Yeah, I was hoping that she would be a bit more actively effecting her escape rather than the way it ended up. That plus the “long explanation of what was going on while they drive to the rescue” scenes made the ending feel like a bit of a missed opportunity to me.
Still, I enjoyed reading the book (which is Akagawa number 43 for me 
)
One day I will have an entire shelf devoted to his books (but not soon, as that would need at least another fifteen or so…)
I’ve read about 20 Akagawa novels now. The craziness is definitely very addictive. After you’ve read a few of his novels, everything else seems rather boring. 
I was tempted to suggest an offshoot Akagawa club. Sounds like you and @pm215 might be up for it…
I’m a long way behind. On my third (have been reading 幽霊列車 in parallel with セーラー服)
Great pick for the the book club. Held my attention until the very end… well, I just made it to page 350. 
I’ve been chasing you guys every week. I learned a lot of new vocab and grammar. I hope to have it finished by the weekend.
Well I don’t know about other people, but after 23 straight weeks, I’m having slight book club withdrawal symptoms…
Good thing I have another 赤川次郎 to keep me going while waiting for the new club.
(Also secretly hoping that Dungeon Meshi will win the IMC poll)
I’m nearly at the end of my non-bookclub read, コーヒーを冷めないうつに (really enjoying it). Hoping to finish it up before the next club starts. I’ll pick a new non-bookclub book up to go along with the next intermediate club too.
First time IBC, after successfully lurking for the whole 23 weeks.
I had fun just about meeting the challenge, a lot of subtlety went straight over my head, but enjoyed checking in on the thread and seeing the chatter
Definitely not the type of book I’d read natively; but was fun enough and moved at enough of a clip that I didn’t dread the inevitable frantic weekly catch-up.
Cheers for running it, looking forward to the next challenge 
So I’m a little late, but I finally finished!
On the one hand, reading a full on novel felt like an achievement, since this is only my second non-manga book I finished in Japanese (the first being volume 1 of the junior novel version of Bookworm). On the other hand, the end especially kind of felt like a slog for me.
I think part of it is the cover art and the stills I’ve seen from the (tv? Movie?) adaptation had me expecting a very different tone than I got from the book. I think I was sort of expecting Izumi to evolve into some kind of Oren Ishii type character over the course of the book, and she doesn’t really get there. She has her moment of revenge on Hamaguchi in the final chapter, but for most of part 3 she was just trapped by doc.
I think some of that may be is my own level of skill/pace being quite low (it took me an hour per chapter, even to the end), so the sheer fact that more time is spent on some of the stuff makes it more emotionally difficult. Like a couple of paragraphs of a character being an evil doctor with a nazi obsession is a comic book villain, but 25 minutes of reading about it feels horrifying serious, even if it’s literally the same description. I do wonder if that’s what caused the difference in tone for me, partly because I have encountered the same before in English even - I’m normally more of a reading than audiobook person, but a few years ago I tried to listen to the first book in the Culture series while going out for a walk. The opening of the first book describes (tw: squick) A character being drowned in a cesspit slowly, which in something that when you read it in 5 minutes and then move on basically just describes “bad guys evil”, but when you listen to it over an hour, well… let’s just say I haven’t got back to the Culture series since.
I still think joining the IBC was worthwhile, and it helps boost my confidence in my Japanese (even if yomitan was a major saviour to get it done 
), but I’m probably going to pass on the next IBC book and go read some more volumes of the Bookworm junior novel for now until my reading speed increases. Maybe I’ll be book for the following book though!
Congratulations - you read 350+ pages of Japanese! I feel like that is a big achievement. Actually, 1 hour per chapter/week doesn’t sound too slow to me (I’m not sure I was any faster). One thing that I found made a big difference in terms of reading speed with the last couple of IBC books was to read each week twice. It certainly seemed to help me to read faster.
Thanks for joining the IBC. Sounds like you have other reading plans, but if tempted, the current IBC pick is easier that セーラー服 and quite a lot shorter…
(whether it is your thing, probably depends on whether creepy, sinister mystery stories appeal. Sounds like they might not.)
