Hi everyone! I am new in the forums, and would like to start participating in a book club. I am not sure, though, if my level is enough to follow along in the begineer book club. I have a N5-N4 comprehension level of grammar. I am almost finished with lesson 9 vocab and midway through level 10 for kanji. Should I give this book club a try? What is your opinion based on experience?
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Welcome to the forums and the book club, then!
edit: Ah, after seeing your edit - yeah, I also recommend what Gorbit says in the next post if this is your first manga/book. (Though you’re welcome to give either a try. I think both have previews on Amazon/Bookwalker.)
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You might struggle quite a bit, but that’s normal, doesn’t matter at what level you start. Though the beginner book club is mainly for those that are already somewhat experienced with reading (as in they’ve read one or two easier manga already), and want to challenge themselves a bit. This is reflected both in the number of questions asked, and the pace.
You might want to first give the Absolute Beginner Book Club a try, coincidentally they’ve just started their current read this week, so you can very easily join in.
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I think you’ll be fine. The point of participating in these book clubs is to learn things you don’t know, personally I think basic understanding of grammar is enough to read. I learn most of my grammar through natural means like watching/listening or reading. From what I’ve seen, most like to learn with textbooks or online resources, but I just want to state that there are other options if you’re not into that.
I think you can try the book out, or you can try the absolute beginner book club like Gorbit said, either way, you should get something out of it.
I’d recommend looking into using something like Mokuro with yomi chan to make the search ups quick, allowing for a less painful experience.
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A bit earlier because I’m not sure I’ll have time tomorrow:
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A week ago we started the last chapter in ロジカとラッカセイ volume 1, so traditionally it’s time for a bit of reflection, some statistics and most importantly… a ton of polls!
Polls
Did you finish the first volume?
- I finished it
- I’m still reading and I plan on finishing it
- I don’t plan to finish it
- I never even started
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voters
How would you rate the volume? (1: hated it, 5: loved it) (anonymous poll)
- ★★★★★
- ★★★★☆
- ★★★☆☆
- ★★☆☆☆
- ★☆☆☆☆
- Unsure
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voters
For our newer readers who never read anything harder, if you finished the manga: How would you rate its difficulty?
- 1 - No effort at all
- 2 - Minimal effort
- 3 - Moderate effort
- 4 - Substantial effort
- 5 - So much effort my head might explode
- I don’t know
- I have read harder manga/books than this one but I still need to click a poll option
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voters
If you finished this manga: Did you join book clubs before?
- This was my first book club
- I had joined the Absolute Beginner Book Club before
- I had joined the Beginner Book Club before
- I had joined the Intermediate Book Club before
- I had joined the Advanced Book Club before
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voters
(Select the highest that applies.)
If you finished this manga: What was your reading experience?
- This was my first manga
- I had read other manga, but only easier ones than this
- I had read other manga or books around this level
- I had read other manga or books that are harder than this one
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voters
If you dropped the book club: Why? (anonymous poll)
- I didn’t like the manga after all
- The manga is still too hard for me
- Reading took longer than I thought
- I fell behind
- I didn’t like how book club works
- I didn’t understand how the book club works
- The threads were too hard to follow
- I didn’t feel like I was part of the book club
- Other problems with the manga
- Other problems with the book club
- Personal problems that have nothing to do with the manga / book club
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voters
Stats
Participation
First, let’s look at the participantion in general. The X-axis are the weeks:
Surprisingly enough, the drop of people reading (the yellow line) trend seems rather mild this time. At least from the ABBC I’m more used to a very sharp drop at the beginning.
And it makes me happy to see that we kept ~67% of readers that started the first chapter up until the end! Looking at the last mangas read here, the BBC seems to have a pretty good track record of people staying, but this is even a bit higher than usual. 
Oh, and ignore week 5 - that’s was the second week of a split chapter, and it seems lots of people decided to just read it completely in week 4.
Mood (among participants who haven’t read anything harder)
Next, let’s see what the mood was like. First in total answer numbers per category, then in percentages:
Pretty green. I think this might be alright for a BBC. For an ABBC I’d want to see more “I’m struggling, but I manage” (since reading your first book is hard!), but even the newer readers at the BBC have already one or more books under their belt, so it’s not that much of a puzzle anymore. But then again, this was on the easier side for a BBC book, so maybe it was a tiny bit too easy.
As a side note, it’s nice that neither the mood nor the participation changed much (or at all) when we made the shift from ~14 pages to 23+ pages per week between week 5 and 6.
New vs experienced participants
And lastly, “new participants” vs “experienced participants”. This one is completely based on who participates in my “For our new readers: How are you doing so far?” polls, and who clicks “I have read harder manga/books than this one but I still need to click a poll option”, so it’s probably wildly inaccurate - I assume there are some new readers and a much higher amount of experienced readers who are completely ignoring this poll.
The inaccuracy is also quite clear from the total numbers going up several times…
Here I don’t have any good data to compare it to. My ABBC Ruri Dragon club (whose stats you can find here) had a much higher “new participants” percentage, but I’d assume that mangas in the BBC range are more appealing to experienced readers in general.
(And of course we get the unsurprising “Newer participants drop the book club more likely than experienced readers” trend.)
Offshoot Bookclub
Would you like to continue reading this manga in an offshoot club?
- Yes
- Maybe
- No
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voters
When is the earliest date you can start with the offshoot club?
- July 22
- July 29
- August 5
- August 12
- August 19
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voters
And here we are. Thanks a lot for voting for my nomination and for participating in the book club! ロジカとラッカセイ is very dear to my heart, and I’m glad I got this opportunity to share it with you and to give it just a tiny bit more of the spot light that feel it deserves. I’m looking forward to continue to read it with you in the offshoot club!
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Wow, thank you for all the data! It’s really interesting to see a visual representation of participation over time, and it’s definitely nice to see more people sticking around than usual!
This Manga in particular was really interesting in my opinion, I quite enjoyed the story, the humour, and the twists. I’ll definitely join the offshoot club if I have the time when that starts.
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One thing I think is interesting is rojika walks a line between slice of life and more fantastical stuff, so the vocab you encounter is more varied than the average school or irl setting (which is where a lot of the stuff at my level sits right now)
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Actually, if I may ask, what did you use to generate all those graphs?
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Google Sheets
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Looking back at that first line graph, I should have guessed from the colour scheme XD
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With 19 voters voting 100% for a start on July 22nd, can we assume that it’s going to happen?
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Yeah, let’s just do that at this point! There haven’t been any votes for a while either.
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