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Page numbers are printed on all pages, physical and digital. It might help to also specify the chapter (they are all four pages long).
Proper Nouns
There are not that many recurring characters. Almost all the stories have Ayako meeting a one-shot character.
Name
Reading
Notes
あやこ
Main character
ねね
A little girl from the same neighborhood
かご中
かごなか
Ayako’s colleague. Her head is a bird cage
Membership
Will you be reading with us?
Yes
Yes, but I might start late
Maybe
No
0voters
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0voters
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The book contains 36 chapters of four pages each. Scanning through the pages, all chapters appears to be of similar “weight”, except for:
Chapter 14 with no text
Chapters 23 and 27 which are a bit lighter.
You can read the first chapter here to get a sense of the amount of text per chapter. It’s all without furigana by the way.
There is also a 7-pages オマケ at the end, called “Panna and Cotta - のんびりな一日”, which we may of may not read.
I thought the book was short, but I admit this is actually a bit more reading that I though.
As usually, we can vote a fast / medium / slow schedule. And possibly adjust later if needed.
EDIT: added 2 month schedule if we want to be slightly faster. I underestimate the speed the BBC is used to. I remember during Hitori Bocchi, at some I just fell behind hard.
Faster schedule
Week
start date
chapters
pages with text
1
mar 28
1-3
12
2
apr 04
4-7
12
3
apr 11
8-11
16
4
apr 18
12-17
20
5
apr 25
18-22
20
6
may 02
23-28
24
7
may 09
29-33
20
8
may 16
34-omake
19
Fast schedule
Week
start date
chapters
pages with text
1
mar 28
1-3
12
2
apr 4
4-6
12
3
apr 11
7-10
16
4
apr 18
11-15
16
5
apr 25
16-19
16
6
may 2
20-24
20
7
may 9
25-29
20
8
may 16
30-34
)
Medium schedule
Week
start date
chapters
pages with text
1
mar 28
1-2
8
2
apr 04
3-5
12
3
apr 11
6-8
12
4
apr 18
9-11
12
5
apr 25
12-16
12
6
may 02
17-20
16
7
may 09
21-24
16
8
may 16
25-28
16
9
may 23
29-32
16
10
may 30
33-36
16
11
jun 06
omake
7
Slower schedule
Column 1
Column 2
Column 3
Column 4
1
mar 28
1-2
8
2
apr 04
3-5
12
3
apr 11
6-8
12
4
apr 18
9-11
12
5
apr 25
12-15
12
6
may 02
16-18
12
7
may 09
19-21
12
8
may 16
22-24
12
9
may 23
25-28
16
10
may 30
29-32
16
11
jun 06
33-36
16
12
jun 13
omake
7
The difference between schedules is not that high. I did try to take the “short chapters” into account. The omake week might also be cut of merged with the last week.
I will open the poll a bit later in case we want to discuss it a bit first.
Fast schedule looks great to me. It has a nice curve, and if anything it’s slower than the two previous BBC clubs (which were both harder and had more pages!). Seems more like a “medium” schedule.
I was able to purchase the ebook on Bookwalker and I’m in the US, I used my Google and PayPal accounts. I’m not seeing “Japan only” on mine though so I don’t know if it’s just a Europe thing.
Anybody else from Europe that managed to purchase a book on BookWalker?
Edit: I just found out that this seems to affect only Denmark.
The following message is displayed:
“For various reasons, it is temporarily not possible to purchase titles from our web store when accessing BOOK☆WALKER from Denmark after 2 April 2025 (JST).”
So it looks like this might be a Denmark-specific issue rather than a general Europe restriction.
Alright, let’s start voting. I added another, slightly faster schedule. It’s true that BBC can be much faster than I thought. But hey, maybe we can say it’s a cosy read with a chill schedule !
I also ordered the french translation, just to help me keep pace if needed. As far as I know, it’s the only translation that exist.
I also need to prepare the vocab sheet. Do we usually just create an empty sheet ? Or do we use mokuro ? (I have bought the digital version and extracted the images already). I admit I almost never used the vocab sheet in the book clubs.
If you put up a blank sheet I’ll probably use it. For Hirayasumi I had to do a lot of lookups, and it was helpful to put them all somewhere (and maybe other readers benefited from it). Just a thought!
I decided to remove my vote. I don’t have a strong preference. I’d like to vote against slow, but I don’t think it’s a big difference between faster and fast. I’d lean towards medium, but would be happy with any of them I guess.
Personally I’d vote for “faster”, but since I’m not really the BBC target audience (and since I might read the whole thing in a week anyway ) I’m not voting either.
) I’m not voting either.