How fast do you typically read a novel and how many novels have you read roughly?

23 comments

1. You should clarify if you mean novels with pictures or novels without.

2. I am reading a picture book like 2 pages a day and it’s my first japanese book I’m reading lol

3. I’m only getting through 10-20 pages a day, this will be my first (light novel). Half way there. I have to do a lot of work to learn the vocab. Definitely takes me a couple hours but haven’t timed myself and often get distracted

4. Depending on the length, somewhere in between 7-12 days for a LN. Currently at ~25 books however the first dozen were full furigana books for children, then about a half a dozen children’s books without full furigana.

   I believe I read for about 2 hours a day. Not measured my speed in a while though.

5. I real full length novels, mostly contemporary literature, but nothing too difficult (think Sayaka Murata, Kawakami Hiromi, Yoshimoto Banana and so on). How much it takes me to read a book depends, I can do around 5-20 pages a day, it depends on how much energy I have left, if my brain is really tired, 5 pages is maximum.

6. > how fast you read.

   Takes me nearly a month, I read 5 so far, each like 250 pages long, some had furigana some didn’t. Most of the books I read or partially read don’t have pictures but a few did (easier ones like the kirby one) every 5 pages or so

   > what stage your at

   I started reading kinda early, just after Genki 2, I really wanted to jump in!

   Now I’m back on tobira because my grammar needs a kick in the butt though

7. I read like 14k chars/hour. I’ve read 198 but 43 were audiobooks

8. How long have you been studying and how long did it take to get to your current level?

   I’ve just started reading Japanese literature and it’s slow going; my vocabulary is so low I feel like I’m looking up every other noun and verb.

9. I’ve read around 80 LNs. I read a typical LN (~100,000 characters), depending on the genre, in less than 4 hours (easy romance/romcom) and up to ~6.5 hours (hard genres with more specialised vocabulary).

10. I’ve read 10 Novels so far. I’ve averaged about 9000 characters/hour on the last couple of them.

11. My first novel in Japanese was John Miller’s and it was easy since it’s basicaly みんなの日本語’s vocabulary and characters (both as in Kanji and story characters). Read that in like a day’s worth of time easy.

    Currently reading カッコウの許嫁 in manga form and it’s fairly easy (I don’t know 15 minutes per chapter). Started the anime when it began airing this season, but now am reading the novel (marked as 小学上級・中学から, with furigana on *all* kanji) like in the manga. Well, it’s a lot of work — started it on the 8th of this month, am basically halfway through reading (well, reading and looking up stuff in the dictionary) about 20 minutes a day (some more like 40).

    That’s the most I can do at my level. Tried 僕たちのリメイク and it’s still too draining for me to “read” it. Will try finishing all the Cuckoo novels since they’re the closest thing to my level I’ve found myself okay to read. It’s a bit unfair since I’m current on the manga chapters so I know most of the story already so I have more context to help myself understand, but hey. I’m reading a novel. In Japanese.

12. Currently reading my first WN. About 1k characters an hour. Although it’s pretty simple vocab and I use yomichan.

13. Since I completely neglected my vocabulary despite four years of classes in the past, it’s definitely slow going in my current attempt to read PSYCHO-PASS LEGEND 追跡者 縢秀星, which is the first actual novel I’m trying to read. I do at least two pages a day when I can fit it in.

    I completely burned out on Japanese for a while, and the last time I tried reading this novel, I struggled mightily with the first page and dropped it. Having stuck with it this time, I’m around 128 pages in, so I’m about halfway done this time. It’s a physical book, so I have to look things up using my dictionary on my phone (and have to google any words that aren’t in my dictionary), which I think adds a bit to the time it’s taking. I’m largely good with the grammar—it’s just that I didn’t know words like 仕掛け罠 in the beginning.

    I generally prefer challenges and I can be kind of stubborn, so I guess I finally came back to it because I didn’t like how I gave up last time. Anyhow, given that I tend to learn better through reading as a general rule, I figured that it’d be a good way to learn new words (in addition to watching unsubbed news and listening to music, both of which I’ve found helpful).

14. I’ve been studying 8ish months, know a bit over 300 kanji, and would be comfortable w/ the Beginner sections & some Intermediate lessons on Imabi. I only started trying to read light novels over the last few months. Since I’m still learning, I grab the text and then type it out in a Google Doc, attempt to translate it as I go, and then check that against the English and revise.

    Currently Reading:

    [Sword Art Online – Progressive Vol 1](https://jpdb.io/novel/3838/sword-art-online-progressive) (just the interlude) jpdb: 7/10 – taken me a month to get through a bit less than 40 pgs

    [不登校の幼馴染が学校に行く条件は、毎日俺とキスすることだった](https://jpdb.io/novel/7098/futoukou-no-osananajimi-ga-gakkou-ni-iku-jouken-wa-mainichi-ore-to-kiss-suru-koto-datta) jpdb: 3/10 – taken me a week to get through p. 45

    The grammar & vocab are *way* simpler in the Childhood Friend one. If I wasn’t doing the whole process I mentioned above, maybe I’d get through them faster? Which kinda makes me wonder if I should stop transcribing, and only make notes when I come across challenging grammar or new vocab. Hmm…

15. Actually even in English my reading speed varies a lot. When I read for fun, I prefer somewhere around 300 words/minute. It’s a slower pace and I can picture situations much better, instead of rushing towards the end. I prefer to keep the same tempo in Japanese too, but because I need to check quite many unknown words, usually it drops to 200 words/minute. Less when there is no fast way to translate, like when I have to OCR on tablet.

    Can’t say much about how many I’ve actually read. Rough counting suggests around 50 books.

16. I’ve read about 20 light novels and I read roughly 10000 characters per hour. I finish one every 3~5 days

17. I’ve read around 80 novels plus a bunch of web novels.
    I’m reading 15 pages per hour, so if most my novels have around 300 pages, that’s 20 hours per novel.
    I believe I read at the same speed as a normal conversation would be held at, and I sound everything I read in my head clearly and always focus on really jumping into the events.

    (Also in English my reading speed seems to be 15 pages per hour.)

18. i’ve read like 40ish and can read a novel in a day or two if it’s good and i get into it or about a week for an average novel. in terms of how long it takes to get through a novel i’d guess around 8-9 hours average

19. Im at a stage where I can understand most things. Not sure how else to put it. If you handed me an N1 test tomorrow I’d probably do okay but not 180/180 without some lucky guesses.

    I don’t know how many I’ve read. I’ve switched mostly to Manga for the past year as its easier to sneak a full Manga chapter in on a break at work than to awkwardly read 7.3 pages or something.

    A standard light novel, I read a page every 1.5 to 2 minutes. Consequently a 300ish page Light Novel (About standard) takes me 6 to 7 hours total. If I’m on a reading kick that translates to 2 books a week.

    Funny timing this, I’ve going to try and seriously up that to 4 or 4 books a week from now until December for JLPT N1 purposes.

20. I take around 10 hours per volume and have read 110 novels

21. Takes me anywhere from 6-10 hours to read a novel depending on the novel and how much I’m looking up as I go.

22. Currently reading one of the Bungo Straydogs light novels (大宰と黒の時代). Takes me roughly 30-40 minutes to get through 10 pages, which includes the time I spend searching for vocab.

23. Read a 120 pages novel last month, wasn’t hard as I expected actually

    Now I’m tackling Dune, I’m at page 140〜 and it’s being a struggle. Lots of 表外漢字 and difficult grammar/expressions