本好きの下剋上: Week 4 discussion

Japanese Language Reading
#1

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Week 4

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Start Date: September 5th
Previous week: Week 3
Next week: Week 5

Reading:

Chapters 9 - 11 (冬支度, 石板GET！, 古代エジプト人に敗北) (35 pages/ 10%)

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
  • When asking for help, please mention the chapter and page number. Also mention what version of the book you are reading.
  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
  • To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun! :books:

Participants

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本好きの下剋上: Week 5 discussion
本好きの下剋上 home thread
#2

My thoughts so far (not finished for this week).
Yay work has begun again. And surprisingly I’m keeping mostly up with the pace. Half of the last chapter is still left but this week has just begun so I’m perfectly in time XD.

9:

  • This chapter was たきぎ・まき (薪) nightmare. Some I was certain to read one way or the other. Others I had to guess…
  • Had a real hard time to get a sense of how much time passes in this chapter. Am I alone with this? The preparations should take a long time but somehow it feels like all is done in the span of one day somehow.
  • It’s interesting how much the anime already diverged from the story at this point. So much reordered and left out/implied.

10:

  • Otto best man like always.
  • How can he write マインと私の名前 ? Am I missing that he knows she is urano?
  • I have problems with this sentence: 思わず口元を押さえて、怖いもの見たさに乗り出していた身を引いた。The part from 見たさ I have no idea about, stupid dictionaries…
  • Have problem with the conversation between トゥーリ and マイン at the end of the chapter. What is the promise they talk about and the Honto sentence as anwser to the apology makes somehow no sense. Is it Main -> Twuri -> Main -> Twuri talking? Am I missing something?

And generally how to read 秋の間; it is read あいだ right? Could for the life of me not find how to read these seasonal timeperiod thingies.

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#3

I have a bit to finish off from last week. So I’ll be reading along from… tomorrow :).

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#4

I’m also finishing up last week’s chapters today, but since I want to synchronize with another reading club I’m in I’ll also be trying to read this week’s chunk over tomorrow and Sunday – 25 pages per day on top of my 10 for 狼と香辛料! Busy times ahead :cold_sweat:

Anyway hopefully I’ll actually have something to talk about in a day or two.

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#5

Done with the rest. So now I can catch up on other book clubs and prepare for next week.
Not much to say regarding the last chapter.

  • first time seing 誤魔化す with kanjis, so this was interesting.
  • I mean I can understand uranos frustration but she was kinda a bitch in this chapter ^^.

If anyone can help with any with the questions in my last post I would still appreciate the help.

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#6

It’s not the “name of Myne and me”, it’s “the name of me called Myne” or “the name of me as Myne” It might help to think of it as「マイン」と私の名前.

It’s a set phrase: 怖いもの見たさ [こわいものみたさ] (exp,n) curiosity of fear; urge to look at something frightening; wanting to take a peek at something unpleasant

Basically, she was pulling herself back from that, as her body involuntarily wanted to lean forward due to the 怖いもの見たさ.

I don’t really remember what’s going on in that part, but here’s how I interpret it:

“Sorry, Tuuli.”
“Honestly!” <-- she’s angry at Myne in the sense “Really now!” or “Come on, Myne!”
“You’re saying such things, even though you promised not to!”
“I never promised such a thing!”

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#7

Also, there’s a misunderstanding onトゥーリ’s part. What マイン uses is an expression that means basically “there’s a tacit agreement not to say such things”, but apparently the expression does not carry over to whatever language they are talking, so トゥーリ takes it at face value. マイン then mentions it in her internal monologue but doesn’t correct her.

About this week, I was mostly surprised about the lie マイン uses to explain why she can weave baskets so well. That’s the kind of thing that is super easy to check, especially if トゥーリ asks to learn too or something. I feel like it’s going to blow in マイン’s face at some point. I don’t know if she could have just said “I practiced on my own with grass” but at least she had some proof of that :stuck_out_tongue:

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#8

POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR FUTURE CONTENT

It gets sort of explained later why her family puts up with her weirdness (she’s actually more weird than she herself realises). But her not acting like the original owner of the body will have quite a few consequences later on – look forward to it.

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#9

Oh, there’s an explanation. That’s good to know. I would have sent her to the exorcists by day 3 :sweat_smile:

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#10

Yeah, the worldbuilding here is pretty great for a light novel (or at least miles above any other light novel I have read). It’s my second favourite LN series, just a smidge behind Konosuba.

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#11

Always kind of fun when you learn a new English word from your Japanese reading! I had never heard of “salting out” (塩析) before, which is kind of surprising because I did read about making dipped candles when I was a wean. I guess the nitty gritty of how to prepare the tallow was something my books glossed over. Once again impressed by the level of detail here.

I feel like I also tried making pseudo-papyrus when I was young and had quite poor results…not sure how well that’s going to go. Though, apparently it is possible (and I like how the comments mention this series and Dr. Stone).

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#12

IIRC, the mangaka learned to do (at least some of) the things マイン creates to be able to draw the processes properly; maybe the novel’s author also learned to make theses things to write accurate descriptions? ^^

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#13

Probably helps that it’s a small world, haha

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#14

Yep, and the best thing is, not everything will be spelled out for you. There’s quite a few things that will make more sense once you understand the characters better. Like when she fainted at the farm during winter preparations,

POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR FUTURE CONTENT

it was not just because she’s a city girl who has never seen an animal being killed.

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#15

Hmmm that’s borderline too much spoiler :sweat_smile:

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#16

@Starker Is this a spoiler for later in the book / future books? If so, please appropriately mark such spoilers, as I don’t want to read even hints about future material.

Well, I guess I’m not going to read what you’re responding to, but as far as I’m concerned everything later in the book or in a future book is too much of a spoiler.

Perhaps our rules in OP (which we’ve been using for a long time) are too vague.

Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.

People should generally avoid posting any spoilers for content we haven’t read yet. Blurring the text is not sufficient, as I think most people would (very reasonably) assume that blurred text are spoilers for the current week’s content. People should either clearly mark (outside of blurred text) that the spoiler is for future content, or preferably (to me) just not mention it at all. Not everyone has watched the anime adaption or read the story in some other form. We should be respectful of that and recognize that some people are very averse to spoilers.

/rant

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#17

As one of those people, I appreciate this post, thank you. <3

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#18

POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR FUTURE CONTENT

It’s not a spoiler to any future events, if that’s what you mean. I blurred it mostly to err on the side of caution. The gist of it is that you’ll come to understand the family dynamics and why people act the way they do when you better get to know them, not necessarily in the sense that it is stated outright in the book, but in the sense that you can infer it. Also, you can trust the author – if someone is acting weird or out of the ordinary then it’s not without reason and you can rest assured that the other characters will not be oblivious to it.

Edit: Actually, come to think of it, now I’m not sure if the thing I just said above counts as a spoiler or not. Should I blur it and mark it as spoiler for future content? I don’t have any problem doing it, if that’s the case, just say so.

Oh, and this is meant for seanblue, I just clicked the wrong reply button on accident.

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#19

In my opinion it counts as a spoiler. In general you should err on the side of blurring things.

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#20

Gotcha, I’ll try to clearly mark anything that could possibly be a future content spoiler from now on as such and now I have a baseline to work from.

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