Available as ebook and paperback; see the Natively page for links to all the usual providers.
Schedule
Starting October 3rd; pacing to be discussed…
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What sort of pace do we want to take this at? My recollection of a previous book by this author was that it was not a particularly difficult read; but on the other hand it is historical fiction and if you’re not familiar with the genre vocab that will be a bit of a speed bump I think.
The book is 311 pages total once you cut out the 解説 and the initial blank pages. It’s split into 27 chapters which are all short and mostly fairly even in length (smallest 6 pages, largest 17, usually 11-13 pages), so it should be pretty easy to find end of chapter break points for whatever pace we want to take.
I had some difficulty getting to grip with the イクサガミ book. That is the only reference I have for “period” related vocabulary. Don’t know if you read some of that book or not, but if the difficulty is similar I’d prefer a slightly slower pace than what we did there.
It’s a lvl 38 in natively at the moment: イクサガミ 天 | L38
The ~45-page weeks felt a little too stiff. I didn’t get sucked into the book either, which might have contributed to it feeling higher effort? Something around 30-35 would give me more leeway to fit it around busier weeks and my N1 preparatory study routine.
That’s probably a little slower than what the advanced club usually does, but given the lower page count that would mean ~10 weeks which seems reasonable to me?
I’ll give the first chapter a try on the weekend to feel how difficult it is for me. I’ve never read a true Japanese historical fiction (薬屋のひとりごと is the closest to the genre), so I hope it’ll help. But I intend to finish this book before mid November, so I have a selfish desire to have more pages a week regardless of its difficulty to read more or less together with the club
I’ll be in Japan in October, so I’m hoping to find a copy then. Fine with whatever pace, but a slower one might be beneficial for me personally what with me probably not prioritizing reading while I’m there.
Aside from that, I usually appreciate the faster schedules since it’s easier for me to stick to them. So yeah, really no preference.
Happy this book got picked finally! I’ve been intrigued since it was first nominated.
Hello! This is the first time I will be joining a WK bookclub. I’ve already ordered the book and excited to read with y’all. My main concern is that I haven’t read much historical novels making this one a harder read for me. Also, trying this as a challenge for myself to try to read something completely new to me and sticking to a schedule.
which I came up with by starting us off with an easy first week and then aiming for 35-ish page weeks to the extent that fitted with the chapter breaks.
How does that sound to everyone?
PS: the font in the paperback I’m using is not a small one (pages are 17 column x 38 characters) and flipping through there’s the usual amount of paragraph and dialogue induced whitespace, so I don’t think we need to adjust for “book has much denser text per page than normal”.
