Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.
Discussion Guidelines
Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!
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.
Proper Nouns
Name
Hiragana reading
Notes
Kindle location first mentioned
赤川次郎
あかがわじろう
the author
cover
尾田医師
おだいし
Doctor Oda
24
目高組
めだかぐみ
Medaka clan
86
星泉
ほしいずみ
main character, Izumi
170
酒井好子
さかいよしこ
aunt Yoshiko
172
星貴志
ほしたかし
main character’s father, Takashi
179
酒井呈一
さかいていいち
Uncle (Yoshiko’s husband)
201
知子
ともこ
Tomoko (?Izumi’s mother)
211
Participation
Will you be reading along with us this week?
I’m reading along
I have finished this part
I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this part yet
I’m reading this book after the club has finished
I’m no longer reading the book
0voters
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Question to those of you who read this book on kindle (mine is an Oasis 10th generation):
When you try to translate more than a single word, do you have problems with language detection and translation?
While reading previous books I had sometimes the error messages below, but with this book I have them almost always. After the first error message I set the language manually to Japanese and get the second error message. When I then switch to other target languages (e.g. French) it eventually works. But for the next translation attempt the errors come up again.
I wish I could set a fixed language for the book I am reading instead of the autodetection of languages. I tried to set the device language to Japanese, but it didn’t help.
And no, it doesn’t depend on the quality of the wi-fi connection.
I use the kindle app, not a reader unfortunately. However, I also have the same kind of error when translating - I wonder if its a kindle issue in general, or if it has to do with the dictionary used.
Yes it has been doing it to me also. I think it’s happening to me in other books too as of a week or two ago. So it maybe a kindle issue that’s not specific to the book.
It can’t be the dictionary. The dictionary is only used for the translation of a single word. If you select a whole sentence the bing translator is used (at least on my device).
I’m done with the prologue. I’ve tried dipping my toes into the Intermediate Book Club twice before, with a manga and a book, but I fell behind when it was a manga and finished late. And I completely fell off when it was a book. But this time I’m hoping I’ll make it through!
I know that learning to use a Japanese dictionary instead of a JP to EN dictionary is also helpful for improving one’s Japanese, but man, it’s tough! I’ve been trying to use the built in dictionary, but the definitions end up having words I also need to look up And while you can select a word in the text to look it up, you can’t select a word in the dictionary pop up to then look that up. I ended up falling back to Jisho most of the time.
Welcome! and well done on making it through the prologue. (I always find that the first chapter of a new book is the hardest as it takes a while to work out what is going on).
I’d definitely recommend a JP-EN if your device has one. I don’t think there is any shame in that! (The kindle one is quite good, and it has nice context sentences).
Much easier to read than I was expecting at first. Lets hope it stays that way
One sentence I had trouble with
… その尻を引っぱたいてばかりいる。
Most of the issues I had was not knowing of the word 引っ叩く, so my brain parsed this as some nonexistent word in たい form
Does this part mean “… she does nothing but spank his butt”? I’m sure this isn’t supposed to characterize their relationship as abusive, so is 好子 semi-forcefully encouraging her husband to work hard at his job?
Also, honorable mention of the best page break my tablet has given me so far:
… 父は、親友であり、教師であり、page break 恋人だった。
… Well that escalated. I wonder if that will be explained later or if I am reading too much into that.
Just finished this week relatively easily. So far the book looks promising, I think I have a hunch on how the story for 泉 will unfold from now on.
It’s my second book in the intermediate book club and the second by the same author. Hopefully, I will manage to have enough time for it as I also joined the advanced one two weeks ago and the advanced book is taking me much longer.
yes, I found that choice of words interesting, and had to look up to see if it could be used platonically (I still don’t know). I’m guessing that it means something like “best friend” here, but maybe we’ll find out something else later…
I think I finally worked this one out (with a bit of help from online translators). I think 引き抜き followed by 引き切らない was particularly confusing. (Is this a particularly grammatical form, or just a word choice)
I gave up on your first sentence. It had so many words that didn’t end up meaning what I expected them to mean that in the end, I just deepled the whole thing and moved on. As for the other:
After looking up some expressions such as 派手好き(の) (flamboyant / attention-seeking) and (見栄っぱり (vain person / show-off), I understood it as something like
(Even though she’s Father’s sister), she’s a flamboyant show-off who does nothing but kick her husband’s ass to push him to become a professor.
Off to a pretty good start. It’s not like I understood everything perfectly, but I often felt like it was similar enough in style to 殺人犯 so that it felt a little familiar and getting into a new book wasn’t as painful as usual. I got a question, though:
When I read the prologue, I got the impression that his comrades buried 泉’s dad by submerging him in the pond in the doctor’s car. So why does he get cremated in Chapter 1? Did they fish him out or did I misunderstand about the car?
And while you can select a word in the text to look it up, you can’t select a word in the dictionary pop up to then look that up. I ended up falling back to Jisho most of the time.
Well that escalated. I wonder if that will be explained later or if I am reading too much into that.