Alright, nearly everyone wanted more natural breaks, and I did manage to end every week either at a chapter end or a little ○ symbol. Originally I intended to pick among several of those ○ breakpoints to find ones that flowed well with the narrative, but there were fewer than expected, so in most cases there was really only one choice. Hopefully it works out well enough. As mentioned, this led to some unevenness, but I don’t think it’s too bad. Week 6 is bit long at 20 pages, but it’s surrounded by two 11 page weeks. Additionally, there are two 19 page weeks in a row at weeks 11-12, but they are surrounded by short weeks as well. So I think anyone who has trouble reading that much in a week can just do extra in those light weeks to make it work.
My proposed schedule is below. Since I only have the kindle version, the page counts are approximations. That said, when I sum up the total number of pages I get 248 pages, and Amazon lists the print copy as being 253 pages, so I think this is pretty accurate. If someone has the print copy and wants to replace the page count approximations with the physical count, feel free. Regardless, someone with the print copy will need to provide the end pages for each week.
@maskedkoala When you copy the schedule into the OP, you should do so by doing a full quote of my post and copying the source. Reason is that I did spoiler part of the one of the week’s end text and that probably won’t carry over if you just copy the rendered table.
Reply to the post and press the speech bubble in the upper left corner of the editor. That will place the full text of the post into your editor. You can then copy the relevant table, cancel the reply and put the table into the OP.
I was thinking about doing a read aloud for this book club if there’s enough interest. For those not familiar, this is where we meet on Discord once a week (on a one week delay from the schedule) and take turns rereading that week’s assignment out loud. It’s good for practicing your kanji readings and speaking fluidity, not to mention just fun hanging out.
It can be a bit difficult to schedule because of time zones. A time that’s worked for most people in the past (sorry U.S. west coast!) is around 9:30pm Japan time every Sunday. Japan doesn’t have daylight savings, but many other countries do, so your time can change by an hour when that occurs. For example, this would be 8:30am U.S. east coast time for most of the book club, but the first two weeks would be at 7:30am.
I’m US East coast right now, but I work on Sundays from 1:30 until 9:30pm my time, so I answered maybe but to be honest I would almost definitely not make the meetings before the Daylight Savings time change, and possibly not after just because I’m usually not an awake, functioning person at those hours since my work schedule shifts my sleep schedule pretty late.
I really love read-aloud sessions, but it’s pretty loose maybe for me. Sorry about that!
Totally understand. It’s honestly earlier than I’d like, but if it were any later the individuals in Japan and Western Australia wouldn’t be able to participate. If we don’t get enough “Yes” votes we’ll reevaluate the time though.
Thanks for the tag! I wasn’t planning to read the book, but if we’re doing a read aloud…
I won’t be able to to make the 26th due to work, and that’ll happen somewhat frequently throughout, but that time plus minus a a couple hours would work for me. It’s pretty much midday here.
Although I’m not sure whether I can read the book beforehand, but maybe it will work out just fine if I jump into the read aloud straight away we will see
This is my first time participating in a WK book club! I recently bought the book on bookwalker with a few extra coins that I had left. I’m looking forward to it!
Bought the physical copy; it was my first time reading a proper novel in Japanese. Got through the first couple of pages to test myself. A lot of lookups, but it was manageable. The biggest issue was dealing with my lookup software. Then I remembered that I have a Kindle and after an hour of troubleshooting got it on there. The ability to lookup a word just by touching it is a gamechanger!
I should hope that I find that rating accurate since I’m the only one on Natively who’s actually compared it against other books so far.
But yes, I think it’s more or less fine. It’s harder than かがみの孤城 which is a 28, but easier than 本好き and 獣の奏者, which are 32 and 33 respectively.
Keep in mind, as I mentioned in my original proposal post, there is some sci-fi mumbo jumbo that creates occasional difficulty spikes. I expect some readers will gloss over those parts, which I don’t think should impact their enjoyment significantly, but will increase the difficulty nonetheless.
Hope that helps. Did you have a specific concern or just curious?
Yes, it helps a lot, thank you!
The concern was mostly my reading speed. I asked you specifically, because I know you’re the only one who wrote such a nice extensive review on Natively .
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