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

Japanese Language Reading
#70

Nice! Looking forward to having you and @Naphthalene on board!

Also, I have a favour to ask you two (and others who are catching up):

We initially had a discussion about the amount of text to read per week, and once we finish the book, I would like to reflect on that for a bit. For those who read along, the weekly chunks and the breaks are of course more perceptible than for those who catch up and read several weeks’ worth in one go.
Therefore, I would like to ask you to get an impression of the weekly chunks anyway, maybe by pausing for a moment at the designated breaks or something? Once the book is finished, I think I would like to ask the participants about their opinion regarding the weekly amount of text and the locations of the breaks. Thanks!

3 Likes
#71

Hmmm… I guess I forgot to post the link to Week 12’s thread when I created it :woman_facepalming:

Here it is:

2 Likes
#72

Here comes Week 13:

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#73

Now let’s see how this chapter is going to end!

#74

At the end of this week’s reading, there is no break - sorry! I hope we don’t encounter a bad cliffhanger there…

#75

Well, I ended up taking much longer as I moved on to read the rest of 本好き in its web novel form, but I’m now done. How are things on your side?

3 Likes
#76

I finished chapter 2 a week ago, but haven’t read further since then. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to catch up on the book club, but once I made sure I could read one week’s amount per day I guess my brain decided the progress in and of itself was satisfactory, and I ended up just… not reading :caught_durtling:

Brain and motivation and stuff can be veeery interesting at times :laughing: :crazy_face: :sweat_smile: I’ve been enjoying the book so far though, so I’m ready to read more :3

7 Likes
#77

Happy New Year everybody! Here is Week 16:

#78

This week, we need to stop again at a location without break - sorry! But I promise it will be the last time - after this long two-week chapter there are only one-week chapters remaining.

1 Like
#79

Here comes the final part of our last long chapter:

3 Likes
#80

I was somehow 40 pages behind, so I decided to do a catch-up day. I do screen free Saturdays, which I thought was the perfect excuse to force me to only mostly understand from context and Kanji knowledge, and only look up words when I just really couldn’t get the gist of a sentence. Paper dictionaries really give me an incentive to try and figure out a word from context :wink:.

I went into it thinking it would be really hard to understand, but it worked great! I only ended up looking up about 15 words total, and while I skipped a lot of words I probably would have preferred to look up, I’m caught up!

Not only do I feel more confident that I will finish the book, I appreciate the practice in making sense from context. Especially the part where the Professor is explaining the importance of zero in the context of a ruler-- I knew almost all of the kanji, but they are used so strangely in ruler terminology. It took me a while to figure out that he was talking about a ruler, but I don’t think I will forget what a 物差 is.

5 Likes
#81

My wife and I are watching through 30 Rock, and we just found out that her brother, Mitch (Andy Richter), went on a ski trip and had an accident in high school. So every day for the past 20 years he wakes up thinking he’s a high school kid going on a ski trip tomorrow. Sounded very familiar!

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#82

Wow, you almost made it to the end! Here is the penultimate week:

#83

It’s hard to believe but true: This week will be the last one!

Kudos to everybody who made it this far, and let’s enjoy the last bits of the story :slight_smile:

5 Likes
#84

To celebrate the end of this book, here is a…

Satisfaction Poll!

Have you read 博士の愛した数式?

  • 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

Survey
Survey831×468 62 KB

We started out with 24 readers (brown line), dropped to 16 readers in weeks 2 and 3, and from there on we finished with a steady count of 11-13 readers, which absolutely speaks for the book, I think!
Another interesting data point is the number of delayed readers (yellow line). In week 1, there were 8 delayed readers (and in week 2 the number of readers was 8 less than the week before), in weeks 2 and 3 we had 3 delayed readers each (and in the subsequent weeks the number of readers dropped by 3 each), so there seems to be some correlation between these numbers. In week 4 we had 2 delayed readers, and after that there were 0 or 1 delayed readers in each week. Again, I think that speaks for the book, be it in terms of writing style or contents.

And now I’m happy to hear your comments! What did you think of the book overall? Also, if you liked the author’s writing style, why not dig up one of her other works and nominate it for the book club?

6 Likes
#85

I think I might do that. There was a sci fi book that she wrote that looked cool, but it looked like it was a bit long for the intermediate club. I’ll look into it again after I finish buying a house next month.

Also, if you google around, the 2006 movie based on the book is available for streaming. My wife read the English version last week, so we’re going to give it a watch this weekend.

5 Likes
#86

Haha, 6 hours ago? I feel like I caught up with the book club :joy:
I wonder if my participation is in the stats.

I loved it! And to think I almost didn’t read it at all…
The setting was actually really interesting. I was glad to see some of the maths I like in a regular book too!
Seeing the progression toward the end (especially the decrease in memory time) was painful, but in a good way!
I’m a bit sad I only chose to start this book once the club was over :sweat_smile:

7 Likes
#87

I posted the satisfaction poll a week after the club officially ended, so well, officially you did not catch up :rofl:
But I think your numbers are in the statistics anyway as I only collected them right before posting (couldn’t find the time to do it earlier).

I’m really happy to see that you and most of the others liked the book! Looking forward to reading more books of this type in the club :wink:

4 Likes
#88

I finally finished watching the movie (shady links were being shady). Overall it was OK. I don’t think I can rate it fairly having read the book, and naturally it didn’t live up to the book.

The story is told from Root’s perspective, while he’s giving his students their first mathematics lecture, which I liked. His lecture is really engaging, and its an excuse to jump out of the story and explain the math, at least a little bit.

Unfortunately, this means that we don’t get to hear anything from 家政婦’s perspective, and I think they generally dumbed her down a bit compared to the books.

The biggest difference was the lack of subtlety in some things–in particular, 博士’s relationship with his sister in law, which is overtly romantic by the end of the movie. There’s also an extra letter not mentioned in the books, and some dialogue that not so subtly implies that she aborted 博士’s child, which I guess explains 博士’s love of children to some extent.

Hey, did anyone notice how none of the characters have names? Is that our names are unimportant, and we are really defined by our roles?

5 Likes
#89

Cross-linking a poll that asks about your reading experience with this book:

Thanks for clicking along :+1:

3 Likes