おばちゃんたちのいるところ 👻 (Intermediate Book Club) ・ In progress

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Welcome to the おばちゃんたちのいるところ Book Club!

View the nomination post here!

Where to purchase

Digital: Amazon · Bookwalker · Kobo
Physical: Amazon · CDJapan

Schedule

Week Start Date Chapter Page Numbers Page Count
Week 1 29 Oct Story 1 (until 一刻も静止しない) 9-22 14
Week 2 5 Nov Story 1 22-34 13
Week 3 12 Nov Story 2 37-55 19
Week 4 19 Nov Story 3 59-73 15
Week 5 26 Nov Story 4 77-91 15
Week 6 3 Dec Story 5 95-107 13
Week 7 10 Dec Story 6 111-119 9
Week 8 17 Dec Story 7 123-136 14
24 Dec :christmas_tree: Break
Week 9 31 Dec Story 8 + 9 139-157 6+11
Week 10 7 Jan Story 10 + 11 161-179 5+11
Week 11 14 Jan Story 12 + 13 183-200 7+8
Week 12 21 Jan Story 14 + 15 203-221 10+7
Week 13 28 Jan Story 16 225-239 15
Week 14 4 Feb Story 17 243-252 10

Vocabulary

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

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.

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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.

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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
  • Hardcover

0 voters

Notifications

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3 Likes

Such a fitting pick for the upcoming season! I bought the book when I first saw the proposal so here’s the table of contents if you need it for scheduling purposes.

Table of Contents


5 Likes

You’re a treasure! So the story lengths are as follows:

Story 1 28
Story 2 22
Story 3 18
Story 4 18
Story 5 16
Story 6 12
Story 7 16
Story 8 8
Story 9 14
Story 10 8
Story 11 14
Story 12 10
Story 13 10
Story 14 12
Story 15 10
Story 16 18
Story 17 13

We’ll definitely want to read the first story across two weeks.

Story 2 could go either way; it’s only 15% longer than the average weekly ‘portion’ in the 地球星人 club (as calculated by the number of characters), so I think it’d be ok as a single outlier, but the fact that it comes pretty early on in the schedule might turn people off :thinking:

There is also the option of combining the 8th and 10th story into a single week, or even jumbling up all the stories and reading them in page count order (to get a nice difficulty ramp), but I am not sure that would be wise. There are a lot of people in the Goodreads reviews mentioning that the stories are ‘interconnected’ (albeit ‘loosely’ and ‘subtly’).

So… poll time!

Are we happy reading the 8th and 10th story in the same week?

  • Yes, even if that means reading the 10th story out of order
  • No, I would rather take a week longer and read all the stories in order

0 voters

What are we going to do with the second story?

  • Read the 2nd story in one go
  • Read the 2nd story in two weeks

0 voters

4 Likes

Does the book put a ton of blank pages between each story, or is it “story 1 ends on page 34, story 2 starts on page 35”? Ordinarily that wouldn’t matter, but with the nominally-8-page stories it might bring them down to more like 6 pages…

If there’s padding and people are happy with ~20 pages in a week, there’s the option to combine 8 & 9 and 10 & 11, which would avoid either super-short weeks or reading out of order, but it sounds like that might be faster than the usual pace?

PS: I see you haven’t included the 解説 in the schedule :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Judging from my Bookwalker copy, which admittedly is probably nothing like the printed copy, there is a whole page dedicated to each story title, and a blank page between title and text. There may be another blank page between the end of the previous story and the next title, depending on where the story ends. So the true length may be 2 or 3 pages less than the one indicated in the contents.

You read that? I read it in a book once, and it took me so much out of the book that I never attempted it again. :eyes:

PS. Not sure I should vote in the poll, as I’m fine either way.

4 Likes

I do, but I’m a weird completionist when it comes to the text in books :slight_smile: Some of them are interesting, some are a bit of a dull slog.

3 Likes

If we’re considering reading the second story in one week, we could also consider grouping stories 8+9 and 10+11 to keep the order as is. It comes to the same number of pages as the second story, likely less if we take the title page+blank page into account.

