ah okay 
mine doesn’t, i grabbed the kindle book from the jp amazon store.
Mine has furigana for almost everything more complicated than 町.
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this is the one i have:
that’s what my version looks like
it’s an easy book, for kids. it might have difficult kanji, but not difficult words, so i thought this is fine.
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Yeah, I had the version sigolino has, so I had some furigana. I just remember feeling like there were a lot of really long sentences I couldn’t parse, and a lot of hiragana that I couldn’t figure out how to divide into recognizable words. Of course, it’s also been like a year since I looked at Kiki, so 
who knows, I might find it a little better if I tried it again now, but it made for a very painful first novel attempt, and I’ve been living in fear of novels ever since, so Girl Who Leapt Through Time has been a very pleasant surprise! 
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Just remember that you’re coming from a perspective of much more experience that most people participating in the beginner book club. 
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kiki’s problem might be the setting. girl who leapt through time is set in modern day japan, the japanese is a bit more “slice of life” than kiki.
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I remember having those same problems back when I was reading it, and it was after I read 時をかける少女. Sometimes I knew the words but just had no idea what was being talked about.
I didn’t finish the book yet, but it’s been almost a year since I stopped. I guess it’s time to go back and use the cheat code called “one extra year of experience”
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Barely. It’s written in 1965, and while there’s no explicit timeframe specified, the author clearly wasn’t thinking in terms of the late 2010s.
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yeah, but it’s also not a fantasy setting, while kiki is more fantasy-ish.
girl who leapt through time is more “every day” and doesn’t go into sf territory much, other than showing kazuko jumping around.
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Yeah, I read just the first chapter of Kiki (way after the book club) and found it exhausting to get through even with the help of floflo - without which I doubt I’d have managed it. I was also definitely worried about keeping up with the club for this one as a result, but when I sat down to catch up on chapter 1 last week I was sooooo pleasantly surprised.
The short chapters definitely help, and I think the language / story is much more straightforward. Kiki’s first chapter at least waxed poetic about sloping towns and the decline of witches. This has been more like “and then they went to the loo”.
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I haven’t read Kiki but I find 時をかける少女 significantly easier than 夏目友人帳 . It’s probably because of the different theme - normal high school lofe rather than the suernatural. But who knows if that might change with the next chapter …
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nah, the text will stay that way throughout the book, until towards the end, when there’s a long explanatory stretch. that one’s a bit more difficult, vocab-wise.
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And even so, it’s not that hard to understand. I didn’t have too much trouble with it back then, at least.
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yeah, it’s not too bad. then again, i still don’t really know what about kiki is more difficult.
wonder what i’ll read after kiki though. i found the kanji okay there, many of the words would probably be easier in kanji, too… it’s always a bit tiring to find where one word ends and the next begins
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OK, I have a couple of questions
Kadokawa version, p 15, about halfway across the page, when 五郎 is putting his wet handkerchief on 和子’s brow
My question is, what is the purpose of は in the middle of this sentence:
五郎は何度も何度も、ハンカチを水でぬらしては和子のひたいにあてた。
Does it convey something different to the same sentence with a comma instead of that は？
Kadokawa version p17, last line.
一度母にラベンダーのにおいのする香水をかがしてもらったことがあるんです。
I can’t seem to find this verb in a dictionary - not sure what I am doing wrong - could someone please help me out? (I can guess from context but would still like to look it up).
Thanks in advance! 
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About 嗅がす, it’s the shortened causative form of 嗅ぐ, to smell something.
I’m not sure about the は, right now. I’ll get back to you on that tonight is no one replied in the mean time.
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は after て form means that the actions were repeated multiple times. This is emphasized by 何度も.
So, he repeated the action of wetting the handkerchief and taking it to her forehead a few times.
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Kadokawa Page 15:
一夫が出ていくと、吾郎は窓をあけはなし、自分のハンカチを水でぬらすと和子の白いひたいの上にそっとのせた。
What are those と doing? It doesn’t seem like the “if と”
「あんな広い教室を、たった三人でそうじさせるなんて、むちゃだよ」
I’m not sure of the なんて here. After a search I’ve found that it’s used when the thing before it isn’t important, but it seems to be the opposite here. Neither of the Jisho definitions seem to fit either