金田一耕助 Series Reading Club - NEXT: 悪魔が来りて笛を吹 (Starting May 18 '24!)

Since we have a couple people who’d prefer a late January start date for 犬神家の一族 already, and I’d like to keep with our ‘tradition’ of not overlapping with the S&M club… How does everyone feel about starting on February 13?

As for what’s after that, I’m also in favor of including 女王蜂. I liked 夜歩く well enough, so if it’s around that level of finish it should be a nice read for me personally. If we choose not to read it as a group, I’d join @rodan in reading it on our own time. It looks like we’ve a majority in favor though. :slight_smile:

That said, I’m fine with skipping the lesser known ones, if that’s what the majority chooses to do. That would leave us with the following queue, right? I’ll add them to the OP later.
女王蜂
悪魔が来りて笛を吹く
悪魔の手毬唄

I’ve been wanting to read some of his other works, so I’d love to join you on that or a similar book. :slight_smile:

That also sounds good… I’ve been meaning to read some 明智 for example, and I know there’s heaps more out there. Personally I’m still enjoying 横溝 a lot, but I don’t mind continuing with him on my own if we go a different way with the club. :slight_smile:

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That all sounds good to me.

So who else counts as “essential”? I think you probably have to have 松本 清張, who basically started the “social realism” strand of Japanese detecive fiction, but I don’t think I have any idea who other major figures in the genre are…

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I just googled “推理小説 おすすめ 国内” and got plenty of lists. I think running out of books is literally the last of our worries :joy:

I don’t think we need to lock in exactly what we’re going to do after 悪魔の手毬唄, but my personal inclination is to go for something a bit more ‘definite’. But we’ll see!

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I am having mixed feelings about continuing with this club after 犬神家. I also had high hopes for some of the “B-sides” and was more or less disappointed with all of them, although they were still at least partially enjoyable.

I think my main problem with this club lately has been the pace, or the lack of space between books. I found myself pretty burned out after reading 殺人鬼 and 夜歩く in quick succession, as well as with 八つ墓村 and 死仮面. I think I would enjoy these books more if there was more time off between, like with the Saikawa and Moe club. We get to miss the characters after a few months and there’s a sense of anticipation in coming back to the series.

With that in mind, I have two suggestions.

  1. We could keep going at our current pace and include the lesser-known books as well. Those not interested in the “B-sides” could take a break between major titles.

The reading queue would then look like this:

  1. We could stick to the major titles but space them out over the course of a year or so. Such as the following list for 2023:

In that case too, other “essential mystery” or non-金田一 books by 横溝 could be slotted in between the main titles, depending on what the more avid members of the group are in the mood for. Any thoughts on these suggestions?

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I like option 2. I personally don’t have any issues with the club’s pace and in fact wouldn’t mind linking the books even closer together, but if we want to space out the “A-sides” more, I’d rather either directly space them out, or expand out the club early and alternate between A-side Kindaichis and something else, rather than move up the B-sides so that we alternate A-sides and B-sides.

I wouldn’t mind putting together a list of books/authors, but would like a general plan of action generally agreed before I put in that time and effort.

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So is it time for a POLL ? Eg:

read the a and b sides at current pace / read just the a sides at current pace / read a sides, interspersed with something else

Any other options it would be worth throwing in ?

Do we want to poll for Inugami start date or is everybody happy with Feb 13th?

I like the sound of spreading those three a-sides over the year and mixing in some other authors.

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I’m fine with spacing out the A-sides a bit, starting with 犬神家の一族 on Feb 13.

I probably won’t have time to read much else from this club until the A-sides are finished. So I don’t have a preference between the B-sides / other Yokomizo stuff / another author entirely.

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Remaking poll with visible votes, I keep forgetting you need to do that :joy:

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Well… okay.

  • Continue everything at current pace
  • Continue A-sides only at current pace
  • Space out A-sides, with B-sides/other Yokomizo in between
  • Space out A-sides, with non-Yokomizo in between
  • Space out A-sides, with no club activity in between
  • Other
0 voters
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This is more split than I expected… I think we need @Belerith to decide for us. Are there any other ‘regulars’ who haven’t voted yet?

As things stand everyone seems to be fine with spacing out the A-sides, the question is what to fill the space with. We have 4 A-sides left (if we include 女王蜂), which gives us 3 gaps. Maybe to split the difference we could do 1 B-side, 1 non-Kindaichi, and 1 non-Yokomizo?

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I think that’s a really neat idea!

Since I don’t have a super strong preference I’d feel bad to push for anything with such a split vote.

Your idea would allow us to get our feet wet and get a look at how switching things up would feel, if we want to focus on another author or series for a bit or go completely wild.

If there’s no vetos, I’d like to pursue this! :slight_smile:

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Well, some ideas for that…

If we’re going to read 1 B-side, I’d rather leave that decision to the people who voted for it.

For non-Kindaichi, we could do 人形佐七捕物帳, which was mentioned by some people in here… although each book looks relatively pricey on Amazon. Alternatively we could read 憑かれた女, the first book with his secondary detective, 由利先生. (I’ve read 蝶々殺人事件, so I’m personally fine with anything but that.)

For non-Yokomizo, if we want essential books by essential authors, the books that come to my mind are 怪人二十面相 by 江戸川乱歩 or リラ荘殺人事件 by 鮎川哲也. (From a more ‘objective’ perspective there’s also 点と線 by 松本清張, but I’ve already read it, so would prefer something else.)

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Since there are only 6 of us, I think we can safely skip anything that one of us has read already :+1:

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I like 松本清張 but have also read 点と線 :slight_smile:

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I’d be fine reading another 松本清張. If there’s another book of his you’re interested in you should bring it up!

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Turns out I’ve read 10 of his books; so if people want I can try to find one I haven’t yet read that’s high on the recommended list; or we could pick a different author :slight_smile:

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Hey all, if you’re looking for some other (shorter?) stories to be mixed into this book club, I just wondered whether you’ve considered the Zenigata Heiji - Wikipedia series? It’s a series of short stories around a policeman in the Edo period (but the stories were written from 1937) that are available for free (on Aozora and Bookwalker, at least) and that are apparently ~30 pages each (at least the first few that I looked at). It seems to be pretty famous, and the hero apparently gave his name to Hattori Heiji who is Detective Conan’s best buddy so you can’t go wrong with this, I feel :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Anyways, I can’t promise I will join for these stories (trying to do my best though) but I thought I’d just throw them in here as they seem to fit more or less, from what I know… :blush:

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…and to Inspector Zenigata in Lupin III :slight_smile:

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Nice :slight_smile: I’m not very familiar with Lupin III but I think it’s always nice if names get borrowed across series!

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