I put no break, but would be happy enough with a short break (ie a week or two so that anyone a bit behind has a chance to catch up) - I just don’t think I’d have the self control not to just read on if the break was significant!
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To be honest, I have no reason to believe the break would NOT be significant 
After all, it’s about getting readers to buy the second book as well, innit? 
I think we can decide this on short notice (i.e. when the first persons have finished the final week’s reading, which shouldn’t take too long as it is only one chapter iirc).
For the schedule of the second volume, I checked out the book and it is of similar length and contains 26 chapters (#24 - #49). Currently I am way too lazy to come up with a detailed schedule - would you all be ok with just continuing to read two chapters per week? I think Murakami writes chapters of pretty equal length so I’m expecting this to work out more or less okay. (If you definitely need a more detailed schedule, then please nudge me and I will work it out.)
Given the intensity of our discussions here and the amount of readers who want to continue, I will just continue with one thread per week if that’s okay.
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Haha woops I think this was my bad/vague phrasing. I meant significant in terms of time - like if we set it to start in a month or two rather than a shorter break then it would be more difficult to resist just reading on.
But the plan you’ve suggested sounds good! If it happens that a week for some reason has some obnoxiously long chapter or a really significant ramp up in difficulty then I’m sure we can just discuss and arrange any updates to the schedule in the threads.
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That was my thinking as well! 
Let’s roll with that, then, for the time being. Next week or so I will update the OP and add the new weeks as off-shoot reading.
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With this week, we are back to our usual rhythm of two chapters per week:
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Here is week #10, now it’s not far until we finish the first part of this book!
Quick heads up: Next week I will only be able to set up the new thread on Sunday evening (travelling once again without computer, for very different reasons but still 
).
I guess y’all know what to do in the meantime
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Thanks everybody for your patience once again! 
Here is the thread for our penultimate week:
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The end of the book is drawing near, and we should decide when to continue with the second part of the book. This week we’ve seen the last Nakata chapter of this part, and there will be one more upcoming Kafka chapter (if everything continues as before). So I guess we can already start to gauge how much of a cliffhanger this division will bring about…
- Let’s continue straight away (on Aug 20th)
- I need a one week break (on Aug 27th)
- There is no other option (or is there? Pls explain)
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I’m already finished with Volume 1 and waiting to start Volume 2. 
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Now that was easy Let’s continue on August 20th, then!
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And here it finally is: Our last week in this book club!
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For those of you who are planning to continue into Part 2: I’ve added a reading schedule to the OP.
When I finally got around to checking the page counts, I discovered that there are quite a bunch of shorter chapters in this part, and when I realized that the initial plan of reading 2 chapters per week might only give us ~25 pages sometimes, I decided to change the schedule somewhat. Please have a look at my proposal in the OP; it usually gives us max. 50 pages per week, with two weeks being a bit longer (but they are surrounded by shorter weeks so you can mitigate this if you are worried). The schedule covers 11 weeks and gets us to the end of the whole book on Nov 4th. (BTW I think this is perfect timing; the next ABC pick after Spice and Wolf will start on Nov 5th.)
What do y’all think?
- The schedule is fine for me
- I’d like to propose a change to the schedule (please explain)
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Oh and by the way, while doing the page counts I discovered that there is a (very short) hidden chapter somewhere in the book, just like an easter egg I deliberately did not indicate it in the schedule so that you can still be surprised by it if you like 
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Now that we successfully finished Part 1, it is…
Satisfaction Poll Time!
Have you read 海辺のカフカ（上）?
- I finished it
- I’m still reading and I plan on finishing it
- I don’t plan to finish it
- I never even started it
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If you read the book, how would you rate it on a 5 point scale? (1: hated it, 5: loved it)
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- Unsure / Didn’t finish
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If you read the book, how would you rate its difficulty?
- No effort at all
- Minimal effort
- Moderate effort
- Significant effort
- So much effort my head might explode
- I don’t know
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Participation Statistics
After the first few weeks, we had a very steady number of participants! Also there were two discussion spikes, one after the Johnny Walker chapter and one after the chapter with the visiting ladies and the Oshima reveal - not surprising that they both induced some more discussion…
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And without further ado, let’s jump into Part 2!
This week we have 2 chapters on our plate:
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Here is week 14, the second week of Part 2!
This week (and next week as well) we’ll be reading 3 chapters, so don’t stop early please 
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Still on week 13; have to do some catching up. I actually started learning Chinese on a whim this week and now I just can’t stop! It’s taking a chunk of my reading time for Japanese but it’s quite refreshing (Du Chinese reading app is addicting). Makes me appreciate all the progress made when I switch back to Japanese 
.
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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 
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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 
Anyways, this week we are back to 2 chapters! Enjoy 
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On to week 17! Again, we have two chapters this week.
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