カードキャプターさくら・Card Captor Sakura Book Club 🌸 Home Thread — Starting September 7th

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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If this is your first time reading a manga in Japanese it’ll probably be hard, but don’t give up just because you “have to look up so much and ask so many questions that it doesn’t feel like reading”, thinking that it’ll be better next time if you do more SRS or grammar study - that feeling is completely normal for your first time reading and won’t go away just by studying more! Sure, you need a decent vocab and grammar base, but past that the single best thing to improve your reading ability is doing just that: reading.

I felt like that for my first book club, and gave up. Turns out that my second club felt exactly the same, and I’m glad I pushed through that one.

So just in case you feel like that and want to give up: If you push through it anyway you will definitely get better.

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This cannot be overstated enough.

Reading your first native material isn’t reading and should be treated as such.

For those who haven’t read native material before, you aren’t joining the ABBC to read. Not yet, at least.

You’re joining it to learn Japanese grammar and vocabulary as you decipher cryptic messages found secretly embedded within pretty artwork.

After a few tomes of deciphering, or several for some of us, you eventually reach the point where you can read successfully. For as much as a single sentence. And a rather short one at that. But only after thinking about it for a moment.

Some learners will progress faster. Others slower. Keep moving forward and you see results. Even if it takes a few book clubs to really feel it.

Eventually, you reach a point where you are actually reading.

It can be difficult to know whose words to trust on learning.

Some say to learn the meanings of 2,000 kanji before learning vocabulary.

Some say to SRS 2,000 vocabulary before you try reading.

Some say to just watch raw anime until you’re indistinguishable from a native speaker with perfect pitch accent (except now you sound just like Naruto, so you should actually have been watching J-dramas, but too late for that now).

And here in the Wanikani book club section, you’ll see people saying you need to read to be able to read.

One thing I can guarantee is many of us here went through some form of this:

I’ve been participating in Wanikani book clubs since January of 2019, and I’ve seen it time and time again: those who make it to the end and join the next book club will keep moving forward.

Open your textbook, shuffle your flashcards, and put your deciphering cap on.

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“Give a new reader a Japanese manga and they’ll be confused for a day before giving up, but give them a WK subscription and they won’t even have time to be confused by manga.”

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But seriously, for those who are new to WaniKani as well, keep up with it. It really helps one to break into recognizing kanji.

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@taiyousea I think I’ll start reading on Wednesday, care to join me? :smiling_face:

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I just got my copy on BookWalker! This was my first time purchasing a book in Japanese yay! Looking forward to this and hopefully sticking with it the whole way through :blush:

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I expect to be in over my head (working on WK lv10, reviewing very rusty beginner grammar in Genki I), but it’ll be interesting to try making sense of something beyond textbook examples and graded reader material and hopefully the weekly pace and discussion thread will help me stick to it.

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Oh heck, this starts soon

Should probably source a copy

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Yes! I’m ready! :sparkles: tome :sparkles:

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:eyes: I might read along since I have the first volume in physical, but CC Sakura for absolute beginner? That is a very ambitious manga to start with. I hope the senpais at the manga book club can make the experience a bit less frustrating for the newbies…

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A panel from my very first (as an absolute beginner in reading) manga that I got through (and completely on my own):

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Compared with easier reads, I do expect CCS to have a higher rate of weeding out those who simply want to learn to read Japanese, while retaining the much smaller crowd of those who have decided that they will learn to read Japanese.

It’s unfortunate, but it’s just the nature of things.

CCS is probably middle of the road compared with the easier reads and harder reads that have made their way into ABBC.

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it’s only level 21 on natively :person_shrugging:

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:laughing: I’m just always surprised by the ABBC choices. I feel like some of the manga I read ‘for fun’ would be perfect for ABBC because it barely has any lingual variations (dialect, slang, politeness, outdated speech etc.), the story is easy to follow, and the settings are familiar if you’ve ever seen one high-school anime in your life. In my head, CCS belongs in the beginner club (and some of the beginner stuff belong into a club that doesn’t exist called “lower intermediate” or something hehe).

I’m all for people pushing through difficult stuff. I just see a lot of people being discouraged and wondering if it’s them and not the manga. I hope they won’t be giving up and will continue pushing onward :blush:.

Good luck everyone reading CCS! :cherry_blossom: It’s a really cute manga!

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I’ve been through that two or three times. If I had the right expectations, I probably would have been reading manga in Japanese at least ten, maybe fifteen years earlier.

It’s the reason I post so much about reading versus deciphering, as I hope it will help set expectations. I want as many people as possible who would otherwise be in the “being discouraged and wondering if it’s them and not the manga” camp to reframe the experience as deciphering something completely unknown and foreign that will require time and effort to progress.

(Also, mention of building pattern recognition and talking about “wanting” versus “deciding” go along the same lines.)

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Apart from the two instances we don’t talk about, L22 is the highest the ABBC occasionally reads, so “only” for L21 is a bold word choice. It’s right on the border of “still being ABBC material”. It’ll definitely be hard.

If you haven’t: Feel free to nominate them!

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:eyes: My social anxiety could never. But I’ll find a willing volunteer to do it for me once everyone forgot about me and I’m no longer visible.

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Gotcha.

(And if it’s just that you don’t want to organize the club afterwards: You don’t have to. You’ll be asked whether you want to organize, but you can just say no. Happens occasionally, and we usually quickly find an organizer.)

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I was curious about this - as someone who is just joining, there are books on my to-read list that seem like they’d be far easier to read, but I don’t actually know because I’m not at that level yet. So a part of me would love to nominate them, or have them be considered, but I don’t want to actually necessarily nominate them since I don’t have the knowledge to know if it would be a good fit and be able to organize/run the threads.

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Are they on Natively? Anything between L14 and L22 with furigana is usually a good fit difficulty-wise. (Apart from that, the ABBC mostly reads manga. Short stories and children’s books have a very hard time getting votes. And I don’t think graded readers fit well since people can just read those on their own.)

You can also just post a link to something in the ABBC thread asking if that looks good for the club if you want a second opinion before properly making a nomination post.

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Gotcha that makes sense and yep they’re on natively! I’ll keep this in mind when the next round of nominations comes by!

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