Yup, count me in! (Though I’ll probably spend most of the time hanging around quietly in the background saying very little, as is my wont ^^;; )
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I’m gonna try to catch up, but I’m only on page 34 
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I‘m still trying to catch up on the first story. I‘m on page 28 now, it‘s more difficult than I thought two read two pages a day (especially if you insist on rereading everything up to that page as well).
But I will try to catch up tomorrow (lots of time) and try to join the second story. Keep the discussions coming! I might not contribute much, but I am reading the comments.
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Unfortunately, I have two surgeries to get through, and will have to drop out for the moment. I’ll try it again later. Thanks!
Sorry I bought the 10分で読める伝記 series some weeks before this group began… so far I’m still doing that series… the first book took me about 3 weeks, so I guess I still have a lot of reading material left before getting another one. 
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@marcusp I will be rejoining beginning with of August, when I get back from my holidays, and try to catch up! 
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That is great! Thank you so much for the feedback!
Fabulous! I think story two moves a bit slower, so all the best in catching up!
That is brilliant! Good luck!
Oh, no, I’m so sorry to hear that. All the best with the surgeries.
I’ll have to look that up, sounds great! Thank you!
I was wondering where you’d got to! Have a great summer!
Thank you everyone so much for the feedback! It’s great to know people are still reading along! Thank you!
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Thank you for checking!
Unfortunately, no, I won’t be continuing the story with the group. I’ve experienced the same problem as ccprince, where my weak understanding of grammar has made it so it takes far too long to work through the pages. I found myself not bothering to work on it and falling behind, and I realized it’s because I couldn’t enjoy the story since I spent all the time trying to understand the grammar.
I’m going to put the book on hold and focus more on vocabulary and especially grammar before I try working through the book again. I’ll definitely use the forum thread as guidance once I start working on the book again!
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Thank you so much for letting us know! I had the same experience reading Yotsuba. So now I’ve put that down, but will return again in the future. Just as I am sure you’ll return to this book. Thanks again and all the best to you!
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I noticed that I know almost no grammar points, so I’ve put the book away for now until I get better at it. I was really looking forward to read it in the club, but I have to accept the fact that I need to do more studys first 
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Thanks for asking, count me in aswell 
I too have a few pages of catching up to do, but will try to get those done today - looking forward to discuss the second story with everyone
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@Dwrlesky: If you’re looking for a place to get started on grammar (I know that many great sources have been mentioned before - this is just one more to add^^): I stumbled upon this site yesterday and found it to be pretty easy to use: it has the grammar structures/expressions grouped by the different JLPT levels and also has some nice summary sheets for the lower levels (I printed the one for N5, which is only two pages, myself to help me check/get up to speed with N5 grammar).
@marcusp: I noticed that many of those struggling with the book do so mostly because of grammar issues. Personally my current level of grammar is roughly N5 and of course I don’t know all the grammar in the book, but it’s enough to (once I looked up vocabulary I don’t know) understand at least the gist of a sentence. Should we maybe recommend roughly N5 grammar for people who are not sure whether to join the book club because of grammar at the beginning of the main thread (of course also encouraging those up for the challenge to start earlier)? I’m absolutely not sure about this, I don’t want anyone to look at this as a requirement or sth (we can always ask each other, there are no silly questions, that’s what the club is for ), just a guideline of some sort…
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I wasn’t able to catch up before this story began, but I should have time to in the next day or two!
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Thank you everyone for all the great feedback, and wonderful to know there are lots of people reading along or planning to do so in the future!
Nice idea about mentioning the grammar level in the first post on the main thread @polenep. I’m just afraid that it might, like you say, look like a requirement and put people off. My own grammar is way below N5 (I took the N5 test a few weeks back so will find out exactly how much below petty soon!) but with the help of the thread and all the other resources available (Jisho, Hi-native, etc) I’ve been able to follow along so far - and learn a lot!
@ShawnPCooke did a marvelous statistical analysis of the level of kanji in the book, an amazing bit of work if you haven’t seen it yet. Perhaps something similar could be done with the grammar? I’ve no idea. But then we’d be on safer ground when saying just exactly what level the book is at.
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I find it hard to say “this is how much grammar you need to know” since a lot of “grammar” stuff on tests are things you can look up (e.g. what does から mean). Even verb endings can be looked up, the tricky part is recognising that you’re looking at a verb ending!
The tricky things are the things you can’t look up, like how Japanese sentences are structured, how topic works etc.
(Things that also can’t really be quantified)
There are also some ‘general reading skills’ related to this like being able to recognise ‘this looks like a verb, I should try to figure out the dictionary form’ and segmenting kana strings into words (both of which Jisho can kind of do for you, but it’s certainly not perfect).
Another useful general skill is being able to try out multiple possible translations and being able to determine from context which one is the most likely.
In a totally foreign language like Japanese it’s easy to get stuck in some silly translation and not realising that there is an alternative way to look at the sentence that makes much more sense.
For instance, you might get stuck on the assumption that とおり means an actual street, rather than the abstract meaning of “way/method”.
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I finished the first story today! Tomorrow I will start the second one and catch up… I really liked the first one, it was a lot of fun! (Definitely better written and more interesting than satori…)
As for grammar, I‘m also at about N5 and I understand the gist of the sentence most of the time. This is also my goal, reading fluently and understanding the important stuff without getting thrown off track by some small element that I don‘t know.
And your discussions are interesting! I especially like the broken up sentences.
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Brilliant! Thank you Tyger!
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Is it possible to read the second story without the first one?
Due to guests and other stuff in the last weeks I am only halfway through the first one and thought I could just skip the rest and reread it after the book is finished
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I believe it is!
And you’re not alone. Take a look at this great question and this wonderful answer!
This is so bad, I was away on vacation, and internet access was very limited, so I couldn’t get to the book at all (nor WK, I have almost 300 reviews pending, I’ve never had more than 50 before 
I’m feeling so intimidated now ).
I’ll try to catch up with the reading, but I also have a lot of catching up to do with grammar and WK so it’s going to take a while, hopefully I’ll be with you guys by the third story. 
(On a brighter note, I actually bought a hard copy of the book as well, and it’s been waiting in my office, I just saw it, it’s beautiful. 
)
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