Kitsun is really nice to use so far. 96 seems like overkill, but maybe that’s just me. 
I don’t want to add really rare words and risk getting overwhelmed with too many reviews.
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True but I’m adding those for review in little batches 
And then I thought that If I don’t want them anymore I’ll delete them while reviewing 
there were some specific terms to the animals and scales and so on …I thought that it would be difficult to read along without knowing those, and so I added them and then some other and in a little moment they are almost 100 
I added some of those, like 鱗. But I think that’s a generally useful word. And it’s showed up so much that I basically already have the reading memorized.
The meaning itself for 鱗 isn’t hard to remember. The right hand side is the phonetic component (リン) so it has no impact on the meaning. The left hand side is the semantic component, and being 魚 it’s easy to associate with scales.
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Is there a resource that breaks kanji down like that or is it something that you just pick up over time?
I also noticed I’ve got a high retention rate for words coming from books…beginners club was really useful
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It’s a little of both. I started picking this up on my own when going through WaniKani, and then I found this wonderful script that adds this information during lessons/reviews and on item pages on WaniKani. This helped me confirm a lot of what I’d already discovered, identify exceptions, and of course also notice phonetic components that I hadn’t noticed myself.
In the specific case of 鱗, it went like this:
- This feels like a リン. I wonder why I think that?
- Confirms that the on’yomi is リン by looking on jisho.
- Searches for similar looking kanji.
- Finds 隣. Oh, no wonder I thought that.
There have been several times where I correctly guessed the on’yomi for a kanji I’d never seen before, which is certainly handy for looking them up in a dictionary.
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I just remembered I didn’t reply to you. 
The word was 岩屋. I don’t remember ever seeing that word (although I did, considering it’s my second read of the book) but the meaning was fairly clear. I also had a gut feeling that it would be kun-kun and it was 
About the part that I troubles reading, it’s not that far down. It’s when bee dude gets injured and fell into a natural cave midway of a cliff? At least that’s how I remember it. I had the hardest time trying to figure out the situation. Also, I remember a shadowy figure of some sort appearing after they get out of there. That left me confused as well… and then my book was over (because I had the 青空 version) and I felt both triumphant and completely incapable of pushing on with the rest of the story.
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I read a few words from the spoiler and re-blurred since I don’t remember that stuff. No spoilers for me!
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Prior to starting I was worried that it would be quite difficult because it is fantasy, but surprisingly it wasn’t too bad. I read this week’s section in one sitting, and was sorely tempted to read ahead. However, since this is the only book club I’m participating in right now, I figured I should stick to the pace, so I started my 3rd volume of 銭天堂 and have continued the やがて君になる manga instead. I think my main “what the heck” was 岩房, which I understood superficially until the author fully explained it on page 20 or so, but I kept feeling like I missed the explanation when it repeatedly came up before that.
I have never seen the movie (or series?) that was made based on the novel, so I’m coming in pretty much with a blank slate. I know there’s a girl, there’s 闘蛇, and she has a strong relationship with them (at least enough for 4 books). I quite like it so far, and I’m looking for to reading more on February 1st!
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That’s exactly what I did too since I hadn’t read that far last year. 
That’s the thing with fantasy. In our native language, it’s easy to recognize something like that as “fantasy thing that hasn’t been explained yet”, but it’s a lot harder in Japanese. When reading Japanese, I’m often wondering if I missed something or if I’m not supposed to understand yet.
Well to be fair, book one is specifically 闘蛇編, so who knows how prominent they will be throughout the whole series!
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That’s a fair point! I just assumed it was 闘蛇 all the way down.
Not too bad so far except for stuff like 人馬もろとも and 水汲み.
人馬 was kinda easy to guess, though I still looked it up to confirm.
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Thanks for the detailed explanation and the link to the script!
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Week 2 is here!
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My version of the book has a few illustrations, so I thought I would share them.
This is the cover. I feel there is a definite ワニness to the 闘蛇 here!
And this is the illustration from the first section.
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I’m feeling jalousy now. I want these pictures
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Do you want all the furigana that comes with those pictures?
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Furigana never hurts
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