My extensive reading goals and background

I learned about extensive reading from a few of my friends on Lang-8, and I’ve been trying it myself to some extent for a few months now. Writing a blog about it seemed like a fun way of keeping track of my own reading and sharing information with other Japanese language learners who might be interested in book reviews and so on!

I started learning Japanese in college in 2002 and studied formally for three years, but after graduating from college, my devotion to Japanese studies has been sporadic at best; I’m not likely to really spend much time in the country, so it’s something of a hobby at this point. Still, I remain fascinated by the language and culture and have continued to study off and on. Extensive reading caught my interest as soon as I heard about it, although it’s been difficult for me to let go of the dictionary, and although I haven’t really been applying myself I’ve already increased my reading speed and fluency and broadened my vocabulary just by reading a lot of kids’ books in Japanese.

My goal is to be able to read in Japanese as easily as I can in English. My more attainable goal is to read all 125 of the Japanese kids’ books in the Tacoma library system. (I’ve been starting with the easy ones, but I’ve been very bad at keeping track of them, so I can’t say yet what number I’m up to.) I’d also like to put together a modest library of books that are particularly good for extensive reading in Japanese and maybe create an extensive reading group in this area. As far as this blog is concerned, I’ll probably write reviews of good books for people doing extended reading in Japanese, keep track of the Japanese books I’ve read, write a little about the books I am reading in English about Japanese and maybe try to write some things in Japanese as well.

I live in Tacoma with my husband and our two cats, and my other major hobby is drawing paper dolls. I also like to play videogames (I have a particular fondness for retro RPGs), cook and watch movies.

よろしくお願いします。