The main issues you’ll find are just how many words you haven’t learned yet, and of course the grammar that you haven’t learned yet. Good news on the grammar is most of it will be fairly common, so use this as an opportunity to learn the basics and you’ll keep seeing it again and again.
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That’s roughly where I started out. As long as you’re okay with looking up a LOT of words and grammar and asking a lot of questions it’ll be ok. Use ichi.moe, it’s a godsend for when you have no clue where one word ends and the next one begins 
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@Eearslya - I would also recommend lagging the reading just a little bit (I’m only talking a day or so) such that the vocab spreadsheet is nice and populated before you tackle a given page. That should reduce the lookup burden a lot for you.
We enter words in dictionary form in the vocab spreadsheet, so you’ll still have to do some work to make the connections between the conjugated verb forms and so on, but it should help a lot to break the sentence down for you and provide all the nouns easily.
And try to work through as much Genki as possible 
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I was wondering if we could have a separate page in the vocab sheet to explain the meanings of the various conjunctions & contractions? Just the verb endings, not the whole verbs…
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Like, listing all the possible conjugations of verbs generally? I’m happy to include that if you think it would be helpful, although I’m a little hesitant about getting it right or how to convey it best. Would it be better to add conjugations just as they appear in the text? (but made general?)
I was thinking only those that appear in the text, because even with my exposure to stuff like the conjugation/contraction 忘れちゃった in Japan, I hadn’t come across it in a grammar text and didn’t fully understand the meaning, so just explaining the ちゃった bit would be helpful.
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Maybe such information could go in the ‘notes’ section of each vocab entry? Personally I don’t think it’s necessary to make an extra tab. Between ichi.moe, Bunpro and the book club discussion threads it’s generally pretty easy to figure out the ‘conjugations’.
Actually, I’ve started reading ahead a little bit so if it helps the newer members I could post a list of the grammar points I’ve come across in the first week’s reading
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Hey! I tried to get the book from bookwalker but I never received my confirmation mail upon registration. Do I need a japanese IP for this as well?
You don’t need a japanese ip. The mail probably just ended in the spam folder of your mail service.
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It looks like it was a problem with my forwarding address, after all. I re-registered using a different email and now I’m all set. See you all on monday!
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I’m inclined to say it would be more helpful to have it in the notes anyway, because it’s right there next to the word you’re looking up, rather than forcing you to check another sheet. Let’s see how it goes if we do it like that - just adding more extensive notes that point out conjugations the first time they occur.
Also…
Notice on Timings!
Advance warning for new people - we usually try to align our thread posting so that discussion threads are ready for people in e.g. Japan, Australia, etc. on the advertised day. Thus if you’re significantly to the West it will seem like the threads are being posted a day earlier than promised.
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So, since this is my very first book club, I’m a little curious how the rest of you work through this. i.e.
What kind of notes do you take?
Should I make myself an Anki deck of the vocab, given that a lot of it is going to be brand-new to me and I’m not likely to re-encounter it in a while?
Should I be trying for full English translations, or just trying to understand?
I burned out doing full translations, so I wouldn’t recommend.
I’ve got an actual book, but for making notes I scan it, then highlight and sticky-note new words - I expect things are a bit more straightforward for ebooks.
You’d be surprised how many times suspect, case, police, investigation, etc. will crop up - you will see a number of new words becoming familiar vocab during our reading.
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Same. Not just because it’s a lot of work, but also because translation is a skill in its own right and some things are really hard to translate! So I wouldn’t bother translating every sentence. What I did find useful, especially with long sentences, is to copy them out, chop them into pieces, translate the individual parts and then put the sentence back together again. The ‘relative clauses’ take some getting used to at first, so that can really help.
So what I do is exactly what Rowena does. I use a PDF editor to add sticky notes to the sentences that I want to make a note on. That way the notes stay out of the way when I am re-reading.
As for vocabulary, I am still working my way through the Tango decks. But like Rowena said, some high frequency words have lodged themselves in my brain even without Anki, just because they’re so frequent!
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You’ve already had some good answers, but I just wanted to chime in to add my support to the “don’t bother fully translating everything into English” camp.
There are a few disadvantages, I think. It hugely increases amount of time and effort you have to invest, and it’s really important to keep reading fun, so that you keep doing it! Plus you’ll be able to read more in the time you have available, and the more you read, the better.
The other aspect is that I think it’s valuable to try to get out of the mindset of translating, as early on as possible with your reading. We’re aiming to read a Japanese book here, not translate it into English - as nienque touched on 
that’s not something you can do immediately from the start, of course, but you want to encourage your brain to make that transition wherever possible. And even as a beginner, I’m sure you’ll find there are plenty of sentences which you really don’t need to write out in English to understand fully!
However, again as nienque mentioned, it can be super helpful to break a more complex sentence down completely, and make sure you understand every little bit. Japanese sentences are, in many ways, constructed “backwards” compared to English. It’s often helpful to start at the end and work your way back! If you have to ‘deconstruct’ the majority of sentences at the start, there’s nothing wrong with that - you will definitely have to do so for fewer and fewer sentences as you read more and more, if you let yourself.
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… we are go!
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Don’t want to disrupt the discussion thread, so I’ll leave a message here, hope it’s ok. I started reading now, despite sort of stopping learning japanese for a week, but now I have Doggy Detectives, WK subscription and Genki (all bought by my own money too), and I’m thrilled to make some progress!!! Good luck everyone!
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As we’re coming up to the weekend, I want to check in regarding the pace (it’s hard to judge in advance!).
- I want to stick to this pace
- I want to read 6 pages a week
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To be clear, this isn’t a “majority wins” situation; we’ll stick to this pace unless everyone wants to speed up. This is just the easiest way of asking
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Although I voted to stay this pace, one more page per week wouldn’t kill me. It’s just nice knowing that I can miss two days and not get behind if I do a page per day the other days. It gives more time to click the grammar links that I don’t necessarily have time for as they are posted.
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I voted the same as Abikin for the same reason. It wouldn’t kill me if we went faster, but I am using extra days to try to close the gap with grammar study and recap.
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