Join the Beginner Book Club Here!
View this book on Natively
Welcome to the ウスズミの果て Book Club!
View the nomination post here!
How it works
We create a reading schedule, with a set number of pages to work through each week. Each week we create a new discussion thread for that week’s reading. In those threads we discuss everything from vocab and grammar to the characters and story. We try to help each other by contributing to the shared vocab list, by answering each other’s questions and by keeping each other motivated.
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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.
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.
- Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!
How do I join in?
- Get yourself a copy of the book (see “Where to purchase” below)
- Click on the participation poll below to let us know you’re planning to join in
- Set this thread to “watching” so you get updates on the group (go just past the last post in this thread, click on the grey box that says “normal” or “tracking” and change this to “watching”)
Where to purchase
Digital: Amazon, Bookwalker
Physical: Amazon, CD Japan
Schedule
| Week |
Start date |
Chapter |
Pages |
Total pages |
Pages with text |
| Week 1 |
13th July |
1 |
1-35 |
35 |
19 |
| Week 2 |
20th July |
2 |
36-59 |
24 |
12 |
| Week 3 |
27th July |
3 |
60-85 |
26 |
21 |
| Week 4 |
3rd August |
4 |
86-100 |
15 |
11 |
| Week 5 |
10th August |
4 |
101-111 |
12 |
10 |
| Week 6 |
17th August |
5 |
112-139 |
28 |
12 |
| Week 7 |
24th August |
6 |
140-153 |
14 |
11 |
| Week 8 |
31st August |
6 |
154-167 |
14 |
12 |
| Week 9 |
7th September |
7 |
168-192 |
25 |
18 |
| Week 10 |
14th September |
8+Archives |
193-223 |
31 |
20 |
Vocabulary
Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.
Membership
Will you be reading with us?
- Yes
- Yes, but I might start late
- Maybe
- No
Which version will you be reading?
10 Likes
Based on the previous picks and stuff, I’d do the following schedule, but feel free to chip in and recommend changes:
| Week |
Start date |
Chapter |
Pages |
Total pages |
Pages with text |
| 1 |
13th July |
1 |
1-35 |
35 |
19 |
| 2 |
20th July |
2 |
36-59 |
24 |
12 |
| 3 |
27th July |
3 |
60-85 |
26 |
21 |
| 4 |
3rd August |
4 |
86-100 |
15 |
11 |
| 5 |
10th August |
4 |
101-111 |
12 |
10 |
| 6 |
17th August |
5 |
112-139 |
28 |
12 |
| 7 |
24th August |
6 |
140-153 |
14 |
11 |
| 8 |
31st August |
6 |
154-167 |
14 |
12 |
| 9 |
7th September |
7 |
168-192 |
25 |
18 |
| 10 |
14th September |
8+Archives |
193-223 |
31 |
20 |
The “Pages with text” metric here is a bit dishonest. If manga analyzer is to be believed, 51 pages in the entire book (out of the total of 200 pages with any text) only have 1 speech bubble, and that’s probably counting stuff like “…”. Though the manga does pick up pace in the last couple of chapters.
2 Likes
Feels a bit slow to me. Several beginner book club manga have been read at 18-25 pages per week. Personally I wouldn’t split chapters 3, 4, or 5.
3 Likes
I split because of the lack of furigana, and because of the 20 pages long chapters not allowing for 15 or so pages. Would you say it’s still worth not splitting even with that?
Since you said that several pages just have one speech bubble maybe that balances out the lack of furigana. From a quick scroll there are certainly some pages with a lot of text, but far more that are empty or sparse. Up to you, or you could make a poll if you want.
3 Likes
Yeah, sure, democracy is always nice.
From which chapter onwards should we stop splitting them up?
- Chapter 3 (total of 9 weeks)
- Chapter 4 (total of 10 weeks)
- Chapter 5 (total of 11 weeks)
- Chapter 6 (total of 12 weeks)
Scrolling through the chapters, it looks like 5 definitely doesn’t need to be split, but 3 is full of dialogue and 4 has a fair amount as well.
How about adding “characters/words per chapter” to your manga analyzer and see what it spits out out this manga? That might actually be a far more useful metric than “pages which text” which might be practically empty or plastered with speech bubbles.
Also we should probably make it a habit to have polls after a club finishes to see how our target audience (i.e. people who need the club to read it) felt about the speed. Maybe we’ve been going to slow for a while now and are just stuck there, taking input from previous clubs without reflection. Maybe we are at exactly the right speed, and only more experienced readers feel like it’s too slow.
5 Likes
I am working on a tool, that should in theory help with schedule creation. The main issue with adding that sort of thing to manga-analyzer is that it has no clue about where the chapters are, and inputting that is way past the role it was designed for. The other tool would have this exact purpose, so it would work better for it.
2 Likes
Ah, gotcha. I assumed the manga analyzer did the “Pages with text” count for you since you say
The “Pages with text” metric here is a bit dishonest.
which sounded like you had little control over it.
Btw, for what it’s worth, I always count “pages with text” as “pages with more than one short text bubble” for that reason. Maybe that would help here too?
1 Like
I did, I manually did the counting, but it’s still a bit dishonest, and especially unbalanced.
Well, my personal rule of thumb, is that if it contains more than just 1 or 2 words, that single speech bubble still counts.
1 Like
Btw, not sure how helpful that is (apart from underlining my “chapter 5 probably doesn’t need to be split”), but here’s a super rough* count of speech bubbles per chapter.
- Chapter 1: 45
- Chapter 2: 43
- Chapter 3: 79
- Chapter 4: 98
- Chapter 5: 62
- Chapter 6: 119
- Chapter 7: 85
- Chapter 8: 100
*) Might be off by +/-20, I did it really quickly and made fast decisions to count big split-bubbles as two or really small bubbles not at all. 
5 Likes
Won’t be reading since I’ve already read it but I’ll join the discussion!
As someone who’s already read this: I agree that this is really slow considering the text density, even without furigana. I also don’t know about splitting chapter 1, that chapter is very light on text (especially the first half). I think splitting ch 6 would be a good idea though since from what I remember that chapter was more difficult than the rest (way more text-heavy, iirc some more formal grammar constructions)
4 Likes
More concretely, what schedule would you suggest? 9 weeks with only chapter 6 split?
3 Likes
Yeah that’s what I would do. I skimmed through the manga just now to refresh my memory… based on your speech bubble count + the text density maybe y’all could split ch 4 too, that would be 10 weeks with 4 and 6 split.
So I guess it’s not that the originally proposed schedule was really slow (only 2-3 weeks more than what I’m proposing), but more that the split chapters could be changed to fit with the contents better
3 Likes
Changed the proposed schedule to this one, tell me if it looks better.
2 Likes
The page counts for chapter 3 need to be fixed.
Done, accidentally typod 31 instead of 21
2 Likes
By the way, it might be a good idea to make a post linking to this thread in the BBC thread. I think more people might discover it that way.
5 Likes