I’m starting late and just finished chapter 1 using the spreadsheets and this thread as I went along… I haven’t studied Japanese for a good year or so, I studied abroad in Korea and just didn’t have the time. I struggled pretty hard with the grammar in this one, especially with the particles in casual speech 
at the same time, it felt too easy with the thread. when reading, do you guys use the spreadsheets and thread as you go along, check after you finish reading, etc.? I’m not sure the best method to use here.
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There is no best method. If you enjoyed the method you used, that’s the best for you. If you didn’t, there are probably others you can try
I personally don’t use the spreadsheets much, even when reading for the first time, I liked to do the dictionary hunting myself.
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Welcome! If you feel that it’s making it too easy or rather, you’re not learning as much as you could be because you’re relying on what’s written, you could try reading it on your own first, without looking at the question and answers. Different people will use different methods depending on their Japanese level, so the important thing is what’s right for you.
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The best method was inside you all along.
Or… was the friends we met along the way?
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I just talked a bit about the method I use/recommend here: ルリドラゴン ・ Ruri Dragon 🐲 Week 2 - #138 by TobiasW.
Sounds like the step “If you want to, you can put in more energy and try to figure them out yourself.” might be for you if you feel like it’s too easy with the thread 
But since you say you are already struggling a lot with the grammar, maybe for now the first part of the post is actually more important to you:
You are still learning either way, easy or not. If you read the book, and read the thread, you will definitely learn a lot. The best methods are those that will get you to the end of the book without burning out.
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Catching up, catching up! I finally got everything set up to read this along with everyone here. So far so good, the spreadsheet is a godsend for some of the odd things I encountered! 
This was such a long answer but extremely helpful as well, thank you for taking time to answer all of it.
Thank you for your hard work 皆さん
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Weeks behind, but finally getting around to reading this. It’s been very interesting for me coming from studying Japanese in college, but not having much exposure outside of that (and it being long ago, hence starting with Absolute Beginner here). It’s very interesting how different some of the stuff I learned is used in writing/speech. (dropping particles all over, casual forms + dropping/merging kana, etc.). とても面白いた
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I know I am starting a little bit late but this is the first Absolute Beginners Book Club I am taking part in and I am so excited. The main reason I started learning Japanese was so that one day in the very far future I will be able to watch anime without subs and get the gist of it, so starting to read a Manga in Japanese for the first time feels like a huge step towards that goal.
As this is the first Manga I have attempted to read, I am not very good at grammar so could only pick up bits and pieces of what was going on in this section before I had to use Jisho or check the vocab/grammar sheets. Looking forward to moving onto the next section tomorrow so that I can try and catchup!
Also thanks to everyone who asked questions in this thread and to those that responded, its really helpful to see where other people are also struggling and get good explanations on what it actually says.
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Just wanna say that I started (very slowly) reading the pages for week 1 to try out the absolute beginner book club for the first time while being at level 5. The google sheet and discussions here have been helpful!
Then I went on a planned trip to Korea & Japan…and while exploring a Japanese book store, I coincidentally found the physical manga! It seemed like fate that I HAD TO buy it! Now I GOTTA go through the rest of this whole book club for ruri dragon (at my own pace)
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Two questions around あんた, I’ve gathered it’s a short form of あなた, but that leaves me with two questions:
- How common is this contraction? Is it a standard informal thing, or the equivalent of rendering certain English accents with an abundance of apostrophes?
- Just in general, the use of you/あんた is way higher than I’d been led to believe was common in Japanese. Is this higher usage a manga thing to make the direction of conversation clearer, a casual thing since this is a mother/daughter conversation. or an artifact of the lower end of the target audience being quite young?
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あんた is very common, you will see it often and hear it often. It can be used in a casual way or a rude way. Obviously, you wouldn’t call your boss or an elderly this. But if you’re speaking with friends you can use it. It’s kind of like friends being rude to each other even though they don’t actually mean it.
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It’s a very common contraction. It also makes the pronoun way less formal and a bit nicer.
As for the usage. This is in fact a literary thing. In general あなた is used mostly when you don’t know anything about the other person and you can’t avoid using a pronoun.
Tofugu has a great article on it, even has the literary use detailed in it: Is あなた Polite or Rude? The Answer Is "Neither"
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Just started reading this book, thanks for everyone’s hard work on the vocab and grammar spreadsheets!
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I’m having trouble with one sentence on page 10.
何で急にツノなんか
何 means what | で is a contextual particle usually to denotes by what means an action takes place | 急 means hurry or sudden | に is a different contextual particle that donates where an action takes place | ツノ means horn | なんか is one on not sure on because it could mean “what” and か could be the sentence ending particle that denotes a question, but it could ALSO be the combined word meaning “something.”
So off the bat I’m confused how the で particle is used with 何? Or how the に particle works with 急? I have a mild understanding of the building pieces in the sentence but have no idea how they’re supposed to combine together to make a cohesive sentence.
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p10
Particles don’t have one single meaning that they’ll always adhere to.
で can mean a lot of things, in this particular case, it states the reason the action was done for, and 何で is a set phrase, meaning “what for/why”
Jotoba word: 何で
に is also very common, and in this sentence it’s describing how the action was done. 急に is also very much a set phrase meaning “suddenly”
Jotoba word: 急に
This sentence is an incomplete sentence, it’s missing a verb, probably something like 現れる (to appear) or はいている (to grow). It breaks down like so:
何で why
急に suddenly
ツノ katakana version of 角, horn
なんか something like (a horn)
(はいていた) grew
why did a horn suddenly grow [on my head]
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Aye, because in this instance is not so much particle に as it is adverb 急に - に is how な-adjectives become adverbs (for い-adjectives, it’s く).
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So essentially there is no actual particles in this sentence? There’s some conjugation like with に turning 急 into its adverb Form, but otherwise it’s all pretty direct and can be “read” in the same way as an English sentence?
に and で are still absolutely particles here. Just because something is a set phrase, does not mean that it’s not constructed from proper grammar, and just because に is used here to turn 急 into an adverb, I personally wouldn’t say that it’s not a particle.
Yep, in cases where the full words are in the dictionary (何で: why, 急に: suddenly) I’d recommend treating it that way.
I’m not sure whether the で and に in those constructions can be traced back to their particle forms (I guess they probably can), but I don’t think it matters much.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a resource that lists “turns an adjective into an adverb” as a function of the に particle. Jisho certainly doesn’t.