博士の愛した数式 - The Housekeeper and the Professor 🎓🧮 (Intermediate Book Club)

NicoleRauch · July 27, 2020, 2:36pm

Welcome to 博士の愛した数式 - The Housekeeper and the Professor

hakase

Where to buy

Discussion Threads and Reading Schedule

We started reading on September 19th, 2020.

Week	Start Date	End Phrase	End Page	End Percentage	Page Count
Week 1	Sept 19th	博士が動くと、メモ用紙がこすれて、かさこそ、かさこそ、音がした。	17	6%	13
Week 2	Sept 26th	[End Chapter 1]	33	11%	16
Week 3	Oct 3rd	二人の会話に耳を傾けていた。	49	16%	16
Week 4	Oct 10th	[End Chapter 2]	62	21%	13
Week 5	Oct 17th	ルートは乱れた髪を撫でつけた。	79	27%	17
Week 6	Oct 24th	[End Chapter 3]	94	32%	15
Week 7	Oct 31st	助けてやってください。お願いします。	107	36%	13
Week 8	Nov 7th	[End Chapter 4]	118	40%	11
Week 9	Nov 14th	皆、引退してしまっている」(no break)	134	46%	16
Week 10	Nov 21th	[End Chapter 5]	151	51%	17
Week 11	Nov 28th	すべてが元通りだった。	162	55%	11
Week 12	Dec 5th	[End Chapter 6]	174	60%	12
Week 13	Dec 12th	。。。理解している人の目だと思った。	188	65%	14
Week 14	Dec 19th	[End Chapter 7]	202	70%	14
Week 15	Dec 26th	頭のてっぺんが、平らなんです」(no break)	214	74%	12
Week 16	Jan 2nd	[End Chapter 8]	227	79%	13
Week 17	Jan 9th	そのために私たちはますます焦った。(no break)	241-242	84%	14
Week 18	Jan 16th	[End Chapter 9]	256	89%	15
Week 19	Jan 23th	[End Chapter 10]	269	94%	13
Week 20	Jan 30th	[End Chapter 11]	282	98%	13

(Note: One physical page contains ~80% of the text of one BookWalker “standard page”.)

Discussion Rules

Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
When asking for help, please mention the chapter and page number. Also mention what version of the book you are reading.
Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun!

Member List

Are you planning to read 博士の愛した数式 - The Housekeeper and the Professor with the book club?

Yes
Yes, but I might start late
Not sure
No

0 voters

If so, which version will you be reading?

eBook
Paperback

0 voters

NicoleRauch · July 27, 2020, 2:41pm

@Kumirei Thanks for letting me know that the book arrived safely! I created this home thread so that we can discuss the schedule here (which I think is more focused).

I noticed that there are 11 chapters (at least in the ebook). What I would be interested in is

The start page of each chapter
The end page of the last chapter
Whether the chapters start on their own pages or on the same page as the previous chapter ends.

Thank youuuu

Kumirei · July 27, 2020, 2:53pm

There is no TOC

Chapters all start on new pages

Chapter	Pages	Count
1	5 - 33	29
2	34 - 62	29
3	63 - 94	32
4	95 - 118	24
5	119 - 151	33
6	152 - 174	23
7	175 - 202	28
8	203 - 227	25
9	228 - 256	29
10	257 - 269	13
11	270 - 282	13
参考文献	283	1
解説	284 - 291	8

seanblue · July 27, 2020, 3:13pm

I’m “planning” to join, but it highly depends on how I’m managing to read 獣の奏者 and 本好き at the same time.

NicoleRauch · July 27, 2020, 3:26pm

Thank you so much! I had naively believed the Bookwalker page which claims

but 232 pages is a dirty lie

In this case, my suggestion for a schedule would be 2 weeks per chapter for chapters 1-9 and 1 week each for chapters 10-11. Which would put us at 20 weeks total. (Unless you say that one page somehow has less text on it than in other books…)

(From the Bookwalker count (plus the amount of text I see in my ebook) I had hoped we could go with 2 chapters in 3 weeks, but this seems to be too fast given the numbers of the real book.)

Opinions and suggestions are welcome!

downtimes · July 27, 2020, 4:00pm

On an unrelated note. Just stumbled over 小川洋子’s thoughts about this book in my “Read Real Japanese”

Has anyone read 『博士の愛した数式』を巡って and knows if it is spoilery? Would otherwise really like to read it beforhand to get used to her writing style.

