hello everyone it's Seji and today
i will be doing a reading challenge
update for may
and june i know we are already in august
but it's okay it's all right i took some
time off in july
so i'm having to catch up with a lot of
like
wrap ups and stuff like that so yeah
before we start
i will show you what i'm wearing today
and this
is a new dress that i got from grass
fields which is a lovely brand
that focuses on creating dresses
shirts and all different types of
clothing
with african prints so i got this dress
because i
absolutely loved this print anyway let's
get to the reading challenges
i have decided to take part in
four this year so they're all kind of
like
year-long reading challenges the first
one is the year
of the asian reading challenge the
second is
the con sabor challenge the third is
the reading women challenge
and the fourth is the classics community
2020 reading challenge okay so let's
start
with the year of the asian reading
challenge
2020 so i had set my goal
at 50 just because i knew i would be
reading
a lot of manga and this year i had
already set out
to read lots and lots of japanese
literature
so yeah i thought that was a good goal
so in may and june i read one two
three four five six seven seven pieces
of asian literature i read malice or at
least i listened
to malice by Keigo Higashino
when i was knitting and it was a great
mystery story would definitely recommend
i also listened to revenge by Yoko Ogawa
which is definitely one of my favourites
of the year
it was so dark it's like this short
story collection
that is kind of like fantasy dark
stuff and death and it's just really
cool
a lot of the stories are just i think
basically all of them are interconnected
as well and it's
a book that i am actually looking
forward to
reading again in a couple of weeks just
because i
enjoyed listening to it and i would also
love to discuss
it during fortnite frights moving on i
also
read a couple of essays by Natsume
Souseki
so i don't know if i could really count
this as like a piece of well it is a
piece of literature i read two
essays but they were rather short yeah
i'm throwing them
in there anyway it was really
interesting and i talked about
both of these in my kokoro
book review video and also in one of the
videos that i did
on self-centeredness in literature
written by people of color
i will leave the links to those videos
in the description box below then
surprisingly i
only read one piece of manga namely
fragments of horror by Junji Ito and
yeah what can i say i love me some Ito
horror
this was great as always
i don't know it's i just really like him
because
it's so gory it's so weird it's so
unsettling
he has such a great skill of
finding the horror in the mundane
so it's lovely i will be talking more
about him
and more horror manga during fortnight
frights as well
for those who are interested in that
then moving on the setting sun
by Osamu Dazai so i don't know
if the video is up already
but i actually did a
like full review for this book it was
really interesting
it's basically about the downfall
of the aristocracy in japan
after the second world war very
insightful
very good like it's a good piece of
literature
i would recommend then
i also read what did i read
japanese tales of mystery
and imagination by Edogawa rampo
and i feel like i've spoken about this
book several times
on this channel and i will continue to
do so during fortnight frights
just because this is like a great
collection
of short stories so looking forward to
that the last piece of asian literature
is my baby first birthday by Jenny
Zhang
and i actually uh did an interview uh
with Jenny a couple of weeks maybe
yeah even months ago but um yeah
it is coming up on my channel we
discussed
her latest poetry collection which is
this one
and i thought it was incredibly
interesting and this book contains a lot
of profanity which i am not used to
seeing
in like my literature but it definitely
pushed me in that
sense if that makes any sense and just
having that conversation
with Jenny was incredibly insightful
and yeah it was just great
talking to her and this collection
really challenged me
i thought it was incredibly thought
provoking
so i'm very happy that i did read it
so like i previously said i read seven
pieces
of asian literature which brings me on a
total
of 23 out of 50
and that means that i have completed
46 percent of the challenge and seeing that that
was everything i read
up until june i am quite like
in the ballpark of being like on track
since i'm actually supposed to be at 50
percent
so i'm feeling very confident about
this challenge okay moving on
to the reading women challenge 2020
and to be honest i think i'm going to
have to give
up on this one because like it's a great
challenge
but it's incredibly specific i'll just
put like the challenges here
and if you're going to combine that with
three
other challenges it's it gets kind of
hard
so i haven't been able to like
specifically think of this challenge
in context of the other ones and so
yeah i haven't been doing great that's
