コンビニ人間 🍱 Repeat Book Club

“Ladenhüter” has another meaning of “something that doesn’t sell well”. A “Kiosk” is not a コンビニ, it is much smaller. Nowadays a コンビニ would be something like a “Späti” i.e. a shop opened late (“spät”),

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Well ‘convenience store woman’ sounds also very different than コンビニ人間 :stuck_out_tongue:

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I only realized this double meaning of “person watching the shop” and “item not selling well”, that fits this book so perfectly, after someone pointed it out to me. It makes it one of my favorite (non-literal) book title translations ever.

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Based on the results of the When2meet, I’m thinking Sunday, January 17, 2021 3:00 AM as a primary time and Sunday, January 17, 2021 8:00 PM as a backup/secondary time for reading sessions. Everybody who filled out the form indicated that they’re available during at least one of these two times.

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So. It will be my first read aloud session. So I have questions.

  1. Do we attempt to read the whole weekly fragment or just a part of it? How long will it last?
  2. Since it’s a novel, it’s harder to assign roles than for manga reading. Are people just supposed to take turns as volunteers?
  3. It is okay not to say anything out loud, right? I can just listen? I’m not good with speaking in any language, but I’m not an English native and I barely ever get the occasion to use English for speaking. My pronunciation is awful and actually my listening skills aren’t perfect, too. I actually treat this read aloud also as a chance for improving my verbal English skills :stuck_out_tongue: But I’m terrified that there will be some spoken small talk at the beginning or something like that and that I’ll be expected to take part :sob:
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I am not in charge of running this Read Aloud session (and after much internal debate I’ve decided to not even take part :cry: because I have so much other stuff going on), but I’ve participated in many of them, and so I thought I’d give you a quick overview of how I’d expect this to go, more or less. So even if there are some deviations in this specific club, you should get a general idea.

  1. Most of the clubs read the whole weekly assignment. An exception are the very fast clubs where the weekly reading is ~40 pages or so - they usually will read until they are fed up, I was told :wink: In the Kemono club, we always read everything, and the longest session was 26 pages, which took us around two hours. For this club, I would expect the session to take maybe an hour or a bit more. (Of course that also depends a bit on how many questions and discussions you will have throughout the reading.)
  2. Of course, as you said, for the largest portion of the text it would not make sense to assign roles. What we usually do is take turns, where everybody can read as much or as little as they want (even one sentence is totally fine!). Not reading at all is also fine of course. Having said that, the usual amount that one (experienced) person will read in one turn is probably around 2-3 pages, give or take. Oh and of course it’s ok to not know a kanji reading and to ask for it :sweat_smile:
  3. In all the clubs I was in, it was always totally fine if somebody would not say anything :slight_smile: I mean, I’m always happy if somebody says “Hello” or something (maybe even in their native tongue?), simply because I like to be able to associate a voice with a name and avatar in the forums, but that’s just me :wink: During the Read Aloud sessions, people often use a mix of voice and text chat anyways, or sometimes people cannot speak during a specific session because of a noisy environment or because they don’t want to disturb others that are in the same room. So if you participate via text chat, that should not pose a problem at all.
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Thank you very much for such detailed answer! :sparkles: :sparkling_heart: :sparkles: It really helped.

Also, I’m a little sad that you won’t be able to participate, but I understand.

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That kinda sounds like a great way to get burnt out, because you always come away from a session thinking “well, that was a drag”…

I’m sure she doesn’t mean that kind of fed up. :see_no_evil: At some point someone will be like, ‘I have to go’ or ‘should we wrap up in 5’, and either the others will follow or they’ll keep reading a bit more if they feel like it.

Sometimes people will leave early or join late, too. It’s a hobby, not a business meeting or anything like that, after all. ^^

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Thanks for setting this straight! (I was about to summon you anyways :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: because it was you who told me about that book club)

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Hi sorry to jump in cluelessly! I just bought コンビニ人間 and was planning to read it alone, but when I saw that the book club was planning to tackle it, I really wanted to jump in. I apologize if this is the wrong place for this post, but is it alright for me to jump in? Do I need to sign up anywhere? I couldn’t quite find a book club FAQ beyond the different levels so I’m a bit confused as to how this process works.

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Jump right in and join! Click the Week 1 link in the OP and indicate in the poll that you’re reading along. Then just join the conversation! Glad to have you!

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Hi everyone! I want to say thank you, really happy to see this happening. I read the German version twice in November/December, then read it one more time aloud to my parents over Christmas. I guess you could say I’m a fan :smiley:

Right now I’m at ~850 Kanji, which would be around Level 25 in Wanikani. It’s also my first Japanese book ever, so it’s definitely a bit above my level. But it’s such a good coincidence that the book club is now, so I want to try my best to tag along :blush:よろしくね!

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Week 2 is live! (And actually posted in the correct thread this time :flushed:)

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Live reading starting in 20 minutes!

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Thanks for the read-aloud! I haven’t been a reader in one of those before, but it was fun.

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So, I tried to join now, but the sound quality was very jittery for me. I haven’t been able to find the culprit (connection seems fine, youtube videos play fine), so I guess I’m giving up about live reading after all :sweat_smile:

But there are also attendance issues after dividing the group - beside me, there were only two other people.

I hope it turned out okay for you guys!

Huh, surprisingly, I’m still on-pace. Reading without prestudying the vocabulary a week ahead of time has definitely made this tougher than Kiki’s, and in the last week I’ve mostly been tottering along as best I can by catching a page here or there in the bathroom. (This is a very pocketable book).

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Week 4 is live! I’m also looking forward to the next live-reading in 11 hours!

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The weeks are flying by! Just posted week 5.

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