海辺のカフカ - Kafka on the Shore 🏖 (Advanced Book Club)

This very much sounds like something I’d do. I have so many other books to read!

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Yes, I did :wink:

Somehow

I think I mentioned that since I finished book 2 in September and that was when the story was happening as well I wanted to finish the whole book by the end of the year. I couldn’t keep an even pace though, as I would have done with the book club, and guided myself according to what was happening in the book (like slowing down in October because the story has already advanced to November, and speeding up in December to catch up). I read the last chapter on the 31st of December, so I managed to finish it in time.
It felt a bit lonely to read it by myself, since the book club was what pushed me to start the series in the first place, but the characters were also pretty much by themselves for the remainder of the story, so maybe that’s the way it was meant to be.

Although I’d like to come by and discuss some of the chapters if you ever decide to revive the book club. Murakami never fully explains the intentions of a certain type of characters so there is always room for speculation.

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I’m sorry about leaving you to finish it on your own. :frowning: I’m happy you finished it though!

I have often thought about at least creating an overarching thread for the third book, or maybe books 5+6, even if chapter threads wouldn’t make sense now that you’re done and I’ve abandoned all scheduling for 1Q84. :see_no_evil:
I think I’ll do that tomorrow. I’ll tag you when I do. :slight_smile:

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Yeah I’ve definitely already bought both so barring anything crazy I’ll be there :joy:

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Definitely would be very interested in a revival! July timeframe should work for me. Although I’d be starting on book 1.

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There’s currently a coinback on the book on Bookwalker, if anyone’s looking to get it there.

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Was poking through Audible and saw that later this year (long after the reading ends, ha) an audiobook will be released:
image

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This is good news ! I was looking for a book with an audio book I could listen to later ! I will give a try to the book :slight_smile: Though, the audible will have to wait for a while ^^

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If it interests you I actually know several books with audiobooks :smiley: I like to listen+read when I can as I feel like it gives me more bang for my buck (no stopping to look up kanji readings, constantly hearing the proper stress/pitch/etc in sentences, more emotional context if the acting is well done).

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That would be great !!! I am looking for audio book to train my listening abilities :blush:

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So I don’t know your taste in books, so here’s a bunch that I’ve read/listened to and found faithful enough to the text:

Collapsed to not derail main discussion
  • ロクヨン (audible) (3 sources on where to buy here) – this book is on the harder side, I wrote a review of it that’s visible on the 2nd page I linked.
  • 頭のいい子を育てるおはなし366 (audiobook.jp) (buying options here) - I haven’t finished this but it definitely fluctuates a LOT in difficulty with some stories being dead simple and others clearly taking advantage of the fact that native children are…native :sweat_smile:
  • スマホを落としただけなのに (audiobook.jp)(buying options) - check the review first - it’s a relatively dark story. Also someone else on the forums is reading it and the audio quality bothers them a bit, but doesn’t bother me. Proceed with caution if audio quality is something you’re sensitive to.
  • 永遠のゼロ - (audiobook.jp) (buying options) - war stories, lots of war vocab but grammar is easy.
  • 神様に一番近い動物 ~人生を変える7つの物語 - (audiobook.jp) (buying options) - a series of short stories. difficulty varies a bit depending on which one you’re reading.
  • 夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口 (audiobook.jp) (buying options) - light novel, high school romance and time travel-ish.
  • コーヒーが冷めないうちに (audiobook.jp) (buying options) - very chill slightly sci-fi human drama about a coffee shop. I loved it, other people thought it was vapid (which is fair, it’s not breaking any new ground in human experience). It is to date the easiest audiobook I’ve ever listened to though, so I recommend it for training listening .
  • かがみの孤城 (audiobook.jp) (buying options) - on the easier side, but a big time investment. I adored this book and most (but of course not all) of the people who have read it enjoyed it. Human drama, fantasy.
  • 世界から猫が消えたなら (audiobook.jp) (buying options) - also reasonably easy human drama with fantasy elements.
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Quick heads up to everybody that we are starting this book in one week! :tada:

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I didn’t have anything else to read at hand while waiting for something yesterday, so I went and read the intro chapter. Seemed very doable. Unique word count seems to be pretty high, though. Part of it may just be a lot of words I’m used to seeing in kanji popped up with hiragana once in a while.

Here is a .csv of all the words I scraped from JPDB with the frequencies (password is wanikani, the csv is the attachment):

I’ll probably add the meanings when I have time to make it importable to Anki. (I’ll have to do it manually, since the site is pretty scrape-unfriendly; missing classes, id’s, no separate kana reading).

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Aaaand we are goooo! :star_struck:

Unfortunately I spent all my edits today for moving the book club threads, so the OP needs to wait until tomorrow or so… :sweat_smile:

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Here is week 2!

This week we still take it easy at 26 pages. From next week we’ll reach our cruising altitude of ~45 pages!

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Here is Week 3! We’re now flying at a cruising altitude of ~45 pages/week. Enjoy the ride!

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Ok so back then I promised to evaluate the schedule once again. So far we had a little ramp-up phase into the book, and starting from this week we are at slightly less than 50 pages which will be our cruising altitude if we decide to stick with the 12-week-schedule that you can currently see in the OP. Other options are 13 weeks (which reduces the speed from week 9), 14 weeks (which reduces the speed from week 7) and 15 weeks (which reduces the speed from next week).

Looking at the current participants poll, it looks like everybody is reading along fine so far (but of course this is only the first week at full speed, so this might not say too much). On the other hand, I really wonder how much sense it would make to reduce the speed as late as 7 or 9 weeks into the book because by then everybody will have settled in (or dropped out) anyway, I guess… The last option would mean to reduce the speed from next week and extend the club from 12 to 15 weeks, but given the ease of the book so far (Murakami is not that difficult to read altogether but sometimes he likes lots of uncommon words, so I was actually expecting some more difficulties with this book) and given the fact that we are the Advanced Club, I don’t really see a good reason to stretch this book out that far.

BUT as I promised to run an evaluation of our schedule, here it is :slight_smile:

  • Stick with the 12-week schedule
  • Switch to 13-week schedule (from week 9)
  • Switch to 14-week schedule (from week 7)
  • Switch to 15-week schedule (from week 4)
  • Erm… what were we talking about?

0 voters

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I haven’t finished this week’s reading but that is 100% me not prioritizing time well + continually getting interrupted while reading lately and nothing to do with the length of reading or difficulty. I think the current speed is plenty doable.

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:point_up::point_up: Basically the same for me! :point_up::point_up:

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OK thanks to all who voted, we’ll stick with the 12-week schedule going forward! :tada:

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