Mmm, I’ve definitely wondered before whether slow reading speed has affected my view of a book – if I made a slow plodding grind through something the author intended to be light and simple I’m going to feel rather differently about it than someone who went through it at a more native pace. And I’ve definitely felt with harder reads “well, that was OK I guess but it didn’t really seem interesting enough to repay the effort” – would I have had a more positive view if the effort had been less?
(I’ve also read books where the reward has felt like it matched up with the effort, or the difficult prose has been a pleasure to read slowly and thoughtfully. So it’s not always a problem.)
Yes, it’s seriously easier, and doesn’t feel like a slog at all.
An hour per chapter sounds like a lot faster than what I was managing though I didn’t time myself. Whereas with the latest pick I’m struggling not to read ahead (failed this week).
Congrats!
It definitely wasn’t just you who felt like the story lost steam in the last part. The whole part after Izumi gets kidnapped by the Doc felt kind of generic to me tbh. It wasted the chance to develop her character further in a way that’s individual to her (like making her learn the skill set needed to become a better mobster) and instead focuses on stuff that anyone else would have gone through if you’d put them in the same situation. I get what you mean about slower reading speed ruining the reading experience, but in this case, I don’t think it would have helped to read faster.
And btw, I also don’t think one hour per chapter is a particularly slow pace. I often needed closer to 2 hours, depending on how completionist I felt.
I’ll second this. 変な家 is one of the easiest things I’ve ever read. Much easier than Bookworm (which I’ve tried to read without a club and failed at some point).
Another person who just finished the book coming out of the woodowrks! I was busy with work for a while again but trying to get back into ready again.
I’ll just through all of my thoughts into a spoiler block:
Overall, I enjoyed the book. I liked the comical elements, and it felt easy to get through. I enjoyed the characters overall, but agree I had trouble keeping up with the names and they could’ve limited the number of people (eg I never separately memorized who the 3 fan club members are, just remembered those names are from the group and that was enough). Also I was a bit grossed out by how the author described/had people say to 17-year old Izumi presumably for the reader’s enjoyment. I finally looked up when the book was from it’s 1978, I knew it was old but didn’t realize it was the 70’s! I think I got thrown off since there seems to be an adaptation from the 80’s.
Same as other members I suspected Kuroki right away, but wasn’t sure on all of the details such as how much he was lying about. For example, are we sure we can believe what he told us about Mayumi? For a while I was trying to figure out if he could be faking being a detective in the first place.
There were a few things I was confused on but brushed off to keep moving forward and didn’t end up being issues with my overall understanding.
Edit: sorry for any typos I’m about to go to bed lol
Now that you are bringing it up, I kept thinking the same thing. I don’t recall if he ever showed her his badge, or any proof of identity, but I certainly would never let someone in my apartment without that 
Another late finisher here. I’ll keep it brief as it’s been such a long time since I started the book that a good chunk of it has been lost to the void for me.
I actually started with the book club and for the first few weeks tried to keep up and be active, but then got busy with college and basically put the read on hiatus and moved on to read other shorter things in the meantime.
I knew I would eventually return to finish the book as I hate starting and not finish things. And the story was interesting enough for me to stick through with it, even though the whole “damsel in distress” trope got quite stale and I felt like the author was running out of ideas. I mean seriously you have to kidnap the main character twice 
That being said, the book was a bit of a challenge at times which I liked as reading easy things isn’t as rewarding in the long run (not to say I don’t like to read easy things from time to time). However, I feel there was a nice balance of difficult/confusing parts and simpler/easier parts so I got the best of both worlds out of the reading experience. Also a handful of new useful vocab.
I commend those who managed to stick through with the bookclub in its entirety and from what I’ve read of other people’s thoughts, most enjoyed the book to a degree which is nice to hear. Even though I wasn’t active in the club for most of its duration, I did ocassionally look at people’s explanations of certain parts and the little “spoiler” summaries to see if I’ve gotten the gist of things. So for that, I appreciate there being a book club to come back to when I needed it.