I finally reached the last lesson in the Intermediate Chinese Reader[1]. I'm aware this doesn't sound like much of an achievement, and in fact it isn't, I actually got to the last lesson of the first of two volumes. Last year in about 8 months give or take I managed to read the previous book, the Beginner Chinese Reader, twice the amount I did this year. I expected for this year to finish both volumes, now I can only expect to read the second one by the end of next year, and then, only the year after that, the Advanced Reader. By the beginning of last year I'd been learning Chinese for about 4 years, so why then did I start with the beginner's book, and I am still halfway through the intermediate one? Well, I did know all of the characters and most of the words in the first book, but I wanted to do the course in full, not least because of the extensive readings, and the fact that it uses traditional characters. And the readings did prove to be extensive, often to the point of tedium, which is the primary reason it has taken me so long to read them through. But no learning is without toil, and I' d much rather read repetitve texts than go through stacks of boring flashcards and try to brute-force words isolated from context into my brain. So, yeah, I will just finish this lesson this month and put it to rest for a while, focus on Russian while just working on Chinese poetry on the side. Hopefully.
As for the test, the HSK test, I will try to absorb the HSK5 vocabulary as fast as possible, and try to do it soon, I wouldn't want to fall back to HSK4, that'll feel like a waste.
[1]John Defrancis - Intermediate Chinese Reader, Vol I.