Hello and welcome to the evaluation of our next series, 「浅見光彦」シリーズ !
The page counts are calculated from the digital version, so if anybody has a paperback version, I’d be happy to know the real starting pages for each chapter.
Anyhow, the sizes of the chapters seem a bit unfortunate; too short to have one chapter per week, but maybe too long to have two per week?
A slower week to start would be great for me. If anyone wants to read slower I’m down for that, but I went into this knowing that you all read fast-ish and that it would be difficult for me, so I’m up for the challenge.
Thank you for the table of contents! I have updated the OP accordingly. It now contains the chapters breakdown and a proposed reading schedule of two chapters per week. This is actually pretty much in line with the reading speed we had in our initial book clubs, but as we have new members, I’m aware that we might want to adjust.
What do you all think?
What is your favorite choice?
One chapter per week
Two chapters per week
Something in between (please explain)
0voters
What would also be ok for you? (please don’t repeat the above choice)
I’m on the fence about whether I’ll join this as it will heavily overlap with ABC’s BUTTER club which also has an aggressive pace, so didn’t vote but ultimately if I join I’ll follow whatever schedule is set best I can.
I’m fine with 2 chapters a week, but if we think it’ll be too fast and 1 chapter a week would be too slow, we could do 3 chapters per 2 weeks? Easiest way to do it could be 5 days per chapter (then 3 chapters is 15 days)
Each chapter has multiple numbered subchapters, so if we wanted to do an in-between pace it should be straightforward to find reasonable breakpoints for that.
OK let’s look into this a bit more closely. What if we think about weeks and pages per week?
What pace would you be comfortable with?
9 weeks, avg. ~32 pages/week
8 weeks, avg. ~36 pages/week
8 weeks, 1 ch./week (= max. 48 pages)
7 weeks, avg. ~41 pages/week
6 weeks, avg. ~48 pages/week
5 weeks, avg. ~58 pages/week
5 weeks, 2 ch./week (= max. 69 pages)
0voters
If we go by chapters, the schedule will be a bit uneven. For the “1 chapter per week” solution, I would group the prologue with chapter 1 (= 48 pages) and the epilogue with chapter 8 (=37 pages), but you are of course free to read the prologue in the preceding week to ease the load. (Or we could make it 9 weeks and split chapter 1 somewhere, for a smooth ramp-up.)
If we go by pages, we should be able to find some good breakpoints on the subchapters to better balance the load, like pm suggested.
I had a look now and read the first 7 pages (the prologue) to get a rough feel for the difficulty. The writing style is pretty easy to read, and the grammar is also on the easier side. I still had to look up a fair amount of vocab, but that might be just because It’s a new book and the beginning is always a little rougher. The prologue was also pretty description heavy. (plus I might not be 100% after my sickness)
After all, personally, I’d still prefer a slightly slower pace than the 2 chapters a week, considering also that the book is not that long. I voted accordingly in the poll.
and since the voters are almost, but not exactly identical, I thought the 7-week option might be a good choice. So I tried to stick with the ~41 pages rule and came up with these page numbers where ideally a break should happen.
Sadly, none of these pages matches a chapter’s end… So the hope is that there is a sub-chapter break not too far off!
Unfortunately I don’t own the paperback, and for these fine-tuned searches it would be better to search in the real pages, so if anybody could help me out in finding appropriate breaks, that would be highly appreciated!
Here’s a suggestion for a 7 week schedule that keeps to subchapter break points. It’s a little lumpy but hopefully not too much so:
page range
page count
starts at
5-38
34
prologue
39-89
51
chapter 1.3
90-135
46
chapter 3.0
135-171
37
chapter 4.2
171-208
38
chapter 5.3
208-255
48
chapter 6.2
256-292
37
chapter 8.0
(The chapters are named rather than numbered; in the above I don’t treat the prologue as a chapter so chapter 1.3 is subsection 3 in the 三次駅殺人事件 chapter, and so on.
Edit: fixed page counts in weeks one and two.
Another option for weeks one and two is
page range
page count
starts at
5-52
47
prologue
53-89
37
chapter 2.0
which has the disadvantage of starting with a long week, but the advantage of not having two long weeks in succession in weeks two and three, plus we get to start week two on a full chapter boundary.
Or we could have week 1 34 pages and week 2 32 pages (subchapter break on page 70) but I feel like that would make most of the rest of the schedule into long weeks.
The end looks very good, but 50 and 46 in quick succession at the start might be a bit heavy? Can we maybe push this one subchapter ahead - what would it look like then?
I like that one the best for now. I’m not much concerned with having a lead in week and are more interested in the weeks being roughly balanced or at least following a long week with a shorter one. That plan would fit my criteria perfectly.
The chapter boundary is just an added bonus.
I also like the 47 - 37 pages option best for the first two weeks. It also allows people to read a bit ahead in the week preceding the official start of the book club, e.g. read the prologue or maybe a bit more, to spread the load of the first week.
What does everybody think about this proposed schedule?
page range
page count
starts at
5-52
47
prologue
53-89
37
chapter 2.0
90-135
46
chapter 3.0
135-171
37
chapter 4.2
171-208
38
chapter 5.3
208-255
48
chapter 6.2
256-292
37
chapter 8.0
I like it!
I have another suggestion for a schedule (plz explain below)
I have a comment / I dislike something (plz explain below)