5 Likes

Haha and that’s how inflation starts :grin: Because if we do that, we can group as well 12+13 and 14+15.

5 Likes

Inflation! :scream:

4 Likes

I’ve been waiting to see how the polls play out, but there has not been any activity on those for a while, so here’s another proposal! Having a break around the holidays seemed like a good idea and we can use that time to have a poll about stories 12 to 15 (to merge or not to merge?). It’d be a 17 week schedule, but could end up being 15 weeks. Either way, there’d be enough time to have the next IBC poll well in advance of this club finishing.

Week Start Date Chapter Page Numbers Page Count
Week 1 29 Oct Story 1 (until 一刻も静止しない) 9-22 14
Week 2 5 Nov Story 1 22-34 13
Week 3 12 Nov Story 2 37-55 19
Week 4 19 Nov Story 3 59-73 15
Week 5 26 Nov Story 4 77-91 15
Week 6 3 Dec Story 5 95-107 13
Week 7 10 Dec Story 6 111-119 9
Week 8 17 Dec Story 7 123-136 14
24 Dec :christmas_tree: Break and poll :bar_chart:
Week 9 31 Dec Story 8 + 9 139-157 6+11
Week 10 7 Jan Story 10 + 11 161-179 5+11
Week 11 14 Jan Story 12 183-189 7
Week 12 21 Jan Story 13 193-200 8
Week 13 28 Jan Story 14 203-212 10
Week 14 4 Feb Story 15 215-221 5
Week 15 11 Feb Story 16 225-239 15
Week 16 18 Feb Story 17 243-252 10

Perhaps someone with a physical copy wouldn’t mind looking up the page numbers and (in the case of story 1) a suitable end phrase?

6 Likes

「…一刻も静止しない。」

This is the last phrase before a little break exactly 14 pages into chapter 1 on page 22.

Story 1 part 1 9-22
Story 1 part 2 22-34
Story 2 37-55
Story 3 59-73
Story 4 77-91
Story 5 95-107
Story 6 111-119
Story 7 123-136
Story 8 139-144
Story 9 147-157
Story 10 161-165
Story 11 169-179
Story 12 183-189
Story 13 193-200
Story 14 203-212
Story 15 215-221
Story 16 225-239
Story 17 243-252

There are a few extra pages between chapters so these pages are based on the pages with text.

4 Likes

Thanks for looking it all up and for leaving out the blank pages! There seem to be 3 of those per story. That actually makes quite a substantial difference. For example, story 10 goes from 8 to 5. Looking at the schedule now (I put the updated version in the OP) I think it’ll be very doable :blush:

3 Likes

Thanks for updating the page counts! I guess with this new information we should definitely pair up the four chapters in question, what do you think?

3 Likes

Yeah, I do think that would be best. I don’t want to draw out a book club needlessly. Does anybody object?

Speak now or forever hold your peace :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes

Fine by me, but we don’t have to decide now, right?

1 Like

Not that I’m trying to escalate the situation :joy: but if you’re combining 8+9 and 10+11, you might as well also combine 12+13 and 14+15, since those both come out to 15 pages, matching the intended reading pace perfectly. (Actually, I just counted, and it seems like story 15 actually has 7 pages of text, not 5. :thinking: But the others looked right.)

4 Likes

Thanks for the correction!

I agree that it’d make sense to combine 12+13 and 14+15 as well, because it seems silly to go significantly slower than the IBC pace of 15 pages, especially when the alternative is to go only marginally faster. When it looked like the 22 page weeks were going to be ~50% faster than the ‘official’ pace I thought a vote was in order, but now that it turns out that they’re actually 15-16 pages (at most ~6% faster)…

4 Likes

Thought it might also be worth mentioning that a lot of chapters end with a line or two text on the last page, so I think it’s all the more reason to combine chapters.

3 Likes

And away we go! :confetti_ball:

6 Likes

Time to finish story 1! No more chopped-up stories from now on :grin:

3 Likes