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Trigger Warnings
Death, disease, disability, crime
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Proper Nouns
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Example:
Name
Reading
Notes
千太郎
せんたろう
Main character
吉井徳江
よしいとくえ
Main character
ワカナ
わかな
Main character
Resources
Information regarding the movie (EN / JP)
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For the next 33 hours (until 2023-05-21T15:00:00Z) the Amazon price is reduced to ¥1,485 - still much more than the paper edition which costs ¥491.
I am a little confused about the author’s name. Why does ドリアン become Durian in the English translation? Apparently the author has used two other names: 助川 哲也 (Tetsuya Sukegawa - his birthname?) and 明川 哲也 (Tetsuya Akikawa).
Also if anyone else is in Europe and prefer to buy the physical edition from Verasia, they are currently in stock (I asked them about it since the book was out of stock for a while, and new copies arrived yesterday).
Hmm, good questions about his name though - I will try to look it up and see if I can find some info. I wonder if ドリアン → Durian was just some kind of stylistic choice.
Whoa, the ebook is expensive! So I just bought a secondhand copy for ¥380, it should arrive in a few days~
I prefer using ebooks, because it’s easier to look up words, but this did not seem a very difficult read, so hopefully the physical copy will suffice.
I really thought the English translated name was a typo at first because ‘there’s no way Dorian would be translated to a spiky fruit known for being stinky’
Under his stage name, Dorian Sukegawa, he has become a hot topic for his unique performance, in which he shouts out all things in the world with intense rock music under the theme of “restoration of words.”
In October 1995, he was in charge of the personality of the consultation program “Durian Sukegawa’s Justice Radio! Jean Berjean!” At the same time, he also gained popularity among young people and began appearing in programs such as “Kondo Sensei” (TV Asahi), which introduced foreign artists.[1][3][5]
When he was a broadcast writer, his real name was Tetsuya Sukegawa, and he also wrote under this name. After the formation of the Screaming Poets Association, he began to use the name Dorian Sukegawa, masochistically criticizing his intimidating appearance. After moving his base of activities to New York, he changed his stage name to “TETUYA”. The reason for the name change is that after appearing on the radio program mentioned above, when Sukegawa was walking around town, a listener who was listening to the program called out to him and asked for “consultation with troubles”, and he was disgusted with it, so he left the program. [9]. However, even after moving to the United States, the only work that came in was “life counseling work”, so he abandoned the stage name “Dorian Sukegawa” and used “Tetsuya Akikawa” [3]. Despite this, he was unable to change his image in the end, and returned to his original stage name of “Dorian Sukegawa” in November 2011.
So… yeah, not sure why he chose the famed Durian fruit after all, but he sure seems to have a bit of a… complicated relationship with his names @2000kanji I guess this also explains the choices between the 3 names he’s used so far.
Just a heads up that I will probably start a poll to decide the schedule by the end of next week, since my book is arriving Thursday evening I saw most people actually plan to read the paperback, so I’m curious if our editions will be similar/the same or not.
If anyone already has the book and had the time to take a quick look, you’re always free to post a schedule suggestion, but we will probably decide based on majority vote in the end (I do remember people rating it as fairly difficult in the nomination post, so I’m guessing we might go at a ~15-20 pages a week post, but we never know!)
The usual weekly amount for this club is about 15 pages, so that would actually be quite fast! If you suspect that the book is harder, you could introduce a ramp-up phase that would bring us to cruising altitude in about 3 weeks. But this of course also depends on the book and its chapter structure.
So, my version of the paperback has 259 pages, but the good news is that the book is divided in 29 chapters, which I think will be helpful for creating the schedule and for people with different versions to also figure out where we are. In my version of the book, most chapters are around 5-10 pages, with the occasional longer chapter, meaning we could do 2-3 chapters a week… with 29 chapters, it would give us around 15 weeks, which seems quite fine compared to other picks in this club (many are shorter of course, but 地球星人 was 16 weeks, and 僕が愛したすべての君へ, 君の名は and コーヒーが冷めないうちに were all 17 weeks).
Proposed Schedule
Week
Start Date
Chapter
Page Numbers
Page Count
Week 1
24th of June
Chapters 1 and 2
5 to 14
10
Week 2
1st of July
Chapters 3 and 4
15 to 25
11
Week 3
8th of July
Chapters 5 and 6
26 to 38
13
Week 4
etc…
Chapters 7 and 8
39 to 53
15
Week 5
Chapters 9 and 10
54 to 71
18
Week 6
Chapters 11 and 12
72 to 91
20
Week 7
Chapters 13 and 14
92 to 107
16
Week 8
Chapters 15 and 16
108 to 129
22
Week 9
Chapter 17
130 to 144
15
Week 10
Chapters 18 and 19
145 to 160
16
Week 11
Chapters 20
161 to 171
10
Week 12
Chapters 21 and 22
172 to 190
19
Week 13
Chapters 23, 24 and 25
191 to 206
16
Week 14
Chapters 26 and 27
207 to 224
18
Week 15
Chapter 28
225 to 244
20
Week 16
Chapter 29 and postscript
245 to 259
15
Starting page of each chapter in my version, FYI...
With this proposed schedule, we “ease in” with 10 pages in the beginning and a gradual increase, and keep the pace of 2 chapters a week (so no chapter breaks). Some weeks can get a bit harder (eg. week 6 with 20 pages or week 8 with 22 pages), but I think overall we are at around a similar pace every week! I would love to hear the opinion from others though, what do you think of this schedule? Should we strive to keep more equal numbers of pages per week, but in this case breaking a chapter in parts instead of reading full chapters?
Also, I would love any input from others who have gotten different paperback or kindle versions. If you had the chance to take a look at the amount of pages per week, would you say the schedule suggestion is manageable?
Once again, I’m not very experienced with book clubs nor the IBC, so any suggestions are welcome
This looks very good to me! I like the ramp-up phase and that we have a 10-page week in the middle to give people the chance to catch up if they could not fully follow the speed
As nobody has commented on the schedule, I guess this means that nobody has objections
So it would probably be fine to establish this as the book club’s schedule?
If, once the club starts, anyone thinks that there is a need to adapt the schedule, feel free to comment and we can all decide to modify it - it’s not set on stone!
Time went by so fast, and it is time for Week 1 to start (well, actually, it should start tomorrow, but I’ve got the thread up today as I won’t have time to tomorrow). I’m excited to start and I hope others are, as well!