I have given up trying to catch up. I’m making anki-cards and study them as I read. I managed to do it for 時をかける少女 and キノの旅. But this book… Pace + difficulty… It hasn’t worked out this time. So that’s my situation. I’m still reading the book. But I’m doing it at whatever pace it ends up being. So unless you are prepared to skip back about 70 pages and cut the pace in half, there’s not much you can do for me, I’m afraid.
If the remaining survivors want to double the pace instead… I think that’s a good idea. At this point, taking a week off and slowing down, is “too little, too late” for me. I still won’t manage to catch up before the end of the book anyway.
As one of those behind, I’m sorry for contributing to the strain of the group. Since the previous month, I took on a job that prevented me from reading for about a couple weeks. When I jumped back on, I’ve been consistently a week behind. However, I simply haven’t had time to participate in any of the threads since the inception of the Haruhi threads. In fact, my presence on the forum consists of me being a phantom in the rafters
Beyond the excuses, as I said before, I’m okay with whatever decisions the main contingent makes because I’m likely to remain a week behind due to work ramping up and other commitments. I’m sorry about that everyone
Sounds good to me. No matter the pace, you’ll make it to the finish line anyway.
Maybe you’ll naturally start increasing your speed too. I think you will reach soon-ish the part where stuff start really happening. (I hope saying that isn’t too spoilery)
Hard to say who is part of the main contingent at this point, since exactly half the group is behind based on last week’s poll
But anyway your answer and that of @tessberg made me think that we will still get a bunch of people making it to the end anyway. (I wish @Belthazar’s answer was reassuring too, but it’s a bit more 曖昧 )
I would define the main contingent as those who are on track not because they would be considered the majority, but because they have the time to get the reading done. Perhaps this was already discussed, but speeding up by a lot with the remainder may not be a good idea. If there are any in the group that are just able to get through at the current pace, then speeding up would exacerbate that problem.
Maybe we should at least try to figure out how behind people are? If they’re like me and only a week behind on the readings, then we can consider something different than if they are like @tessberg and report that they’re irreparably behind.
I know the next book has been already selected, but perhaps the club shouldn’t consider books at this length anymore due to how long it takes at the pace we’re going.
I agree. I was thinking of going through the threads to see where everyone reported they are, but maybe just a poll in this thread would be more direct.
I’m reading with the group
I’m 1 week behind
… 2 weeks
… 3 weeks
… 4 weeks
… 5 weeks
… 6 weeks
… 7+ weeks
I’m only here to answer polls
0voters
If enough people are only one or two weeks behind, we could just pause one week to allow them to catch up.
Hm, something like that. I don’t think the problem is length alone, it probably has more to do with length + difficulty. I just read the first 青春ブタ野郎 book, which is even longer in terms of pages, but difficulty was much lower (I think) so people would have had no issue following along. (Maybe)
At this point, I’m guessing we should indeed have an “advanced” book club, which might be possible, considering that there are now a few advanced readers active on the forum.
Although difficulty is a factor, a book taking 20 weeks to get through is a huge time commitment for people to set aside time for. Lots of things can change to cause reader attrition. I say this because the amount of time reading this book (or any books) is something that has been brought up on book club threads many times over.
An advanced club may satisfy the needs of those who’d like to go through books more quickly, but it still wouldn’t address a recurrence of this in the future. In any event, I’m very thankful for your and others’ active participation in the threads and efforts to include everyone in the process.
I answered that I’m caught up but I’m actually a few pages behind. I’ll catch up tonight and should have plenty of time to stay caught up after the weekend. Whatever pace we decide to go with for the rest of the book is fine with me.
I think the number of weeks we’re spending reading one book is more the factor for me than the length of the book. Maybe if we decide to read another long book in the future we can have a limit on the number of weeks we read it in? It would require more reading per week but I think it would be easier to maintain discussion/interest over a shorter period of time. Maybe it’s also a better idea to create separate threads/clubs for these instead of the intermediate club.
Yeah, I think increased speed would have to get into advanced/custom book club territory. 15 pages per week really does seem like a sweet spot for intermediate book club.
So I wanted to say that if it was less difficult, people could read faster and thus we would finish earlier. Basically what @brrricane said: at 20 pages a week (so just 5 more) we would be almost done already.
So, I don’t think the length is a problem per se, just length/speed.
My suggestion for an advanced club was to give a space for people who still want to read books like ハルヒ. In particular, I know nothing about those pop culture books, so it’s nice to get recommendations from others.
In the meantime, we can restrict books from taking more than 15 weeks for instance.