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So, what sort of pace do we want to go through this? I have the paperback, which is just under 250 pages, split like this:
Foreword to the paperback edition, 7 pages
Prologue, 6 pages
(then we get the table of contents)
Part 1 量から質への転換を – 38 pages, split into 10 subsections of 3-5 pages each
Part 2 魅力的な「誤読」のすすめ – 48 pages, split into 16 subsections of a few pages each
Part 3 古今のテキストを読む – 130 pages, the meat of the book. This has 8 major subsections, each of which has an extract of three or four pages from a text by a well known author and some discussion related to it
おわりに, 2 pages
I know what sort of pace I (and the ABC) read fiction at, but for non fiction I’m less sure. What do people think? Should we go at a relatively fast pace through parts 1 and 2, and take part 3 slower, or move fairly slowly through the whole book?
If we wanted to aim for a 12 week schedule[*], we could do the prologue and part 1 split over 2 weeks, part 2 split over 2 weeks, and then 1 week per author in part 3 (throwing the おわりに into the last week).
[*] I suggest 12 merely because it seems about in line with other ABC pick club lengths.
At first I imagined that we could in theory read part 1 and part 2 in one week each, but it would be ~50 pages in an unknown writing style, plus it should contain lots of stuff that we’d probably want to reflect about (more than in your average novel I guess), and so I figured that it’s probably not too bad an idea to just take it a bit more slowly.
Looks like we agree on taking it slowly, so I have updated the initial post with a schedule with the breakpoints and page numbers from my paperback copy. Week 1 is a little longer because there wasn’t a section break quite in an ideal place. I figured the “foreword to the paperback edition” is likely skimmable fluff and the ebook might not have it anyway, so opted to make week 1 the longer one, not week 2.
Now I have looked at the page numbers I see that the sections for our weeks 8 to 11 authors are rather shorter than average, at 15, 12, 11, 14 pages. When we get past week 6 or so we’ll probably have a better idea whether we’d like to merge those together and take them in two weeks rather than four.
To be honest I haven’t joined the ABC yet despite it being the right level for me since I have difficulty sticking through with long books + the IBC ones have interested me more, so I’m very excited that this is the next book! I love reading non-fiction so I’m very excited for this.
I may join a bit late so that I can make more progress in the other books I’m currently ready fist.
I do have to ask though: What is going to constitute a spoiler for this book? lol If I understand correctly, the chapters about novels are using snippets to illustrate how to read better, but they’re not worthy of being called spoilers, right?
Good question I just cut and pasted all that from the template for book club home threads, but it seems unlikely we’ll really need spoiler text much. I guess there might be one or two places where the text asks a question, gets you to read something and then walks through the answer, and those would probably be spoilers. Or if there’s a twist ending to one of the reading pieces?
Hmm, I might join this one. It would be interesting to read excerpts from these famous authors who I’ve mostly only read in English, and the commentary might be a useful helping hand.
(Paradoxically, I read the 周囲に流されない intro section, and found that it is exactly the sort of material that I prefer to speed through But it’s just the intro, so it’s not surprising that it’s lightweight.)
ABC folks who have tackled modern classics before, are there any special resources (dictionaries or guides or whatever) that you recommend?
How are people feeling about the pace? This week’s extract and discussion of こころ is 20 pages, and week 6 and 7 (森鷗外 and Kafka) are a similar length, but after that we have a run of 15 / 12 / 11 / 14 / 17 page weeks, so if we want to go faster we could for instance fold the 12 page and 11 page weeks together.
I’m not going to poll right now; just mentioning it so you can think about the speed as you work through this next week or two.
Having just managed to catch up I think the pace is not too challenging (or else I wouldn’t have been able to do so in the first place )
I think the author’s writing style is straightforward enough that a speed-up won’t do harm, but the quoted parts require some really slow reading and re-reading on my side, so not sure. Also, I like the one-quote-per-week approach as it gives enough room for proper digestion. On the other hand, it would be interesting for me to finish this book until the end of this year (it would fit nicely into a certain spot in a certain challenge ) so I’m a bit torn…
I am sure the author advocates allocating and giving ample time to read, and I don’t consider that too many weeks. It could also be good if there would be conversations. But I don’t know how fast ABC is usually be. I haven’t read the 12 and 11-page parts for that matter, though.
I think overlapping with the next book is OK, but don’t know if it’s good for ABC.
Week six starts today. We will be reading and discussing an extract from the 森鴎外 short story 高瀬舟. I have included a link to the full short story on Aozora for those who would rather read the whole short story before starting (since it’s only 15 pages and the chapter has spoilers for it right from the start). (Thanks to @NicoleIsEnough for suggesting this.)
Week 7 is up – this is a Kafka ultra-short story which the book includes in its entirety.
Incidentally nobody seemed particularly inclined to want to speed up so I’m not going to bother to poll; we’ll just continue on our original schedule. I quite like the “one book/author a week” pacing and I have multiple other book clubs taking up my reading time anyway
I just cut and pasted all that from the template for book club home threads, but it seems unlikely we’ll really need spoiler text much. I guess there might be one or two places where the text asks a question, gets you to read something and then walks through the answer, and those would probably be spoilers. Or if there’s a twist ending to one of the reading pieces?
But it’s just the intro, so it’s not surprising that it’s lightweight.)
I think the pace is not too challenging (or else I wouldn’t have been able to do so in the first place 
)
) so I’m a bit torn…