After having read the texts from "Breaking into japanese litterature" I found out I really like learning japanese like that. That, mixed together with anki studies, was a great way for me to learn written japanese. However, I am uncertain what I should proceed with reading now.
I've bought a few books, like 銀河鉄道の夜,　こころ,　吾輩は猫である and　ハリーポッターと賢者の石　and two light novels (バッカノ and　とらトラ) so far. I started out with toradora, but I am proceeding pretty slowly without the help of an inbuilt dictionary. Should I switch over to an electronic way of reading, and if so, which way would be better. I don't have an iPad or e-Reader atm, but if that will make life much easier for me, I will probably invest in one.
So in summary, what is your recommendation for exciting stories/texts to read and what format do you recommend reading them in? I will ofcoarse combine the reading with anki to learn uknown vocabulary. Give me your advice, please!

I like to read without stopping by all the words I don't know, otherwise it takes a long time to make progress and I think it's annoying to have to do it. I value reading massively for pleasure and context-based learning more than reading mainly for the vocabulary. I'll look up a word if there's one that keeps coming up several times that I don't know the readings for, or if there's one that's crucial to know in order to understand the context. For that reason I like having the physical copies of the books, I think it's easier and more motivating.

Since you say that you benefit greatly from the help of electronic dictionaries maybe you'd do better with an online reader so that you can use something like Rikaichan. Have you looked into the Yomichan add-on for Anki on here? I think it's pretty good but I haven't used it. I'm happy with just my books and my dictionary on my Android phone so I don't know.

If you read the books you could mark the words you would like to srs while you come across them, read on, and then have sessions where you go through them to add them to Anki. Looking up the readings could be bothersome though. But that's if you don't find it impossible to read without all the look-ups I guess.

read on stuff that interests you.

Have you worked through an Anki deck like Core6k? That helps a lot, IME.

Jon

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:I like to read without stopping by all the words I don't know, otherwise it takes a long time to make progress and I think it's annoying to have to do it. I value reading massively for pleasure and context-based learning more than reading mainly for the vocabulary. I'll look up a word if there's one that keeps coming up several times that I don't know the readings for, or if there's one that's crucial to know in order to understand the context. For that reason I like having the physical copies of the books, I think it's easier and more motivating.

I'm in much the same boat, but I've found its great that if I'm reading near my computer to have open an excel sheet or if I'm not, have a pencil. I write down or mark the words and then come back later and add them to my deck. I use Weblio's example sentence finder + a self-made program to pull down sentences. I can about 100-150 words in an hour. Great for continual addition of cards to your deck.

I'm enjoying 狼と香辛料 quite a bit, and you seem to like fantasy series so maybe give that a try, it's a light novel series (with an anime adaptation).

This is a bit of repeated advice, but, someone on this forum had suggested reading very slowly and carefully the first 10-15% of a book and adding every unknown vocabulary word to Anki - this is to 'prime' yourself on the author's style. Having done this, you can then read the remaining 85-90% of the book with good comprehension. I didn't follow the suggestion strictly, more like, I have one bookmark 'ahead' where I'm simply reading and looking up words when I have to, and one bookmark 'behind' where I'm collecting vocabulary. It's probably less effective my way because I only collect vocabulary when I've had a few days with a '0 new cards today' staring at me so I'm 75% of the way through reading the book and only maybe 2-3% of the way through on vocabulary collecting...

It is, however, definitely true that authors in any language tend to have favorite vocabulary that does tend to come up over and over. I'll try to stick more strictly to the technique next time (although I'm still unsure how to weigh 'percentages' when it comes to a light novel series... the first 10% of each volume seems less painful than the first 10% of the whole series though!)

I prefer paper books for a variety of reasons, but even if I preferred etexts, right now I'd really be waiting for the Japanese Kindle launch that has been discussed recently in these forums. A lot of light novels will hopefully be available as etexts soon, but the pricing relative to physical books and what devices they'll be on, and exactly which titles, how and where the devices can work, what payments can be accepted, and so on, is all stuff we won't know until after the actual launch. (Actually, I -am- waiting semi-eagerly to find out, as I don't prefer physical books so much that I wouldn't take etexts if they happen to be significantly cheaper. )

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:I'm enjoying 狼と香辛料 quite a bit, and you seem to like fantasy series so maybe give that a try, it's a light novel series (with an anime adaptation).

After having watched the animes (and love it), the mere though of reading the light novel terrifies me personally. Between Horo's old samurai-era way of talking and the economic concepts that come up and get thrown around; it seems like it would be a crazy difficult read.

I think almost all light novel series have some kind of specialized vocabulary that they throw around, whether it's technology or economics or even just made-up fantasy words. ミニスカ宇宙海賊? Nautical words! 大正野球娘? Baseball! (This is the kind of thing that can make light novels actually harder to read than regular novels. I cut my teeth on light novels, but mostly 富士見二丁目交響楽団, which is just romance and music. And the music's mostly katakana. Nevertheless it is a Boys Love novel so... it's kind of a niche taste!)

That said, I guess the economics got heavier later on, but I didn't find the first chapters of 狼と香辛料 to be too hard. Even Horo's dialect is just a couple of weird quirks that you get used to pretty fast.

Anyway, my recommendation for reading novels is things that are contemporary, realistic, and deal with daily life and relationships rather than economics or history or fantasy worlds. Yoshimoto Banana, Murakami Haruki's more realistic novels, Ekuni Kaori, Miura Shion, Ogawa Yoko. Mysteries can be kind of iffy -- you'll see words like "subdural hematoma" -- but a lot of people find the kinds of books I've just listed to be boring, so if you're one of those mysteries are a good choice. (The best Japanese mystery I've read is 火車 by Miyabe Miyuki, but it's really long and has a lot of economic vocab in it.)

蹴りたい背中 by Wataya Risa is really good too. It's short, it's an easy read, but it's got a lot of depth to it and it talks about serious social issues like hikikomori.

My recommendation for reading is to do a pretty heavy chunk of reading without a dictionary, or with very occasional dictionary lookups, and find a book that's easy enough that you don't need a dictionary. Read on the bus, read on the subway, read standing in line, read in the bath, whatever. And at the same time, you can have another book going where you look up a ton of words and only get through two or three pages a day. That way you get the feeling of accomplishment of learning new words and getting new words in Anki, while still actually making significant progress reading a book. But you could also do that with the same book like SomeCallMeChris.

Try Otsuichi（乙一)'s きみにしか聞こえない and his other (non-horror) light novels. Pretty easy read, and the magical realism and prose pulls you in.

Horo doesn't speak in a samurai-era dialect, she just has a very set pattern of idiosyncrasies that can be individually found in modern day dialects, don't worry about these. I haven't read too far in, but I can't imagine that the economic discussion can get too high brow, can it? Not beyond the standard "price of X will rise/fall in the future due to the influence of Y" fare, anyway, surely? I mean the target audience is typical otaku.

I wonder if I'll ever find the time to read through them to the end, while I want to get to the end of the romantic wish fulfilment plot, 17 volumes is a hard ask...