I just started reading and man, it’s fun. I’m a complete beginner, so I’m looking at the vocab list/searching the dictionary every other word… 
It’s definitely a puzzle, like the advice for the thread says. That opening sentence on page 7 took me a hot minute to understand.
That being the case, I plan on getting through like 1 to 2 pages a day throughout the week. That way I might actually retain some of what I learn. Still though, I’m doing better than I thought I would.
It really doesn’t help the perception of difficulty that the manga opens with this (brief) kinda abstract philosophical pondering 
But that is one of the reasons I really want to encourage people to stick with it. There are a few of those in the first volume, but they are absolutely not the difficulty you should expect the majority of the writing to be!
And we’re off! Really looking forward to this book. It’s a nice change of pace from オオカミちゃん, for sure (the previous ABBC). The difficulty seems doable for me, although I already spotted some sentences where I’ll need to call in some help to get more than the ‘general meaning’.
One question that popped up immediately: is there a difference in page number between the numbering in this thread and the vocab sheet? The book says it starts at page 5 (as does this thread), but the vocab sheet lists those words as being on page number 7.
I’ll review what the cause of that would be when I’m off work: the thread is based fully on what the book says, so not sure where the vocab sheet pulled it’s numbering from. Maybe @ChristopherFritz knows off the top of his head and can address it more quickly than I can?
I’m having plenty of trouble reading the stylized writing that appears in various panels over the background, rather than within the speech bubbles.
Yeah, I know about the katakana that is often used to convey sounds (like boom/kapow in Batman comics of old) or perhaps signifying vocal interjections, but rather I’m thinking about what in some spots feels like narration, while in other spots it represents speech from minor characters (like the talking of the girls heading off toward the karaoke club). While I can read some of it, I find that a lot of it is incomprehensible due to the strangeness of the writing.
Yeah those bits of dialog not in speech bubbles are sometimes really difficult to read, I was also having trouble with a few of them! Luckily they rarely seem to be very significant dialog…
This book’s lack of page numbers certainly doesn’t help any!
Page 5 is the chapter title page (full-page artwork).
Page 6 is blank with the series title.
Page 7 begins with the narration on top, 「誰しも…」
You get used to it over time. (Well, sometimes kanji is still difficult…) If you have trouble with any, don’t hesitate to ask for help!
Made an effort at reading these pages but they were kind of hard in places! I might have to go through them again another time.
You cats are early! I’m still at work!!!
So how much more difficult is this than Yotsubato or Shirokuma Cafe?
I’d place it as both easier and more difficult than Yotsuba (mostly after the first volume, when kanji is dropped from Yotsuba’s speech making it harder to parse out words) and Shirokuma (which is filled with puns, including cultural references you’d have to have lived in Japan at the right time to recognize).
Reading at Absolute Beginner Book Club pace adds to the ease factor. You don’t need to fully understand everything, so long as you are learning along the way and gaining recognition of the grammar and vocabulary involved.
Adding to the list of “things I meant to do but didn’t get around to,” I did intend on posting all handwritten dialogue typed out for each week. Here is this week’s, beginning with the first page with text!
I will only be posting the text by default, but of course, if there are any translation requests, I’ll oblige. I’m also leaving out SFX and focusing on dialogue. Feel free to ask about SFX, though!
宮村(みやむら): この角度やば
堀: フィギュアとか見てニヤニヤしてそうっ
由紀: じゃあねー堀ーっ今度は一緒に行こーねっ
I also see @ChristopherFritz is already working on editing the vocab sheet; I was just about to start the same, but I’ll leave it in your capable hands. 
Aside from which, it’s still read-only.
I was thinking of adding a proper noun index.
I got an edit invite right at the start because I had intended to start editing a while ago. I just have yet to actually utilize those privileges 
I got distracted and only completed going over…page 7.
Certainly this was because it’s not Saturday yet, and certainly it was not because I forgot to change it.
Permissions are updated now. Thanks for pointing it out!
Wow thank you @anon99047008 and @ChristopherFritz for your hard work!
I stuck in a few names, but I don’t have my copy on me, so I might have been getting ahead a bit. Don’t entirely recall whether they all appear and get named in volume one.
Edit: Ok, the Horimiya wikia says the student council trio don’t show up until chapter 7, which is the first chapter of the second volume, so for the time being, I’ve hidden those rows.
Ok, this gets even more confusing. The table of contents in my edition says that the full-art page beginning chapter 1, with the caption “Page 1”, is **actually ** on page number 3. That would mean the first page with actual text would be page number 5. 
I’m so sad I’m not at the point I can start reading yet. Horimiya is one of my favorite anime of all time and would love to try reading along week by week with people 
I’ll just have to bookmark this thread and come back eventually
