あん 👵🏻 (Intermediate Book Club) ・ Now Reading Week 16

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Welcome to the あん Book Club!

View the nomination post here!

Where to purchase

Digital: AmazonBookwalker
Physical: AmazonVerasiaCD Japan

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 15th of July Chapters 7 and 8 39 to 53 15
Week 5 22nd of July Chapters 9 and 10 54 to 71 18
Week 6 29th of July Chapters 11 and 12 72 to 91 20
Week 7 5th of August Chapters 13 and 14 92 to 107 16
Week 8 12th of August Chapters 15 and 16 108 to 129 22
Week 9 19th of August Chapter 17 130 to 144 15
Week 10 26th of August Chapters 18 and 19 145 to 160 16
Week 11 2nd of September Chapters 20 161 to 171 10
Week 12 9th of September Chapters 21 and 22 172 to 190 19
Week 13 16th of September Chapters 23, 24 and 25 191 to 206 16
Week 14 23rd of September Chapters 26 and 27 207 to 224 18
Week 15 30th of September Chapter 28 225 to 244 20
Week 16 7th of October Chapter 29 and postscript 245 to 259 15

Vocabulary

あん Vocabulary Sheet

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

Trigger Warnings

Death, disease, disability, crime

Discussion Guidelines

Spoiler Courtesy

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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).
  3. 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!

Proper Nouns

Feel free to add to this as new characters / places get introduced throughout the book.

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)
Feel free to suggest additional resources.

Membership

Will you be reading with us?
  • Yes
  • Yes, but I might start late
  • Maybe
  • No
0 voters
Which version will you be reading?
  • eBook
  • Paperback
0 voters

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to be notified when weekly threads get posted!

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(I will reserve this reply slot for polls or anything else :slight_smile: )

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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).

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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.

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A durian is a type of fruit, and it’s spelled ドリアン in Japanese

They look like this:

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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’ :sweat_smile:

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I had the same thought, though I did suspect it was due to the fruit since it’s the only thing that seemed to make sense!

I tried to investigate a bit more on the name, and here’s what I’ve found so far:

早稲田大学時代には劇団を主宰し、卒業後は雑誌ライター、放送作家などを経て、1990年、東欧革命取材を契機に「叫ぶ詩人の会」を結成し、同会長となる。芸名であるドリアン助川として「言葉の復権」をテーマに、世の中の森羅万象を激しいロックに乗せて叫ぶ、独自のパフォーマンスで話題になる。
1995年10月、現役高校教諭の後藤鮪郎が出演していたラジオ番組の後を受け、相談番組『ドリアン助川の正義のラジオ!ジャンベルジャン!』のパーソナリティを担当。また、並行して若者の人気を集め、海外のアーティストを紹介する『金髪先生』(テレビ朝日)などに出演するようになる[1][3][5]。

Easy translation

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]

放送作家時代は本名の助川哲也、この名での著作もある。叫ぶ詩人の会結成後に威圧感を与えがちな自らの風貌を自虐的に捉え、[要出典]ドリアン助川の名を使うようになる。活動の拠点をニューヨークに移したことを機に、芸名を「TETUYA」に改名した。改名の理由は、前述のラジオ番組に出演以降、助川が街を歩いていると、番組を聴いていたリスナーから声を掛けられ、「悩み相談」を希望され、嫌気が指した事で番組降板を希望していた[9]。しかし、渡米後も舞い込んで来る仕事は「人生相談の仕事」しか来なくなったため、「ドリアン助川」という芸名を捨て、「明川哲也(あきかわ てつや)」を使っていた[3]。にもかかわらず、結局はイメージを変える事が出来ず、2011年11月に元来からの芸名である「ドリアン助川」に戻した[10]。

Easy translation

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 :sweat_smile: @2000kanji I guess this also explains the choices between the 3 names he’s used so far.

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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 :grin: 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!)

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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.

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It’s finally here!!

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...

ch 1 - p5
ch 2 - p9
ch 3 - p15
ch 4 - p19
ch 5 - p26
ch 6 - p30
ch 7 - p39
ch 8 - p46
ch 9 - p54
ch 10 - p60
ch 11 - p72
ch 12 - p80
ch 13 - p92
ch 14 - p101
ch 15 - p108
ch 16 - p121
ch 17 - p130
ch 18 - p145
ch 19 - p157
ch 20 - p161
ch 21 - p171
ch 22 - p185
ch 23 - p191
ch 24 - p197
ch 25 - p201
ch 26 - p207
ch 27 - p214
ch 28 - p225
ch 29 - p245
postscript - p253-259

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 :slight_smile:

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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 :+1:

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As nobody has commented on the schedule, I guess this means that nobody has objections :grin:
So it would probably be fine to establish this as the book club’s schedule?

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I will link it to the main post!

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!

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For what it’s worth, it looks great to me :+1:

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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!

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Week 2 is here. I’m looking forward to see how the story will develop!

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Week 3 is here. Enjoy the reading!

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We’re starting Week 4!

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Hope to see you guys on Week 5!

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