I personally vouch for amazon.co.jp. It needs a Japanese address, yes, but you can make an account with a middle man shipping service, and they give you a free address that you could theoretically even have stuff ship to (or not, since that would be a healthy sum of money)
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OK, this will be the first club I am joining - in the past, I considered joining for “Todofuken no-hanashi”, I even have the physical book, but my level of competence was way too low back then (I will, of course, come back to it, considering that there are helpful resources in this book’s topic).
Now, I’ve come back to learning Japanese after a hiatus, feel more confident now and ready to give it a try. I’ve just bought the manga on Bookwalker (I even valiantly battled the Japanese site, completed the purchase, using ChatGPT to help me with more difficult stuff like “Please check if you want to use this card for future purchases”. 
and it’s only afterwards that I discovered the global version of the store).
Anyway, I am excited to begin reading - よろしくお願いします!
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Thanks! This one worked, got the e-book.
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Ok I am joining my first book club, and thank you to the experienced readers who have organized this. I bought the book from amazon.co.jp this is my first kindle experience. I have managed to read the first chapter already, but I’m sure I’ve missed a lot, especially the katakana? sound effects. (I’m middle aged and not a manga reader).
Question: who buys this book except for Japanese learners? What age? Boys? Girls? Are manga like this available in English/other languages and who is buying them?
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They are available in other languages.
Primarily people who enjoy romantic comedy/slice-of-life things. It is aimed at a young teenage audience. I think this particular manga is considered 少年, so its target market is teenage boys, specifically.
The nice thing about Japanese manga, I suppose, is you can tell who the intended audience is by which magazines it runs in, and they are usually labeled by demographic:
少年、女性、男性, etc.
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Thank you.
“The nice thing about Japanese manga, I suppose, is you can tell who the intended audience is by which magazines it runs in, and they are usually labeled by demographic: 少年、女性、男性, etc.”
I guess I should do some research on manga and visit a bookstore. But I see “shonen magazine comics” on the front cover and title page…ok I see this series has a wikipedia page, don’t want to see any spoilers…
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Yep, that is the magazine it would have originally ran in when it was serialized, and the title gives it away (well once you learn that 少年 = Shonen/shounen, anyhow). A lot of online bookstores tend to tag by demographic as well. I’m not sure Amazon does (if it does, it’s not super visible), but places like Bookwalker definitely organize that way!
Having not been in a physical bookstore for Japanese manga, I’m not sure how they organize, honestly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they organize in much the same way.
Yeah, definitely best to avoid Wikipedia for that! They will 1000% spoil series. 
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I think amazon organizes with some really smart recommendation engine first and foremost. At least I always get “Recommended for you” or “similar to your recent purchases” etc first. But it can filter at the very least by demographic (sort of).
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Since I’m certainly going to have a bunch of questions…
Is the preferred approach to compile multiple questions into a single post or make a separate post for each question?
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Multiple in a single post is easier to manage I think.
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This is my first Manga reading experience(in Japanese). Really excited to start reading this along with other readers! Thank you for organizing this.
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I hope you’ve had life calm down a bit, because we are certainly starting the ride and not stopping until it’s over, come join:
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I was wondering about the title, why is it [可愛いだけじゃない式守さん - Kawaii dake janai Shikimori-san] and not [式守さんは可愛いだけじゃない - Shikimori-san wa kawaii dake janai]? Is this a grammar thing or just a stylistic choice?
(btw this is my first book club and I’m enjoying so far even though it’s a bit of a challenge so thanks to everyone involved for organising)
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It roughly means “The not-just-cute Shikimori-san”, but that doesn’t work well in English. As for why it’s exactly like this and not the other way around as a sentence, who knows, this is what the mangaka decided.
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It always seemed to me like it’s very common for slice-of-life manga to have a title structure of [relative clause][noun] (with the noun also often being 話). This style doesn’t really work well for titles in English, so they end up changed quite a bit. Just remember that when it comes to professional translation of published works, it’s not just translation but interpretation and localization too. Here they’ve captured the spirit of what the Japanese title is getting across but with phrasing that sounds better in English.
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I think the best comparison would be a move title like “The talented Mr. Ripley”. In English, this works for very short adjectives, but not for entire sentences. But the essence it the same: the work is named for the character, with a description of who that character is.
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Think you can omit “slice-of-life” from that sentence and it still applies. Seems like a common format for titles, especially before they started just putting the whole plot in the title. 未来少年コナン, 美少女戦士セーラームーン, からかい上手の高木さん, 無人惑星サヴァイヴ, 風の谷のカウシカ, 棺担ぎのクロ, et cetera, et cetera.
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And the week 2 thread is now live, head over there and get reading!
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Oh look, what’s that, is that maybe week 3’s thread? 
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単語リストを作ってくれてありがとう！
Thank you for the vocabulary spreadsheets!
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