Hello! I am planning to start reading volume one of 幸色のワンルーム starting June 4th, 2021 I was hoping that some other people would like to join me so I decided to try and run a book club. Trigger Warning this book’s main character is a victim of various forms of abuse and follows the story of her being kidnapped by a stalker (I believe) and their story of trying to become happy. They also do form a “let’s not continue living” pact if they get caught. So if these topics will be difficult for you to read I would not recommend this book!
Summary
The unhappy girl is kidnapped and learns “happiness” for the first time.
That day, the girl was kidnapped. However, it was the beginning of a hopeful life for the girl. The girl vows to marry the kidnapper, who devotes a lot of “happiness” to the girl. The relationship between the victim and the kidnapper — why is it so warm?
The chapters are around 30+ pages, so I will be splitting them in half so the reading will be hopefully 15-18 pages per week.
Schedule
| Start Date |
Chapter |
Page Numbers |
Page Count |
| June 4 |
Chp 1 pt 1 |
4 to 18 |
15 |
| June 11 |
Chp 1 pt 2 |
19 to 34 |
16 |
| June 18 |
Chp 2 pt 1 |
36 to 45 |
10 |
| June 25 |
Chp 2 pt 2 |
46 to 56 |
11 |
| July 2 |
Chp 3 pt 1 |
58 to 70 |
13 |
| July 9 |
Chp 3 pt 2 |
71 to 83 |
13 |
| July 16 |
Chp 4 Pt 1 |
86 to 101 |
16 |
| July 23 |
Chp 4 pt 2 |
102 to 118 |
17 |
| July 30 |
Chp 5 pt 1 |
120 to 134 |
15 |
| Aug 6 |
Chp 5 pt 2 |
135 to 150 |
16 |
| Aug 13 |
Chp 6 pt 1 |
152 to 162 |
11 |
| Aug 20 |
Chp 6 pt 2 |
163 to 174 |
12 |
Who Should Join
I think this book should be around the beginner level. It has furigana for the kanji and for the most part the text density per page is on the lower end. It is listed as psychological, drama, and romance. If the book sounds interesting to you please feel free to join and we can struggle through it together!
Where to buy
Digital: Bookwalker
Kobo
Physical: Amazon JP
CD Japan
Are You Planning on Joining this Book Club?
Pros for me:
-
I’m finishing a series at the end of this month, leaving an opening in my schedule starting in June. The timing works out.
-
The dialogue looks to be about just the right level for me, not too light and not too heavy.
-
As it doesn’t look like a series I would normally read, it may be nice to lean outside the usual.
Cons for me:
-
With minor exception, I typically avoid stories that lean too much into the romance genre. (I peeked at the English Wikipedia page just enough to see the genre, which simply says “Romance”. Not that Wikipedia’s always to be trusted on these things. Japanese Wikipedia puts it as “Suspense” and “Human Drama”.)
-
The series is incomplete, something I usually try to avoid unless it’s a slice-of-life series. With its ninth volume out soon, I don’t know if the author intends to end the series or keep it going for a while. The pace of volume releases has slowly increased from one volume every 4 to 5 months early on, to one volume every 9 to 11 months more recently.
-
My e-book provider of choice (Kobo) doesn’t have the same “volume one is free for the current week” as BookWalker, so I can’t easily skim more than the first chapter. And 試し読み for later chapters are only a few pages each. So I’m not able to gauge the primary genre of the series.
I’ll have this thread on notification, and will probably decide whether to join in or not at the very last minute!
I wish I could help out more with narrowing down the genre, but I haven’t investigated throughly enough to know how far in the romance realm it goes. (I’m trying to avoid spoilers lol). I’m mainly attracted to the book because I like psychological books and I think the premise of the book may lend itself to some interesting questions. No worries if you decide its not for you! Also thank you for mentioning kobo. I’ve never used them before, but I should add it to the list of places to purchase from!
I avoided looking at anything else on the English Wikipedia as well. Gotta avoid spoilers in case I do read along!
I totally agree lol! For slice of life books I don’t really care, but I’m pretty sure this book has some twist to it and I’ve already had wikipedia ruin a book for me in the past. 
I own volume one already, so I think I’ll read along for that one at least. 
I’ll give it a shot. Looks like it could be interesting.
@Belerith @meaniezucchini Awesome I’m excited to have reading buddies! I’ll work on adding a schedule and getting a vocabulary sheet set up this week. 
Words… words everywhere!!!
I just found out there is an official English translation of the manga (unfortunately only available via crunchyroll 
), so if anyone wants to check their understanding along the way this is an option. I’ll probably read each chapter and then go through the English chapter to double check my understanding and see if there’s any grammar I messed up.
I added a tentative schedule. @meaniezucchini @Belerith Some of the chapters are shorter such as chapter 2 and 6. Would you prefer to leave them broken into two parts or have a week with more reading?
I think it’s fine to have a couple of short weeks but if you guys want to do two chapters instead, that’s fine with me.
Alright! I’ll probably leave the schedule as is then.
I haven’t looked into it too deeply so maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like a lot of it is available for free on pixiv?
https://comic.pixiv.net/works/3174
It seems like a lot got added to the story when it was published. Chapters 4-6 of the book aren’t what’s on pixiv they seem to be unique to the publication. It’s great this is available though, so people can see a bit more of the story before deciding to read. Thanks for sharing it!
I’ll probably read the chapters in one go, since that’s how I prefer to read manga. But I don’t mind the schedule, just means I’ll read a chapter every two weeks instead. 
If it’s very good I can’t promise I won’t read ahead, though.
I saw a Pixiv link when doing a web search for the series before, but went for other links and forget to get back to it. Thanks!
I wonder what software the mangaka uses for enter the dialogue into their comics. From my (limited) experience, it’s not common to see furigana used on Pixiv.
Likewise. This year I’ve been aiming for “read one chapter per day” (with a different manga for each day of the week). I can easily have a day where I swap back and forth between this and another manga each week.
Honestly, your reading experience will probably be better by just reading in one go. I’m pretty sure some of the weeks will cut off in weird places. Also, yeah totally feel free to read ahead! (I hope the manga is good lol) If anything that’ll make things easier if anyone has any questions on grammar or other content!
That’s a lot of reading! How many books have you gotten through so far? Also, I really like the idea of a chapter a day from different books. I’m not at the point where I can read that much each day, but I think I might adopt this when I get to that point! If you do read along I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts since you said this isn’t something you’d typically read. 
