冷たい密室と博士たち - Doctors in Isolated Room (S&M Vol.2)

ohh, interesting :eyes: Maybe I can juggle between this book and all the other books I’m planning to read this summer. I’ve changed my vote in the member list poll from “might start late” to “yes” :v:

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Aaaand looks like we’re off :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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The first week went fast, and we’re already in week 2! Will the story pick up speed any time soon? …

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I’m still a few pages behind on last week’s assignment, but for those of you who are faster than me, here is week 3:

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We decided to stick with two chapters per week, so here comes week 4!
This will be our longest week with close to 80 pages, if I calculated correctly :cold_sweat: Luckily, after that it’s all going downhill easier with shorter weeks :muscle:

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Hey all, I’ve just realized that we’re already pretty far along in our book - therefore I was starting to think about the next volume (or not?). Here is what I came up with:

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With only the slightest of delays :sweat_smile: we’re reaching Week 5! This week’s pace is a bit more back to normal, with around 65 pages across the two chapters.

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Here’s the penultimate week :slight_smile:
And it’s only ~50 pages!

@Belerith Are you still planning to catch up? It might be about time :sweat_smile:

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My life has been taken over by One Piece, so not before you’re done with the book, I’m afraid. :see_no_evil:

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Wow, is it over yet? :scream: Here is our last week:

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Went fast, didn’t it!

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Satisfaction Poll Time!

Have you read 冷たい密室と博士たち - Doctors in Isolated Room?

  • 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

If you read both volumes from the series, how would you compare them?

  • I liked it way better than すべてがFになる
  • I liked it a little bit better than すべてがFになる
  • I liked both equally
  • I liked it a little bit less than すべてがFになる
  • I liked it way less than すべてがFになる
  • I don’t have an opinion / something else (please explain!)
0 voters

Participation Statistics


My thoughts

I must say I liked this book way more than the first volume. It felt much more realistic to me in a way. (OK, apart from the fact that she jumped off of a 5-story building and survived… but hey)
I mean, it was still a complicated plot and everything, but it was all somehow explainable from the past events and and it felt somewhat plausible. In comparison, Vol. 1 was just… weird, especially the discrepancy between her choosing to lock herself up and then breaking out of this self-chosen prison… I still don’t really get why she thought this was necessary as she had been found to be innocent at the trial after all…

Anyways, after having studied the people’s names (thanks again for the tip @miwuc!) it started to make more sense with all those people, and I thoroughly enjoyed the tension when Moe wandered around in the research lab at night.

I also enjoyed reading the Japanese as such. I find Mori’s writing style to be very approachable and easy to digest. My reading speed with more difficult books (language-wise or vocab-wise) is still atrocious, and so I’m happy that I managed to read this book quite faster than normal.

Bottom line: Looking forward to Vol. 3, hoping for it to be more like Vol. 2 and less like Vol. 1 :wink:

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Thanks for sharing!

Here are mine

I agree the plot is not quite as far fetched, and there is some kind of motive other that “she’s a genius and that’s what geniuses do”. In the first book it was never clear why Magata was locked up in the first place. I also liked that there was more stuff happening between the murder and the reveal (like the attempted murder of Moe).

And yeah, the style is very readable. So far I think the easiest Japanese books I’ve read are the mystery novels (容疑者xの献身 and the two S&M). In my limited experience I’ve found LN’s to be much harder.

What I’m really curious about is how they’re gonna manage to keep running into mysterious murders for 8 more books, without being officially detectives. Moe’s uncle has got to play a part in there somewhere. The first two where just random encounters, which is already a stretch. If it there is one more random murder it’s really going to defy all odds.

Slightly unrelated, but I like the opening of the anime of すべてがFになる (even though I haven’t watched the anime)

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Detective Conan would like to have a word :eyes:

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I finished chapter 12 today, I’m almost done! Student life is busy busy…

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Continuing to very belatedly follow behind this club, I just finished 冷たい密室と博士たち!

Some thoughts on this one

Like most folks above, I preferred this one to すべてがfになる. In that book Saikawa and Moe were very much the detached outsiders, whereas in this one they were more directly involved, both through Kita and also though Moe being attacked. The bit where Moe is in the research facility at night was genuinely edge-of-the-seat reading (even though I knew that she logically would be okay given that there are more books in the series) and I ended up staying up late reading that bit. I don’t remember anything in the first book being quite so gripping :thinking:.

I didn’t figure out the mystery at all because I am very bad at that, but the explanation was pretty satisfying I thought!

Saikawa continues to be infuriating at times. I was kind of expecting him to get in trouble for the fact that instead of telling the police when he’d figured out (one of the) murderers he decided to really stupidly to tip her off and try to set up a private meeting :man_facepalming: He’s very lucky it didn’t go even worse than it did.

TLDR: another fun mystery! I will definitely read the next volume but maybe not right away (although the audiobook for book 3 did get released today which seems very timely!) So I may not catch up in time for volume 4 starting but one day, one day :grin:

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Hey, good to see you follow us in the trails of this bookclub! :wave:

I totally share your sentiment in all aspects!

I remember I was sitting outside on my balcony reading this, and it slowly turned darker and darker around me, and at some point it was really dark and I almost freaked out when I came across a shocking moment in the book :woman_facepalming: :grin:

I think if we continue at our current pace of about 2 books per year (which feels quite good to me right now because after having read a book, it feels like I need a break from the two, but then I start to miss them at some point and that’s a nice feeling as well), you should definitely be able to catch up to us at some point not too far in the future.

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Yeah, that seems like a good pace! Will also mean that as they are releasing every 2 months , from book 5 on the audiobook release dates will be before the book clubs for the rest of the series which is a bonus. (The audiobooks aren’t one of the fancy ones with a full cast and sound effects and everything but the narrator is pretty decent and they are included in the audible.jp unlimited listen/monthly subscription selection so they’ve been a nice little extra for me so far).

I am feeling at the moment like a change of pace as the last three books I read have all been crime, that said, these books/Mori Hiroshi’s writing style is so straightforward and pleasant to read that I’m sure it won’t be long before I pick the series back up!

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Riiight? :joy_cat:
I must say these series is what I can read the fastest of all books so far. Plus, he is a very productive writer, so there are many more series waiting for us if we feel so inclined :grin:

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Finished just in time :sunglasses:

I think I liked this one about the same as すべてがFになる. It’s a bit less crazy, though I haven’t decided if that’s a good thing or not.

  • I thought the lab setting was fascinating; I just wish it had been utilized more.
  • My original guess that the professors were guilty was right for the wrong reasons - I guess the author doesn’t like to make the murderer(s) a straight-up villain.
  • At one point the wind was compared to 100 elementary school students practicing the recorder, which is pretty great.
  • It was fun to read everyone’s comments from 2 years ago :slight_smile:
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