basically
what i'm trying to say here i managed to
read
one book during may and june that
fulfilled
this like one of the challenges one
of the prompts
and that was childhood by Tove Ditlevsen
and it fulfilled
number 15 which was read a biography
so there's that in total i have read
seven books that fulfilled
various challenges so i'm at
29 percent which is 21 percent
away from half so i think i'm going to
have to give up on this one but you know
who knows
maybe towards the end of the year i will
have fulfilled
the other challenges which leaves me
with time to
finish this one but yeah you never know in good news though i
completed the classics community 2020
challenge
and that was to read 12 classics
so i read
who among us by Mario Benedetti
this one is from Uruguay and it was
great
i have a full review of that one then
i read childhood by Tove Ditlevsen
which was also great also full review on
my channel
then i read lord of the flies by William
Golding and
this one was not great so let's move on
then i read this african american
classic
actually with my book club and it's
imperium in
imperial by Sutton E Griggs and
i thought it was really interesting it's
kind of like
this dystopian like you have this
underground shadow government
filled with african americans in waco
texas
and it's just really weird very
interesting like i said because at this
time because this was i think written in
like
1903 or something
so science fiction novels weren't really
a thing
so you have this book kind of like
grasping
towards that that genre
but not quite getting there so
it's really interesting also this wasn't
written all that well like the plot and
the pace was all over the place but it
was still very
entertaining so i would definitely
recommend this one
and then i read a brazilian classic
the double death of Quincas-Waterbray
by Jorge amado and this one was great
this was a lovely novella i think it has
7
70 no 80 no 17 78
pages something like that oh no 71
pages and it's a quick read it's very
funny
it's about this guy who is like a really
good guy
good husband good father and then one
day
he decides to just say you know what
i'm done i'm gucci with this and so he
calls his daughter and wife vipers and
he decides to live
on the street basically drinking all
day long and having fun so that's what
this novella is about and so he
basically dies
and his family is actually quite
relieved
because he won't cause them any more
shame
but then his friends from the street
would still like to
say their last goodbyes and then all of
a sudden
he's alive what
okay yeah so he's alive but there's like
this very
interesting twist and i thought it was
done like in such a superb way i would
definitely
recommend you pick this one up and yes
to everyone who has been recommending
captains of the sans near to the wild
heart
and Bras Cubas i
have those titles at home i am planning
to read them so if you would like to
recommend me more brazilian literature
feel free
to do so in the comments yes it is very
much
appreciated now moving on
what else did i read yes again
japanese tales of mystery and
imagination
these stories were written in the
1920s to 1930s
so that's a japanese classic yeah
did i already say the setting sun as
well
maybe i'm not too sure but this one is
also a classic
so all together i read one two three
four five six seven i read
seven classics in may and june
so that brings me on a total of 17
classics that i have read in the first
half
of 2020 so i have completed the
challenge i had to read 12 and i've read
17 already so that's 142 percent
so i'm very happy with that i am still
going to
continue reading these classics so
yeah very much looking forward to
reading more and then finally i have
the Con Sabor reading challenge
and i have been slacking a bit with this
one
but i do have to say i am slowly making
up for it um i've been reading a lot of
brazilian literature
i have some uruguayan literature as well
that i've read so in like july
and this month so yeah i'm pretty sure
i'll be able to finish this one
so basically it's the same as the
classics community i have to read
12 books written by authors from
latin america and so the ones that i
did read in may and june
were who among us and 
the double death so that brings me on
a small 4 out of 12
which is 33 which means that i should
have read
two more classics but you know
we'll be all right i'll be able to uh
finish that challenge before the end
of the year so yeah that's kind of like
where i am at at the moment hopefully i
will be able to do
like an update for july and august
in a more timely fashion either way
thank you so much for watching if you
like the content that
i make on this channel then perhaps
consider joining my patreon
i run a book club over there where we
read diverse classics from all over the
world
it's loads of fun and if you're not into
that you can also support me by donating
a Ko-fi or just by liking subscribing
and commenting
anyway again as always thank you so much
for watching and i hope to see you in
another video
 
