人間失格 (Advanced Book Club)

Japanese Language Reading
#47

And when some people read the whole chapter 1 first week, I was thinking “maybe even the slow start was unnecessary” :sweat_smile:

When I was preparing the original schedule, the 12-week version was the next best thing because of the chapter lengths. :woman_shrugging:t2: Adding just one week would give people breathing room, but it won’t change the overall load too much.

But, since I’m not a participant, I’m just waiting for the final decision and I’m still offering help with the exact break points so a week won’t end in the middle of the scene etc.

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#48

It’s harder than I initially thought, but this being the advanced book club, I think it’s still a reasonable load. And indeed, some people actually started with the faster pace.

On the other hand, I notice we have some less advanced readers joining, which is great, so maybe we want to slow down a little to accommodate everyone?

I also brought up the discussion just because we said we could readjust the pace if needed so I wanted to make sure people could voice any concerns.

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#49

Yeahhhh… I was doing fine in weeks 1 and 2, but this week I realised that 18 pages in a week is pretty challenging for me. I can do about 6 pages before my brain is fried for the rest of the day. It’s a combination of the sentences being really long, and of having to keep a lot of looked up vocabulary in short term memory as I try to make it through to the end of a sentence. Slowing down a bit would be helpful for me (especially those 21-22 page weeks will be brutal otherwise lol). On the other hand, perhaps it was a bit too ambitious of me to join. Whichever way it goes, I’ll try to make it work :muscle:

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#50

I changed my vote a bit to sticking with the original schedule. I know if the length stretches out more, the more likely I am to lose focus and drop the book :sweat_smile:. But if we end up adding one week it’s fine as well. The text is denser than in light novels, sure, but probably not at the level of a slow pace for a hard book.

I’m reading pretty extensively and not worrying about understanding every detail, so maybe that changes my perspective, though. Faster pace helps with not having time to get stuck too much.

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#51

I haven’t read the week 3 part yet, but that’s because I got distracted by other books. I’ll get to it eventually. Any pace is fine by me.

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#52

I fell behind the pace, because this is very hard for me as my first novel, and i want to understand as much as possible. But i’m definitely commited to finishing. So, a little more time would be nice.
(i also think it’s fine to keep posting in older weeks’ threads, i’ll definitely keep an eye out for any replies!)

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#53

By the way, there’s currently an e-book bundle sale containing the 2018 “A Shameful Life” translation (Humble Bundle).
edit: sale is over

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#54

Uhh, that’s quite an endeavour :grimacing:.

Then again, this is the advanced book club.

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#55

Yeah, but it’s also one of my favourite books, so as long as i can get through it, i don’t care how hard it is. I’m also learning a lot. And reading the translation side by side helps (though i also recognize some mistranslations and differences).
It’s also not like i don’t have any reading experience, I’ve played some games and read parts of mangas. So far, i’m enjoying it a lot :slight_smile:

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#56

Btw, I don’t think that bringing up something commercial is strictly prohibited as long as it’s more or less related to the topic? I see resources being linked all the time.

Guidelines only say:

We ask that you be mindful of the content that you’re posting and make sure that it is something members of the community would be interested in checking out. This includes job postings, downloads, sites, and content that isn’t Japanese-language based.

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#57

This.
I’d prefer not to extend randomly/ disregarding break points, but otherwise I’m okay with any pace.

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#58

I said this but then did not follow up :woman_facepalming:

Also, I am officially an idiot as I killed the book type poll AGAIN AAAARRRRRGGGHHHH :sob:

Although this being the advanced book club, we are currently going significantly above the envisioned pace :wink: and I think I would like to correct this somehow, it’s just quite tricky with this book… I’d like to wait one or two more days to see where the majority of readers is at.

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#59

As expected, the schedule topic is difficult… Some want to stick with the original schedule and are afraid to lose momentum if the schedule gets dragged out too much, some want to stick with the original schedule but don’t mind if it gets extended, others would definitely prefer an extension. I can relate to all of these viewpoints. And the numbers are all very close together :flushed:

Therefore I suggest to proceed as follows:

  • Let’s keep chapter 2 as-is (i.e. two weeks with 18 and 16 pages resp.)
  • Let’s extend chapter 3.1 by one week to break down the big chunk of 22 pages, i. e. we should hopefully end up at 3 weeks with 13-ish pages each
  • Let’s stick with chapter 3.2 for the time being (i.e. let’s keep it at two weeks) and let’s check back around the end of week 8 to see whether we need another extension or whether we are good

This way we will introduce an extension of one week for now, and we can see how everybody gets along with that over the course of the next few weeks. I hope this is something everybody can more or less accept as a compromise?

Could anybody with a paperback copy maybe help us along in finding suitable breakpoints for chapter 3.1? That would be great :blush:

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#60

My proposition:

#1
どこへも、訪ねて行けない。(just before 堀木。in a separate line)
Kindle loc 984, 58%

#2
それが自分の日常でした。(just before the poem)
Kindle loc 1151, 68%

#3 end of the chapter, obviously :wink:

@miwuc how does it look page-wise in your paper version?
i know there is also a natural break after 「そんなら、社の近くですから」, but I’m against it, because just before the break there is a new character introduced, and I’m afraid it will be easy to forget who she was during the 7-day rest :wink:

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#61

#1 starts on page 78 and ends on page 88. about 10 full pages.
#2 ends on page 103. about 15 full pages.
#3 ends on page 116. about 13.5 pages.

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#62

So that means the first week is an easy one (so people can maybe catch up a little :sweat_smile:) and the other two weeks are pretty regular regarding our ideas for “hard” books. That sounds very good, thanks to you and @Aislin for your efforts! I will update the schedule in the OP.

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#63

Here’s Week 5 which will take us to the end of Chapter 2:

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#64

Let’s dig into chapter 3! This week is a chill week at 10 pages to allow everybody to catch up or to catch some breath:

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#65

I realised that I had muted the reading section in WK, because it was getting a bit spammy. But I forgot I would miss all the BC threads I was part of :sweat_smile:. So I got a bit confused of the schedule, and am a bit behind. Fortunately my vacation just started, so ample time to catch up o/.

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#66

We pick up the steam a bit more and proceed to the middle section of chapter 3.1:

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