NicoleRauch · July 27, 2020, 5:11pm

Oh @Kumirei one final request please if I may: Could you post (or send me - my email address is in my profile) a pic of the first two or so pages of your book? I’d like to compare the amount of text, because maybe the physical book really contains less text per page compared to other books? (Still puzzled by this page numbering thing tbh)
Thank you!

Kumirei · July 27, 2020, 5:15pm

No problem

Pretty cover

pages

NicoleRauch · July 27, 2020, 5:36pm

Thank you, that helped a lot! There seems to be not too much difference to other books, text-amount-wise… So it’s probably not worth trying to come up with a slightly more compressed schedule (especially as we can hit the end of a chapter every other week, which I like).

EDIT: I added tentative breakdown to the OP; please have a look and comment!

valkow · July 27, 2020, 9:06pm

I vote: read before but will enjoy following along with the book club, yay.

NicoleRauch · August 1, 2020, 12:10pm

Whoa this Hakase edition looks HUGE (when compared with the graded readers)! Is this a special edition?

For the sake of the reading schedule, could you maybe compare the contents of the first few pages with the pictures Kumirei posted above, to see whether the pages are the same?.. Thx!

davids68 · August 1, 2020, 12:56pm

Maybe it’s the perspective in the photo? I don’t think it is any bigger than a regular novel. The chapter page numbers and images all match. Here’s the inside cover of mine.

Edit: mine is A6 size/文庫本

NicoleRauch · August 1, 2020, 1:24pm

Oh good, thank you for double-checking! Probably your graded readers are smaller than mine because they are of a higher level? I only own a set of Level 2 ones (from the same series as yours).

My graded readers are A5 while most of my novels are A6, just like yours. (I.e. they are twice the size!) But on your picture the novel and the graded reader look like they are almost the same size, so I went for a moment

BTW I like the text on that marketing banner! Let’s brace ourselves…

NicoleRauch · August 7, 2020, 12:57pm

I had set up a vote for the start date of this book club in the Intermediate thread, and it just occurred to me that I should probably cross-post it here as well so that everybody can have say who wants to:

2000kanji · August 11, 2020, 4:26pm

I would love to read this book, but I am not sure whether I am on the required level (I just reached WK 40). I have read the book in German and I liked it very much.

For those who would be interested in the German edition: it is called " Das Geheimnis der Eulerschen Formel". I found it in a small bookshop in Munich, but it is also available at amazon.

I’ll buy the Japanese edition and see if I can keep up with the club’s pace.

NicoleRauch · August 11, 2020, 4:50pm

Welcome to the club!

Unfortunately the WK level alone does not say too much about your other Japanese skills, but since you asked, I’d say level 40 sounds totally fine (especially if you decide to read a digital copy where you have a lookup option, but it should also be fine for the paper edition).
For Japanese in general, I’d say if you have N3 or equivalent knowledge, that should be sufficient. With N4, you might struggle a bit more, but it won’t be impossible if you are willing to put in the energy. You can always ask questions in the threads, and usually questions will get answers quickly.

I must say I’m much more fond of the German title than of the English one which sounds a bit… dunno… “cheap”?
(The German title says “The secret of Euler’s formula”)

2000kanji · August 11, 2020, 4:55pm

I just bought the bookwalker e-book version. Is there a lookup option for bookwalker e-books? If I read in the browser I could use rikaichamp, but I would rather read with the bookwalker app on an Android tablet.

NicoleRauch · August 11, 2020, 5:17pm

Not sure about lookup in the web version, but in the iOS app I can hold my finger on a word and I will get a popup that has an entry called “Dict”. This will give me results from my dictionaries for that entry. I’d suspect the Android app works in the same way.
(If you don’t see any results, you may want to select “Manage” in the lower left corner to pick the dictionaries you want to use. Or maybe configure them in some other way…)

morteASD · August 11, 2020, 5:21pm

Surely you mean entry called 辞書?

2000kanji · August 11, 2020, 6:06pm

The lookup with Rikaichamp does not work in the browser reader, as you can’t mark text in this view. In the Android app, Google translate is used to translate the selected text. The online help does not mention a possibility to configure other dictionaries.