この本を盗む者は 📚 🪄 (Advanced Book Club)

[seanblue]

I think I’m officially in the “never catching up” group. I’m already nearly a week behind, with a little less than an hour left to read of week 2’s portion. If I really really pushed I could probably catch up within 2-3 weeks, but there are two problems with that:

1. This book isn’t easy enough or gripping enough for me to push like that (pushing to read fast would probably hurt my enjoyment)
2. I got a new English book that I originally intended to read starting this week because this week and next were “shorter” weeks at 34 pages. Now that I’m behind, I’d have to wait several more weeks or maybe even until the end of the book club to read it, which I’m just not going to do.

Unlike Spice and Wolf, I think I will keep reading this. I am enjoying it overall, except when it throws out a ton of food or other special-category words all at once that I don’t know. At those times I want to never touch the book again! I’m just realizing that it’s not a “gripping, want to read fast” kind of book for me, so I’m better off reading it at my own pace. I’ll probably read the above-mentioned English book and 1-2 easier Japanese books while reading this, to avoid going multiple months without finishing a book like happened to me a couple times last year.

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Also, to expand a bit on the difficulty. Partially in response to:

@pocketcat

I know the question of difficulty came up and my personal, subjective opinion is that this probably falls somewhere around a Natively 33 based on what I’ve read so far. A decent scattering of unusual words, but they seem to always get furigana the first time they’re shown and the writing style is straightforward narration.

Through the first chapter (nearly done) I’ve definitely had to look up more words compared to many books I read, but for me the hardest part has just been the writing style. I’ve often found it difficult to follow the author’s train of thought. Like it flows in a direction I’m not expecting and I keep doing double takes and having to reread sections.

I think the hardest Japanese book I’ve completed so far is 薬屋のひとりごと (level 37), with close runner ups to 魔法少女育成計画 (level 35) and Red Data Girl (level 34, which feels understated to me). So far, この本を盗むものは feels slightly harder than all of those. If I were to give this book a speculative Natively difficulty from the first chapter, I think something in the 36-39 range would be fair. Its current rating of 46 certainly feels overstated by quite a bit.