佐賀のがばいばあちゃん 👵🏼 (Intermediate Book Club)

I just received the French Manga version of our book (new edition from May 2022):
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Nice! This prompted me to look up the manga on Bookwalker. Looking at the sample, it was nice to see some of the scenes we’ve already read about come to life. I’d love to see a couple of sample pages from your book. :slight_smile:

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The manga has a lot more scenes than our book.
Here is the chicken scene, the day of the sports festival.

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The drawing is so cute ! It makes me want to get it

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I’m only on chapter 2, so I’m the same boat!!
Chapter 3, now :slightly_smiling_face:.

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The penultimate week is here!

Unfortunately I spent all my edits today (and yesterday…) for moving my existing book club threads, so the OP needs to wait until tomorrow or so… :sweat_smile:

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Wow, those are limited? That’s crazy!

Also, are we supposed to move old book clubs threads ourselves…?

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Sorry for the late reply, the notification was lost in you-know-what…

Yeah, I thought so too…

I don’t think we were supposed to, but the mods of course did not catch the older club threads, and so some people started out, and then it somehow spiralled off…

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I found the thread where the big move was organised when I went looking for a place to complain about the you-know-what, so I guess the you-know-what giveth and the you-know-what taketh away!

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Finally we are entering the final week! :grin:
Props to all of you who have made it this far! Next week you’ll be rewarded by the book survey :slight_smile:

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And now the book club is officially over! :tada:

Thanks to everybody who participated in reading and/or discussing the book!
Enjoy your book club break, and see you again in the Spy x Family book club :blush:

But before you run away, here is the…

Satisfaction Poll!

Have you read 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん?

  • I finished it
  • I’m still reading and I plan on finishing it
  • I don’t plan to finish it
  • I never even started it

0 voters

If you read the book, how would you rate it on a 5 point scale? (1: hated it, 5: loved it)

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Unsure / Didn’t finish

0 voters

If you read the book, how would you rate its difficulty?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Moderate effort
  • Significant effort
  • So much effort my head might explode
  • I don’t know

0 voters

Participation Statistics

We had an extremely solid user base, after the first two weeks basically nobody dropped off. That supports my impression that the book was well received and that the difficulty level and schedule was okay. OTOH, we did have a small group of ~3 late readers, but it didn’t increase over time, so I guess that’s fine as well.
Week 3 triggered an enormous outburst of discussion :slight_smile: Thanks to everybody who was part of that. Afterwards, the discussion trailed off a bit, but given the non-exciting nature of the contents, this is only to be expected, I guess.

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Ha, the only one who voted 4 so far. I thought it was a pleasantly easy read at a pleasant pace and the stories were amusing. What more could one ask for? :grin: I’d be curious to hear what made @omk3 and @downtimes vote for 3.

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I was considering changing my vote to 4 actually, before you asked. :grin:
I still haven’t settled on how to go about rating my books to be honest. This one was pleasant and interesting, the first part more than the second, I thought ( when the focus shifts from grandma and life in Saga to grandson and his school life). I always had fun reading it, but when I paused after completing each week’s section, I felt no real motivation to continue reading - I could easily drop the book any time, and that’s not something that happens often to me. Hence the 3. Probably more like 3.8?

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I haven’t dropped the book as I love it. But I didn’t have time to read at all lately so I am kinda late. But later better than never :slight_smile:
I loved the story and for a first book it was a great pick for me. It’s not too easy nor to hard (for my level). And yeah, true based stories always get me. So it gets a good 5 even though I haven’t finished it yet :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’m still figuring this out, too. I gave this book a three which, when I look at other books I’ve ranked a 3, means I generally enjoyed it and it was worth my time. Four is I really enjoyed it and would recommend to others. A five means it affected me profoundly. I think I’m discerning enough in picking books to read that I’d be surprised to encounter a 2 or lower.

I’d also put this at the high end of three, but it didn’t have that quality that made me excited to pick it up every week that all the books I’ve ranked 4 seem to have.

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Nope - I have however read 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん. :wink:

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omg how did that happen :exploding_head:

Are you telling me I was in the wrong book club all the time? :rofl:

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A bit late but I finally finished too! Agreed that it was a nice, touching read and I’m glad I read it but it didn’t have that “gripping” quality to it other books have. Which fits the theme, I guess, but I might not have read it if there wasn’t a bookclub for it.

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OK, finally I managed to finish as well! Like you all said already, it was a nice and heart-warming read for “in-between”, but nothing that gripped me and that called out for me (and that’s ultimately why I kept prioritizing other stuff above it).

For me it was definitely the lack of a challenge in the narrative. Of course, you could say that their whole life was a challenge, and I wholeheartedly agree, but the narrative was a bit too easygoing and chill for me to really really like it.


Speaking of which, for those of you who liked the writing style a lot, it very much reminded me of https://bookmeter.com/books/550755 - it’s written by the author of the famous manga ちびまる子ちゃん (who sadly passed away a few years ago at the same age I’m at now :cold_sweat:) and it’s a very lighthearted book full of small episodes around her family (always super funny) or around some colleagues or other famous people (unfortunately pretty much lost on me because I never heard of any of them, but probably super funny if you know them). I cannot fully recommend it due to the fact that I could not really relate to a bunch of the stories, but the tone was pretty similar, so you might want to look into it if you like that.

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I’m still working on it! Since I’m skipping Spy X Family, I’m hoping to have it finished before つぐみ。( Anyone else still reading with me?)

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