Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).
Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:
Example
This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.
The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.
This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.
Posting Advice
When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.
Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!
The pages numbers are from the Bookwalker edition.
Long table with Chapters length
Chapter
Start Page
Pages total
1
7
9
2
16
7
3
23
8
4
31
9
5
40
9
6
49
5
7
54
12
8
66
12
9
78
9
10
87
8
11
95
8
12
103
8
13
111
8
14
119
8
15
127
8
16
135
12
17
147
5 6*
18
152 153*
7
19
159 160*
10
20
169 170*
6
21
175 176*
9
22
184 185*
8 9*
23
192 194*
6
24
198 200*
9
25
207 209*
9
26
216 218*
7
27
223 225*
8
28
231 233*
11
29
242 243*
25
epilogue
267 268
2
29 weeks would be a bit too long for a book club?
We could read two chapters at a time where they are shorter?
Also, by skimming through the book to get the pages number, I saw that a lot of pages are mostly dialog.
I had very much decided that I needed to hold off on this club, but then I found a reasonably priced copy with no shipping charge and that went right out the window. I may still find myself overcommitted when the time comes, but I’m keeping my options open at least.
Happy to help you along a little bit regarding the schedule, if you don’t mind
This is a bit counter-intuitive, but actually the Bookwalker page numbers have nothing to do with the actual book, they are specifically for your device and your font size settings. You can try this out by adjusting the font size (click on the cog wheel at the bottom of the page) or by switching to another device (e.g. from tablet to phone or something) and you will notice that the page numbers differ each time. That means that generally speaking nobody else can make use of these page numbers except you.
But what you can do is apply a little bit of mathematics in order to roughly get an idea regarding the real page count: You can look at the number of pages that your device displays for the book (in my case, it’s 578 pages) and also at the number of pages the book officially has (e.g. on Amazon); for this book it shows 288 pages. Now if we calculate 288/578 = 0.498, we get the ratio of my phone’s pages to the real pages. In my case, chapter 1 starts on phone-page 10 and runs until phone-page 29, i.e. 20 phone-pages, or 20 * 0.498 = 10 real pages. This way you can determine for each chapter how many pages it contains.
For the general schedule, as omk3 pointed out, we read about 15 pages per week in the IBC, therefore this book (with 288 pages) should cover around 19 weeks.
Looking at your suggested schedule, for your device you seem to be much closer to a factor of 1 than me (my device is a phone, and the font size is rather large, so that’s probably why). That means your schedule does not seem to deviate too much from the real page numbers, which is great! In that case you can pretty much stick with it as-is, would be my suggestion.
At the bottom of each page you can access the book’s table of contents which allows you to directly jump to each chapter (not each book has this TOC, but here we are lucky). This should be much faster than scrolling through
Thanks for the help!
The book is supposed to be 288 pages long and my Bookwalker settings had the epilogue finishing at page 269, so maybe pure luck but it seems to fit quite well
@pm215 would be awesome if you can confirm or let me know how far off it is
Here you go.
No differences from your table before chapter 17, but then it diverges slightly by a page, and again a little later. Sorry about the lack of formatting, but when I cut and pasted your table to edit it came out plain text…
2 weeks shorter as we start by reading 2 chapters a week right away, except if they are already 12 pages long.
Week 1 might be a bit rough though, starting with 16 pages and potentially a lot of descriptions at the beginning of the book?
3rd proposal:
Week
Chapter(s)
Pages total
week 1
1
9
week 2
2+3
15
week 3
4+5
18
week 4
6+7
17
week 5
8+9
21
week 6
10 + 11
16
week 7
12 + 13
16
week 8
14 + 15
16
week 9
16
12
week 10
17 + 18
13
week 11
19 + 20
16
week 12
21 + 22
18
week 13
23 + 24
15
week 14
25 + 26
16
week 15
27 + 28
19
week 16
29 + epilogue
27
One week shorter. Chapter 1 only for week 1, then 2 chapters every week (expect week 9 and last week). Basically less weeks, but more pages to read every week.
I’ll wait a bit to hear if someone has other suggestions and then I guess we can make a POLL to vote for the preferred schedule
Oh my gosh I’m really tempted to give this a try the story is exactly my kinda thing but it would definitely be a little too difficult language wise… (I’ve read a few novels before, but all ones aimed at younger audiences)
Did anyone dive into IBC a bit early? How did it go? Was it do-able or a complete nightmare?
It was doable, but it will also depend on your JP level overall and how much time/perseverance you have. あん was the hardest book I ever read and I started it around the time the IBC primer club started, so a bit earlier then I should, I guess. What helped me was reading a bit in advance and setting aside enough time to search up all the (many) words I didn’t know. And accepting that some sentences and words won’t completely make sense to me, but that I understand what is going on roughly around that section and that that is enough for me. But I’d always recommend just giving it a try🙂
I read an ABBC manga, then went straight to an IBC novel, and never regretted it. I had an extremely limited vocabulary at the time, so I had to look up basically every other word, but other than that it was very doable. I was lucky in that the specific book was written in a straightforward, almost bland way, with no especially complicated sentences or advanced grammar.
And you’re lucky in that respect too, because 赤川 次郎 writes very simply, and his books are mostly dialogue. I haven’t read this particular one, but I’m sure it’s going to be a great starter novel in terms of difficulty (and hopefully fun).
I didn’t dive into the IBC specifically, but into more difficult novels very early. I am happy I did and would recommend it to anyone, as long as you have your methods on making difficult stuff readable for you (easy lookups, tolerance to not understanding every single detail). Also, some people have reported that they didn’t feel like books that are aimed at children/teenagers were that much easier than the “advanced” books anyway, so also keep in mind that all the difficulty ratings here are, to a degree, subjective. Having an interesting book also helps reading comprehension, because it’s less like a chore to read it, if you’re really hooked.
Also, people in the book clubs are so helpful and I’m pretty sure someone will assist with sentence comprehension if there’s something you aren’t understanding.
Lastly, just give the sample pages on amazon a try? That’s what I always do when I’m unsure if I can stomach a “difficult” novel. Also, if you’re buying digitally, it’s on many platforms (amazon jp ￥455, kobo ￥253) pretty cheap currently, so not much lost if you do decide it’s too much for you and decide to drop out (which is totally okay, too!).
And since you have over a month till this book club starts, you can also go through some of the past IBCs and see how well you can stomach the level or try to read a bit ahead in the current novel. There are really tons of methods to make this doable
The kindle locations are a better measure for the amounts of weekly readings than the number of pages, as they are proportional to the number of bytes i.e. the amount of actual text.
Here is the overview of the chapter lengths and the proposed 3 schedules in kindle locs:
I recommend to use one of the e-book versions as you can select words to immediately get a translation, which is a great tool to look up unknown words - much better than trying to find the kanji in jisho. On kindle you can even translate whole sentences.
I may still find myself overcommitted when the time comes, but I’m keeping my options open at least. 
