I’m reading along (I’ve read no further than the end of this week’s section)
I’m reading ahead (I’ve read beyond the end of this week’s section)
I’ve read this book already but I’m here for discussion
I have no intention of catching up or the club has already finished, but I’m using the forums as reference
0voters
Vocab Sheet
Anybody should feel free to add to the vocab sheet. Read the guidelines on the first sheet- even if a word is not yet included you can use the spreadsheet as a tool to get help.
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading need to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as such.
Discussion Questions
Feel free to use these questions as a framework or a starting point for responses. I also encourage people to post their own discussion questions!
What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!
What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?
No worries! I saw the “Week 11” text first and was really confused for a moment whether you’d actually been reading that book for so long already and how I hadn’t realized how much time had passed
In the first paragraph the mother struck me as kind of unhinged. But then it was revealed that babies are typically born through artificial insemination and people generally think of natural sex as a freakish way to get pregnant… and now I wonder if it’s society that’s unhinged instead
[殺人出産 spoiler]It reminds me of Sakiko. I imagine this is what it must’ve been like for her to prefer natural procreation.
The anime seems a bit brutal for preschoolers, what with the protagonist being chopped into increasingly smaller bits Though I like the premise of the number of colours expanding as the story develops.
That’s what I thought too! It seemed like a perfectly wholesome anime at first, with colors being reintroduced into the world… And the with red we got descriptions of blood instead. These are pre-schoolers.
She’s definitely re using aspects of her previous books. Still, I feel like we’re going to be seeing this one from a different perspective, so I’m not disappointed about that at all.
Yepp, so far we’re getting the similar themes. But I’m interested in where this will unfold. (I haven’t read the description yet, so I know nothing about this book.)
Argh, promised myself I wasn’t going to fall behind with this book club, but that ended up being a loftier goal than I though it’d be. At least I’m catching it earlier than last time, so hopefully I’ll be back on track soon.
The premise of this world so far is interesting in the sense that a lot of people in our world already view sex as more of an expression of love and less like, “it’s only there for procreation,” which makes it seem not too farfetched from how society is now.[殺人出産 spoiler]It kind of seems like a more idealized version of of the world from 殺人出産 with the same methodologies to allow both men and women to give birth without all the, you know, murder. What I’m most interested in is figuring out what transgressive lines this book will explore, and what that expression will convey about our own world (basically what I usually look forward to in a Murata story).
Here’s to another book that’s bound to have a number of twists and turns!
Better late than never! I had this book on my shelf already and when I saw there was a book club for it I picked it next! I read recently and loved コンビニ人間、so I picked this up to try. I love dystopias in general.
So far it’s challenging for me with lots of セックス specific vocab but fun for the same reason lol。
Not sure how my pace will go but will post in the weeks as I go.
