海辺のカフカ - Kafka on the Shore 🏖 (Advanced Book Club)

Belated question: Did anyone finish reading Part 1 and decide NOT to continue reading with Part 2? Just curious…

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Welcome to Week 15! This week we’ll see 3 chapters again, don’t forget to read them all :blush:

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Sorry for the delay! I was super busy in the past week, and yesterday I went to bed so early that I totally forgot to post the threads :woman_facepalming:

Anyways, this week we are back to 2 chapters! Enjoy :slight_smile:

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On to week 17! Again, we have two chapters this week.

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Here is chapter 18! We’re slowly ramping up our reading speed again, with 2 chapters again.
Next week brings us 61 pages again so feel free to read a little bit ahead this week if you think that might help you. :blush:

Welcome to week 19, which takes us back to 3 chapters:

Week 20 brings us 3 chapters again - but it will be the last time, I promise! (or maybe not? :ghost:)

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The audiobook for this has just been released on audible! Not listened yet but will be a nice accompaniment for the rest of the book (it’s included in Amazon.jp kindle unlimited, not sure how much it is outside of that)
Links:

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I just tried to sign up for audible Japan but it was impossible because I don’t own a credit card with a Japanese address, and the Internet™ said that those are difficult to get by, so I went with audiobooks.jp instead :woman_shrugging:
How did you do the signup, just out of curiosity?

I signed up via the audible app on my phone, which somehow meant me being able to use my usual payment details even though it wouldn’t let me sign up via the website. I’m on iOS but I think @Scylie managed to do the same on android from what I recall :thinking: To be honest, it seems less intentional and more like a weird oversight, but the ‘all you can listen’ set up of audible.jp and the amount of exclusives they have that I want to listen to (including the S&M series and this) mean that I’m hoping it will keep working at least a while longer! :crossed_fingers:

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It seems to be two different things altogether :thinking: When I signed up via the Japanese website, it asked me for all my information to create my account. On the webpage there is a 2-month free trial (but I could not get it because of the credit card issue).

Then I tried to create a new account through the app, like you suggested. It asked me for my Amazon credentials (and nothing else) and let me in, and it looks as if I could actually make payments this way. The app even gave me monetary amounts in Euros! But, there is no 2-month trial :sob:

So I guess they manage the two user groups independently: Those that come through the website and those that come through the app, i.e. through Amazon. :woman_shrugging:
Anyways, thanks for solving this puzzle! You never know what it might be useful for. :+1:

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I originally signed up because of a trial advertised through the app so might be worth keeping an eye out for! Think it was also 2 months for something ridiculous like 100¥ or something. Not sure how regularly it gets offered.

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Probably doesn’t apply to this book, but audiobook.jp has quite a few books available as 聞き放題 and while I’m not sure about Germany, the US Audible at least has a lot of JP titles recently and they often let you purchase credits in a bundle driving down the cost (and occasional blowout type sales. I recently got like 5 books at 80% off each).

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Okay what the heck now I realise my public library even has a copy of this!

Seems the Japanese books are in a few specific libraries, so I hadn’t noticed. And the search functionality left a lot to be desired :angry:.

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Here is week 21:

We’re already on the penultimate week! Here we go:

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It’s incredible but true: We’re on the last week! We’ve conquered this big chonker and managed to read ~1000 pages :tada:

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Speak for yourself… I’ve still got 100 pages to go. Been falling way behind on my reading lately. :persevere:

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I’m finished now. Got a similarly bittersweet feeling from the ending as I did from ノルウェーの森, but it’s almost more surprising in this case because the story was so abstract. It still carries some serious emotional weight though.

Anyone have any theories about the big picture, the 入り口の石, or anything else? I’m still reeling and going over the pieces in my head, but one thing that stood out to me was the way カラスと呼ばれる少年’s mutilation of ジョニーウォーカー mirrored 星野 killing the 白いもの. Made me thing that カラスと呼ばれる少年 and 星野 might be connected in some way. Or is that too much of a stretch?

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To those of you who are still fans of Murakami: :sweat_smile:
@Jfredel78 and I are planning to read Reading Murakami Haruki's 1Q84 (Intermediate/Advanced Book) from January. We’ve both read the first part of the first book already, so we’re starting from Book 1 part 2. Is anybody interested in joining us? (If you still need to read Book 1 part 1 I’m sure we can find a solution that works for all of us.)

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