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I began flipping through the pages and realised quickly most are not dense at all. There’s a lot of floor plans… and when I say a lot, I mean a lot.
So I decided to draft a schedule by roughly estimating how many pages would total ~15 pages of a regular book. This turned out to be ~26 pages on average, excluding two weeks’ worth of reading at the end with normal-density pages.
I will be reading on Bookwalker and unfortunately don’t have access to a paperback copy, so if someone else could revise the page numbers for me, that would be highly appreciated
Also, please anyone feel free to suggest any changes, since I only did a quick glance-over!
My draft schedule
(Page numbers from Bookwalker on mobile with 76% font size)
Week
Start Date
Starting Point
Page Numbers
Page Count
Notes
Week 1
August 3
第一章
1 - 31
30
Week 2
August 10
謎の空間
31 - 51
20
Week 3
August 17
第二章
51 - 75
24
Week 4
August 24
三角部屋
75 - 103
28
Week 5
August 31
二つの側面
103 - 127
24
Week 6
September 7
第三章
127 - 158
31
Week 7
September 14
隠された部屋
158 - 183
25
Too short?
Week 8
September 21
第四章
183 - 205
22
Longer
Week 9
September 28
重治
205 - 224
18
Too much?
Week 10
October 5
喜江さんは、ソファの上に…
224 - end
??
Plain text version so people can fiddle with numbers
Can I suggest that they are in spoiler tags? I don’t have any sensible triggers (that I know of) and prefer not to know ahead of time anything from the story
Speaking of spoilers, isn’t the book already spoiled from the trigger warnings at the top of the post basically telling you what happens? That already kind of burnt this book for me. Ah crap I see they are blurred on this webpage but showed up in full from the email notification.
Remove them if they’re spoilery IMO. While well intentioned I feel like the likelihood of these warnings achieving their intended purpose is minuscule compared to the probability that they’ll just spoil people.
If some participants are very sensitive to a particular topic they’re free to ask or research the book synopsis themselves.
Or as a compromise I suppose it could be added as a separate comment with ample warnings that it contains spoilers, making it less likely that people will read it by mistake.
They’re really not as major spoilers as it seems, though. And for what it’s worth, they’re also unspoilered on Natively. (I’m not saying that’s how it should be, just how it currently is)
So spoiler tags don’t work? I would prefer to have trigger warnings inside the book clubs to keep things inclusive.
The people that I know who have PTSD and need trigger warnings couldn’t work with something as unspecific as “violence, 18+” as their triggers are more specific. It also could easily lead to misunderstandings.
If the spoiler tags don’t work, you can just refer to the learnnatively page where they can find the trigger warnings (or content tags) anyway.
If they’re available on Natively I think we should definitely not post them here where the censoring is hit or miss and refer people to that instead. That seems like the best compromise.
I had made one for あなたも殺人犯になれる! but it never got filled so I don’t think it’s mandatory. A table with character names and readings and first appearance can be nice though
We had started at 9 pages and ramped it up to 20 pages (well that was also just lucky that the chapters were quite short).
A suggestion in your breakdown would be to cut week 1 in two? I think it would make more sense that week 1 and week 2 both have only 15 pages than starting with 30 pages.
So like this:
Week
Start Date
Starting Point
Page Numbers
Page Count
Week 1
August 3
第一章 part 1
1 - 15
15
Week 2
August 10
第一章 part 2
16 - 31
15
Week 3
August 17
謎の空間
31 - 51
20
Week 4
August 24
第二章
51 - 75
24
Week 5
August 31
三角部屋
75 - 103
28
Week 6
September 7
二つの側面
103 - 127
24
Week 7
September 14
第三章
127 - 158
31
Week 8
September 21
隠された部屋
158 - 183
25
Week 9
September 28
第四章
183 - 205
22
Week 10
October 5
重治
205 - 224
18
Week 11
October 12
喜江さんは、ソファの上に…
224 - end
??
Then around week 4 you can have a poll to see if the pace is fine or too slow / too fast.
@Sasabonsam has been assiduously filling out a vocab sheet for セーラー服. Not sure if anyone else is using it, but I’ve found it really helpful for revising some of the new words along the way. (I confess I haven’t got past section 1 with those!)
I don’t know how many characters are in 変な家, but if there are lots, it is definitely worth creating a list of proper names and updating it each week.
I like the idea of ramping up the pace, though the first week is already quite short if you look at page density. I tried splitting the first chapter into thirds and it looks like this:
Updated schedule table
Week
Start Date
Starting Point
Page Numbers
Page Count
Week 1
August 3
第一章
9 - 25
16
Week 2
August 10
二つの浴室
25 - 38
13
Week 3
August 17
妄想
38 - 51
13
Week 4
August 24
第二章
51 - 75
24
Week 5
August 31
三角部屋
75 - 103
28
Week 6
September 7
二つの側面
103 - 127
24
Week 7
September 14
第三章
127 - 158
31
Week 8
September 21
隠された部屋
158 - 183
25
Week 9
September 28
第四章
183 - 205
22
Week 10
October 5
重治
205 - 224
18
Week 11
October 12
喜江さんは、ソファの上に…
224 - end
??
*I changed the starting point of the first chapter to page 9 so it doesn’t include the contents page. My bad.
I think that would be roughly 6 full-length pages for the first two weeks and 9 for the third. With the original breakdown, Week 1 would be around 9-10 full-length pages and Week 2 about 13-14.
Let’s just poll this since I don’t know what pace everyone prefers lol.
I think it is hard to know just how quick/slow this will be to read until we/someone starts.
One way of working out breaks is based on kindle locations. These are roughly based on lines of text. In あなたも殺人になれる we read about ~150 kindle locations per week. In セーラー服 it is about 200.
Looking at 変な家 the first chapter is only “115 locations” [the pictures only count as “1 location”].
This means that it would be a comfortable 1 week read assuming that it is similar in difficulty to those books.
Hello all, over in the book club home thread we are currently discussing shortening the time between the start of book club picks by letting books overlap if they are too long. The overlapping option seems to be really popular right now, so I was wondering whether you might want to consider starting earlier than planned? If we are to follow the new rule we are currently discussing, this book could have started last Saturday so if you want you can start from this Saturday already. I leave it to @ekuroe to track the main discussion for a bit more and then come up with a reasonable start date.
(and please shout if you need help / have any questions or anything!)
I’m interested in trying this as a non furigana novel, the preview on bookwalker didn’t seem too intimidating. This is shorter than what you normally read in the IBC right? So I guess the floor plan pages break up the text enough to make it a little easier. I also think that it’d be better to finish one book before starting the next one, but I’m still probably a bit below this clubs difficulty level so not likely to be a regular reader for a while.
Again, the page numbers are taken from Bookwalker and so are discrepant from the paperback copy.
I’ve just been approximating by the size of paragraphs.
so if you want you can start from this Saturday already. I leave it to