I went back to the Seattle library on Wednesday for more books, taking the bus this time, because (unlike with the Sounder train which I’m so fond of) there’s a bus stop just a block away from the main library. I came back with a nicely stuffed bag of books, and now my word count is up to 90,511, so by the time I write next week’s update, I’ll be up to 10% of my goal!

I’m gradually becoming able to pick up level 5 books and read them without feeling like I’m in over my head, and level 3 books are starting to be too easy. In my case, I have a rather wide base of words I’ve seen once or twice before over the years but never learned or had reinforced until now, and that’s serving me well — I don’t know what kind of progress someone without that base of years of video games and lots of lang-8 diaries and comments would be making. For me, though, it really feels like I’m tying a lot of previous experience together very quickly.

One weakness of my apartment is that I don’t really have a cozy place to read: the office and the dining room table feel too hard somehow, our living room furniture is good for playing video games but somehow not so comfortable for reading, and reading in bed in the middle of the day just feels goofy. So I’m in the process of making our little balcony a reading-friendly area: I set up a little container garden, and all that’s left to do is to find a better chair than the one I have now. I’ll take pictures when it’s all done.

I’ve been unusually busy this week, but have been reading even still and am up to 75,000 words. Level 3 books are starting to get boring, and I look hopefully at my level 6 books — ah, but not yet, if I am honest with myself about the number of unknown words per page.

Two things have particularly brought me joy this week as far as extensive reading is concerned… Emmie, another extensive reader who I met through the tadoku.org boards, collected and sent me sixteen kids’ books from her and her other friends with grown-up children. I won’t be getting them for a while, because I went with the cheapest shipping option — but I can be patient! (Yes, really. I do have that capability…) Thank you again, Emmie — I’m looking forward to it so much! I really can’t wait ^^

The other thing was a trip to Powell’s, a famous bookstore in Portland that sells new and used books. Brian and I are visiting Portland with two of our friends from San Francisco, and our hotel (from which I write this entry, as a matter of fact) is just a couple of blocks away. There’s an aisle of Japanese books with grammar books and dictionaries in English as well as books for adults, lots of manga and kids’ books. The last time I was at Powell’s (which would have been a good couple of years ago?), I certainly looked at the Japanese section, but I don’t think I bought anything. That is, even the kids’ books were pretty much beyond me, and I didn’t feel like wasting more money on books I couldn’t read… This time, thanks to extensive reading, there’s so many books I want to buy! Since all the kids’ books are used, they’re generally between just $3 and $10. (Although there’s a couple of the Narnia series that are $15 — the darned things are cheaper new at Kinokuniya.) So I’ve already picked up a hefty stack of books, and I’m going back for more tomorrow.

Brian jokes that I’m like a werewolf — instead of turning into a wolf when there’s a full moon, I turn into a wolf when I run out of books. Luckily, I don’t think I’m in danger of that for now!

I’m going to try to start writing diaries at lang-8 again… I just haven’t had the time or desire to do so for several months, but lately I rather miss it. If you want to follow my writing, feel free to add me as a friend; I tend to write diaries that can only be seen by my friends these days, unless I particularly want a lot of comments for some reason. Using words that have been reinforced through reading really helps cement them in my mind, and besides, writing is fun in and of itself for me. (As you may have noted?)

I’ve had a lot of time to read lately, since this month I’m only scheduled to work starting next week. I was getting discouraged by the dearth of appropriate books in the Tacoma library; at the moment my fluent reading level is around 3 or 4, and most of the remaining books are either level 2 (which I am so, so bored of) or level 5 and 6. I can feel that higher-level books are starting to be within my reach, but I’d prefer not to rush it and feel frustrated. As I wrote before, that’s what prompted my Seattle library trip, and now the situation has changed completely.

I brought home 26 books all at about my reading level, and I’ve been reading one or two of them every day. I find, too, that such abundance makes me feel less compulsion to use the dictionary: I made a deal with myself to only look up words after I’ve finished a book, and I find that the more books I have available the less I want to look up words — I would rather just move on to the next book! Such abundance also makes me feel less urgency about updating the blog. I’m actually up to 65,000 words, and have written down little starter bits of information about every book I’ve read, but I haven’t quite gotten around to fleshing them out and posting them. It takes time, and reading the next book instead is always just such a tempting idea!

I am also understanding better the importance of weaning myself off the dictionary; even with unknown words, as long as the book is at an appropriate level I really have started to read much faster than I could when I started. I even find myself gradually moving to the headspace I find myself in when I’m engrossed in an English book: I hardly notice the individual words, I just want to get to the next idea. Of course, then when I run into a word I can’t figure out for the life of me, that happy flow comes crashing down…

I wonder about my progress with vocabulary: I feel like I’m absorbing some words, but others, even when I kind of intuit the meaning from context, seem to go in one ear and out the other (in one eye and out the other? Oh dear). The fact is, for me, looking up a word, attaching kanji to it, storing it in a tidy little vocabulary list and, ideally, writing it down a couple of times is really what begins the process of anchoring it in my mind; the word is then reinforced by seeing or hearing it in a few different contexts, then eventually I can draw upon it when writing. Skipping those first steps makes me feel like I’m missing a lot, and I wonder if I’ll actually be able to actually expand my vocabulary, or if this is more like reinforcing the piles of words I already have somewhere in my head but don’t really know well yet. If a book constantly uses a word that’s new to me then it has a good chance of staying in my head, but if a new word shows up just once in a book with a thousand or two thousand words, then there’s not much chance of it making an impression. Between that worry and my determination to take the JLPT later this year, I decided to start a course of self-study, following the textbook I used in my third year of formal study — for another thing, there is a lot of grammar I’m embarrassingly shaky on. I’ve got enough time for it at the moment, so I don’t feel like I’m cheating myself out of reading opportunities. (But who am I kidding, if I get short on time the grammar will be the first thing to go.)

Incidentally, grammar studies go better when I alternate reading and textbook exercises. I almost have to, because I can’t just concentrate on grammar anymore when there is a book at hand!