Final poll for the reading group time is in the home thread:
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Because almost everybody is keen to start the reading group this weekend already, here is my suggestion:
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Having no days off work lately and reaching a new level on Wanikani, I may lag behind for a bit. Thanks again @NicoleIsEnough I bought the book on Bookwalker and I’m a lot happier with it than kindle. Bookshelf is adorable.
I’ve read the prologue and a page from chapter one. I have to look up a lot of words, but that’s level 10 for you. Bunpro has helped me a lot, I don’t struggle with grammar as much anymore. First chapter looks a lot easier in terms of general plot. I get the gist of what’s happening at least.
My question for now is, how do you go about reading when you don’t understand a whole lot? One sentence at a time? Do you look up words as soon as you see them or try to make out their meaning on your own first? Any tips?
I’ll try to finish what we have for this week today or tomorrow morning.
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Glad to hear that you like Bookwalker 
For the reading, I usually read sentence by sentence, looking up words immediately as I encounter them (sometimes right then, sometimes after I finished the sentence). And then I fight my way through
If you have specific questions regarding a sentence or part of it, or if you want to check your general understanding, you can always ask here. (Please don’t forget to add spoiler tags where appropriate)
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I used to look up words as I encountered them, then reread the chapter afterwards. More recently I’ve been reading longer sections then looking up the words the second time through. Either way, I find I get a lot more out of text if I read it more than once.
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How is everyone finding the start of the book? The beginning of any story tends to be a challenge, as they are setting the scene and describing the characters. Please post if you have any questions at all.
For anyone who skipped the prologue, I wrote a translation. (Hopefully more or less accurate.)
There was a rattling noise. It was the sound of an octagonal lottery box turning.
With a clatter, a ball about the size of a pachinko ball spilled out. A shiny, bright copper-coloured ball. On its surface “10 Showa 42” was engraved in tiny characters.
Someone’s fingers picked up the ball.
“Today’s lucky treasure is a Showa 42 ten-yen coin? How lovely. Hopefully a customer carrying the treasure comes in.”
The cheerful, calm murmur filled the interior of the small shop.
Also, in case you were wondering, these are pachinko balls.
And these are 昭和42年の十円玉
(I am a visual learner, can you tell? 
)
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I really liked the start of the first chapter, especially that it is set in our time (or so it seems), with an ordinary schoolgirl having trouble with ordinary things like swimming lessons.
Also, Shouwa 42 would be 1969, if I calculated correctly?
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Google tells me it’s 1967. But I am impressed that you tried to do the maths yourself!
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Oh, now I understand! I recently learned that the year when an era starts is called 元年 (がんねん) and so I thought that only the subsequent years are numbered starting from 1. But that’s not true; the year in which the new era starts gets two numbers: it’s the last year in the old era and also year 1 in the new era.
(And then I had an embarrassing off-by-one error in my calculation on top of that, so that’s why I ended up way off.)
It’s really confusing, isn’t it!
Thank goodness for the Internet or I would live in constant bewilderment!
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Page 10
つめたい水に飲みこまれる。
I’m having a little trouble with particles here 
Does this mean that she will swallow water, or be swallowed up by the water?
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The second one, I’m pretty sure. Since it’s passive, the “doer” is marked with に.
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Ah, ok, thanks!
Moving on, on Page 11:
真由美は道をかしげた。あんなところに、駄菓子屋さんなんてあってっけ？
I’m struggling with these two sentences, particularly the bolded parts.
Looking up かしげる, I see it means “to tilt (esp. head); to lean; to incline; to slant”.
Could it mean that she crossed diagonally across the (main) street (towards the alley with the shop)?
Then for the second one,
あんなところに - in that sort of place
駄菓子屋さん - candy shop owner
なんて - how, what
あって - (I’m not sure of the verb here, perhaps 合う? If so, then maybe with meaning #3 - to be profitable)
っけ - (jisho lists け as a particle indicating that the speaker is trying to recall something, but that doesn’t seem to fit with my guess for あって.)
If I just ignore っけ or think of it as か, then my guess for the whole thing would be something like “How would the owner even make a profit in a place like that?”
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You misread or mistyped this sentence–it’s 真由美は首をかしげた。首 instead of 道. So it’s saying she tilted her neck (either to get a better look at the shop or just the sort of thing one does when thinking, I’m not sure.)
Adding さん to a store is just the way of referring to the shop itself, particularly (/only?) like mom-and-pop-type shops (i.e., not a supermarket or department store.) So 駄菓子屋さん just means “dagashi store.”
あって = ある, I’m pretty sure.
So that sentence as a whole is like “Was there a dagashi shop there?” Or “Was there always a dagashi shop there?” At least, that’s how I read it.
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Thank you @jaearess!
when mayumi finds the dagashi shop… (pg 10 on my ebook)
だいたいにおいて、駄菓子屋というのは不思議な魅力を持っているものだ。赤や緑の毒々しい色をしているゼリーやグミが、瓶にめいっぱいに詰め込まれているかと思えば、じみなせんべいや塩コンブ、黒々としたかりんとうなどが、ごちゃごちゃと並んでいたりして。
what is that かと思えば doing in there? this is how i translated the passage:
generally, dagashiyas have a strange allure. the shelves are packed chock-a-bloc with jars stuffed full of jellies and gummies in poisonous looking red and green, plain crackers and salty konbu and sticky black karintos.
and then i think she goes on to contrast this dagashiya with the general dagashi ya she described? but what does the かとおもえば do in that passage?
a few lines ahead…
だがしににせてつくった、でも中身は全然違うもの。他とは違う、特別の力をひめたもの。
how would this translate?
it looked like a dagashi store, but its inside was completely different. another thing that was different about it, is the special sort of power it seemed to conceal.
this translation doesn’t make sense to me, but can’t see what i’m missing here. ほかとはちがう means what here?
and then the names of the special dagashi… since these are made up its anyones guess what their names in english would be but are there things i’m missing when i translate them like this? would love to know how you all would translate these.
猫アメ: cat candy
ほねまで愛して。ほね型カルシウムらむね：bone shaped, bone deep love ramune?
ひょうろうキャラメル：provisions caramel? doesn’t sound right. what else could it be?
ヤミのカクテルジュス：dark cocktail juice?
妖怪ガムガム：monster gum
銀貨チョコ：silver coin chocolate
にじいろみずあめ：rainbow colored water sweet
ブルブル幽霊ぜり：quivering ghost jelly
あかんぼう：baby? is there a pun or something hidden in the 棒 ？
べっ甲亀あめ：tortoiseshell tortoise candy? that doesnt sound right…
えんそくかん：canned trip?
ツバメのたまごまんじゅう：swallow’s egg manju
コウモリせんべい: bat crackers
当たり外れスナック：hit and miss snacks
うらめしパン：regret bread?
マフィアあじのどんちょころね：mafia tasting don chocolate! hahahahahaha.
アラビアン。ライスシェラザードふうみ：arabian rice? scherezade flavor?
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how come I can’t see any of these features you mention : marking and annotating, built in dictionary and sending snippers to google for searching on my bookwalker app?
Hmmm, I must confess I have never used the Bookwalker app on my Mac, I’m usually reading on my iPad. There I can mark something by holding my finger on it for a little while, and then a menu pops up that lets me do all those things.
Does the Mac app not allow you to mark stuff or open a context menu?
no it doesn’t 
would be so convenient to at least mark out passages even if i couldn’t clip text. seems odd that it would have functions on the ipad version that aren’t there on the mac version though.
Now that’s a bummer! 
Would indeed never have guessed that they completely miss out on these features in the desktop version. (Will add this information to my future recommendations of Bookwalker…)