Hello friends! It’s been a long time, and I’ve actually been slowly writing book reviews here but not publishing them as life got more and more hectic. But I think I’ll be back for about one or two weeks with a few posts before disappearing again.
The impetus for this slight return to the blog is that I crunched the numbers and realised that I’m making progress towards my reading goal! I mentioned at the start of the year that I slowed down my reading in 2025 and wanted to continue embracing the slow reading trend. Well, I kind of bucked that trend in January by finishing 13 books. February and March had a bit of a slow down, with 9 and 8 books read, but I was still thinking that I was reading faster than I liked.
Until April – I decided to read a book that I bought at the start of my time in Japan for my Japanese April book and it slowed me down considerably. And that was such a good experience! The book was basically an illustrated dictionary of Ukiyo-E and since I have been reading some art museum catalogues after visiting the Impressionism exhibition, I was interested in how Eastern and Western cultures intersect. So it was pretty cool to learn about how many different genres of Ukiyo-E paintings existed and how it influenced Western painting as well (this article I found has a picture of a Van Gogh painting with Ukiyo-E paintings in the background, the image I saw while reading the book). Additionally, the book also had a few entries on Yuujo and their impact on the genre, another fun find since I did some research on this topic a few years back as well.
And thanks to the fact that I took time to read this from cover to cover instead of skipping around so that I could finish faster and read more books, I ended up reading 6 books in April. And for the past few days, I’ve been slowly savouring a new book I bought, which is a Japanese book on the Church and society. I don’t think I’ve read much Christian non-fiction from the perspective of the Japanese Church, so I’m really enjoying this one.
I think this year, I’ll also aim to finally finish reading a French book that I bought. That might actually take me a whole month because I’ll need to slow down to even concentrate on what the book is saying!
Sounds like the slow reading is really working out for you. I’m guessing it makes you feel less pressured to complete a higher number of books.
Hi Eustacia—i still don’t know how you can read so much…and in Japanese and French, too! I did find one comment you made interesting: you said that you enjoyed reading a book from cover-to-cover rather than skipping around….I’d like to know how you choose material in books to skip or what is your process for “skipping around.” I’ve read your book reviews and they give no indication that you skipped anything!
I’m so glad to hear that you’re making great progress on your reading goals!
Thank you!