I already have a question: Shortly before the first break (I think in the third-to-last sentence, which starts with はるかに広がる), my BookWalker ebook contains this:
彼の身体からだをさすっていく。
At first I thought that this is a funny wordplay (身体からだ) but it doesn’t make any sense with the rest of the sentence (at least to me), so I think this is maybe furigana gone in the wrong place? What does this look like in the print version or in other ebooks (Kindle)?
It says 彼の身体をさすっていく in the print version, as expected. You can actually report errors on the kindle version, so I just did that. I didn’t bother specifying that it’s supposed to be furigana based on the print version. The report error popup just showed the highlighted text and asked what it should be, so I just put the corrected text without further comment. I’m kind of curious if they’ll fix this and if so how quickly.
Oh, that’s a neat feature! Thanks for reporting the typo. (Although I wonder - because it seems that Kindle and Bookwalker use the same text source - what the fixing process might be like… It might involve some interesting loops and hoops.)
Jumping into a fantasy book in Japanese with zero context is incredibly difficult. I’ve read a few pages and I have no idea what’s happening. Hopefully things become clearer soon. Plus I need to readjust to the author’s writing style, as I’ve gotten used to the simpler writing style from 本好きの下克上.
EDIT: Okay, it has gotten a bit easier after a few more pages.
Yeah I must say I struggled with the start of the book as well… And it did not help that the fox has a very un-straightforward way of describing its thoughts and memories. I had to step back a bit after the first break (which is only after one page or so) because I felt that I could not handle a switch of scenes (and a new scene) that quickly But like you said, after a while I got used to it and settled into the new world.
My overall impressions of the book so far: To me it feels as if it was written for a younger audience than Kemono, based on how many kanji are used (or rather: not used!) and how many kanji got furigana.
(I’m trying to keep track of all the unknown kanji and unknown readings of known kanji in order to improve the read-aloud fun, and so far I had maybe 6 to 8 per page on average, which I think is a lot less than I had with Kemono, but maybe there will be more difficult chapters ahead. )
What do y’all think?
I had the opposite experience. I remember I struggled with the character intro pages in 獣, but it seems I got used to that one.
I don’t really remember enough about the furigana/kana only ratio to compare, but it’s definitely, noticeable aimed at children, haha. It’s still a very similar style to 獣, with lots of sentences ripe with commas.
As for words… I just checked - in this first part I highlighted 45 parts. If the 16 pages in the home thread are correct, that’s a bout 3 per page. They’re not nicely spaced like that at all though.
My favorite word in this part was あわい. I think it’s beautiful.
I kind of regretted not learning the words in 獣 when they’d show back up at some point, and during read alouds especially. So I started putting some words into an srs today. 45 items a week seems like a very manageable amount!
I am also writing down words I either don’t know or will forget the reading of. Alas, more than 45 and I am only halfway through. But it is my second read through and it always makes so much more sense the second time around.
I’d say so, yes. Because he’d been dirtied by iron, he couldn’t go into the あわい before - I really like that word/concept - but now that his wound has been cleaned he’s free to go.
… Were getting introduced to (one of?) the mythical beast(s) our main character has a deeper connection with quite a bit sooner with this story!
Just started with reading the book and it immediately got me interested. However, I still struggled with some passage in the book. Fortunately, I found this thread where you guys also shared some of your thoughts. I kind of help me to somehow understand it as well. Hoping to read more pages of this book too.
But like you said, after a while I got used to it and settled into the new world.
)
