Thanks for putting this together! It’s really nice to regularly be part of book clubs and definitely feels a lot less intimidating than when I first started with 魔女の宅急便. A little wild to think that when I first started reading books my WK level was in the 20s; time flies! (I still haven’t formally studied grammar, so I’m happy that I’ve been able to stumble along at the intermediate level :y)
Excited to start up another book with everyone, especially something from Murata-sensei. コンビニ人間 was/is refreshingly readable while still offering plenty of depth and nuance.
Re: start dates I def wouldn’t mind a bit of a break lmao
Another thing to consider when choosing a start date is garnering interest. Waiting a bit could make a big difference in initial participation. In the wait before starting コンビニ participant counts grew pretty steadily (or at least trickled in a bit every time there was a new post on the home thread). I expect there will be at least a small dedicated core coming from the コンビニ club so I don’t think participation will be an issue, but it might be worth giving more people who would be interested in joining the opportunity to come across the club. The main book clubs work on a regular schedule so they don’t really have to contend with this, but with these “pop-up” clubs it takes a bit more time to advertise and get folks on board.
Also, labeling the intended difficulty as beginner/intermediate might make the club seem more approachable to some. The pace is definitely on the relaxed side of a typical intermediate book club schedule so it wouldn’t be false advertising. Every book club loses a ton of people early on who probably bit off a bit more than they could chew, but I certainly know of several people (myself included) who have challenged themselves and come out much better for it.
Adding to what @jhol613 said, please feel free to announce this book club in the appropriate channels to make people aware of it (it’s a bit more difficult to find because it’s not a regular book club).
The Intermediate Book Club and Extended Reading threads come to mind; also the Beginner Book club miiight be fine (if you add some explanations) as the schedule is rather relaxed-intermediate.
It really pains me to do this given how excited I am to start this book, and given that I’ve encouraged others to join, but I’ve decided that I will not be able to read along with the club from the beginning.
I’m at a frustrating point where I’ve come far enough along in Japanese that I want to jump on every opportunity to use the language more, but I also need to think practically and roll back for the sake of my professional and social life (not to mention sleep). I’ve probably let myself get to the brink of ~4 hours of Japanese study per day when you include reading and listening practice. While I can handle this day-to-day, I’m afraid the whole house of cards would come crashing down if I had a particularly busy few weeks (I nearly experienced this after moving, where it took me over a month to fully catch back up with all of my commitments even though I was still studying Japanese at ~70% capacity throughout the move).
My current plan is to wait ~2 months and hopefully jump into the discussions well behind the rest of the group. I’ll also put it out there because I know a few people were looking for either a mental break or a chance to catch up on other things–might we consider delaying the start for a few months? If a couple months off would alter your participation status, please comment. Otherwise don’t hold up for me! I’ll be looking forward to reading and joining the discussion down the road.
I get what you’re saying, I’ve reached that point myself twice. I had to give up on Kiki and Your Name for the same reasons; week to week the workload was fine, but once circumstances got in the way and I got behind, it was either let the book go or burn out from Japanese entirely.
I am a bit torn; I want as many people to be able to join as possible, but I am also worried that we might lose some momentum if we delay and people might end up dropping out.
How long of a delay are we talking about? A week or two, sure. Not that big of a deal. Though a 2 month delay because of a single person would be a bit of an overkill, imo. However, I don’t really think a lot more people will join at this point and it’s not like they’re locked out of the club once it starts.
Although I’d prefer not to delay, I personally don’t mind either way. I have more books to read than I can manage anyway.
I agree with what @Kappa420 said - I’ve enough to read as is, so I don’t mind delaying a bit. At the same time 2 months is a long time, and could hold a risk of losing momentum as people who committed to the book move on to other books in the meantime.
Based on voting so far it doesn’t seem like there are a whole lot of people looking to delay, so 2 months would be overkill. @jhol613, would a delay of 1 or 2 weeks allow you to join us, or would you rather stick to your initial plan of jumping into the discussions a bit later?
I’ll be here whenever we decide to start! Really enjoyed コンビニ人間 with yall and would love to have old peeps along with new ones to dive into 殺人出産.
Totally get the feeling of overkill @jhol613. In the past I’ve also let my studies balloon to the point where it was a bit unreasonable for me to be taking on so much at once. Hopefully you manage to find a sweet spot for everything to settle.
I’ve come up with an alternate plan! I will put 君の名は on hiatus while we read 殺人出産. I typically don’t like to put books on hold once I’ve started reading, but I’m not too concerned about loosing track of the story or characters since I’m already so familiar with them in this case. I also found myself much more engaged in コンビニ discussion, so I expect that there’s more value in reading 殺人出産 concurrently with this club than in reading 君の名は concurrently with the intermediate club. It’s not an ideal solution but I think it’s better than my original plan. No need to delay—I appreciate the poll and the consideration!
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And several others… 
