Let’s see how the story evolves further! This week comes with a solid 21 pages, but it will get shorter again after that, so don’t worry:
2 Likes
Here comes the next week 
For those of you who struggled with the amount of text (like, me 
): This week is only 9 pages, so you can safely catch up again and relax a little:
3 Likes
I have entirely too many ambitions to keep on top of and the description of this book didn’t grab me, but I’m curious how people are finding it so far?
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I like the writing style. It’s much heavier than the light novels I am reading regularly. It makes me truly feel like I’m reading literature.
The setting is interesting, in an historical sense. It’s not a time period I am familiar with.
The main character though. Hm.
Overall, I’d say it’s not something that I would read on my own, but I don’t mind following along the schedule.
7 Likes
And what time period it is, is it set around the time when the book was published or earlier?
Here is Week 4:
@Aislin Sorry, nobody got back to you yet! The book was published in the 1930’s (as you might know already) and I’d say that it is set around that time, as they already have trains, cars, telegraph, electric light etc. So it’s not a medieval story or something.
3 Likes
I was wondering if it isn’t a nostalgia callback (from the author’s perspective) to something like late 1800s, especially considering the rural and isolated setting.
But judging from your answer, it seems like there isn’t any specific timestamp to tell. 
Thank you!~
I‘m not 100% familiar with when specifically all those things were invented, but late 1800s might be plausible as well. I‘ll keep you posted if we learn more from the story.
2 Likes
Let’s move on to Week 5:
Ooops! I think I forgot to post the link to Week 6 when I created the thread 
Anyways, here it is:
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Welcome to Week 7! This is quite a long week again, and it will get us way past the 50% mark:
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One more long week, and then we get a bit more breathing space:
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If you want to get an impression of what Snow Country looks like right now, here is some video news coverage of a very recent massive snowfall in the area:
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懐かしい This reminds me of my childhood lol we had that much snow pretty much every year. That’s the reason why I joined this book club in the first place.
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We’re quickly approaching the finishing line! Here is this week’s chapter:
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Happy New Year everybody! Here is our penultimate week:
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Wooow, it’s the final week already 
And a very long one, so 
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With this we have reached the end of our first “hard” book club pick!
Kudos to all of you who made it to the end 
As a reward, here is a quick
Satisfaction Poll!
Have you read Snow Country?
- I finished it
- I’m still reading and I plan on finishing it
- I don’t plan to finish it
- I never even started it
0 voters
If you read the book, how would you rate it on a 5 point scale? (1: hated it, 5: loved it)
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- Unsure / Didn’t finish
0 voters
If you read the book, how would you rate its difficulty?
- No effort at all
- Minimal effort
- Moderate effort
- Significant effort
- So much effort my head might explode
- I don’t know
0 voters
Participation Statistics
Also, please feel free to share your thoughts below 
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That’s a very sad graph. The number of people dropping
(or, not dropping, as the case may be) the book is very happy though! 
I was behind for I think all but 2 not consecutive weeks, but I finished just a day late! 
I’m happy I managed to do that, and not so sure I would have finished without that outside motivation at all.
I’m happy to have finished my first old/more difficult book. It was quite hard, at least for me, and fitting of the advanced level. I was expecting it to get easier after the initial bit, and it did, but it never got all that easy. There were a lot of words I needed to look up, which I think is at least in part due to the cultural disconnect.
In a way, this experience is reminiscent of when I first started out reading Japanese. I feel like I’m back at some starting point. Maybe in a year a book like this will seem perfectly suitable to read as a means to shut off my brain?
I can’t say I exactly liked this book much (though I can’t say I disliked it either). I found it hard to connect to any of the characters on a meaningful level. I think I missed a lot of the little nuances and cues and implications which might have led to a deeper understanding and connection of and with both the plot and the characters. In a way, it feels like I had this opportunity to glimpse into a different life and age, without knowing the language spoken there and no translator available.
Maybe I’ll re visit this book in a few years and have a completely different experience.
I’m looking forward to reading more old/advanced books with this book club and maybe finding out how the author’s voice changes. よろしく!
6 Likes
I’m finally done with the book!
It was indeed one of the hardest read I had attempted in a while.
Also, like others, I’ve been confused at times by the conversations. The time skips tripped me up a couple of times as well.
I’m also not quite sure I liked the book, but I didn’t dislike it either. The end was quite intense and unexpected. I’m not quite sure what to make of it.
I felt I could connect with 駒子 to some extent as her attitude, especially drunk, reminds me of myself at her age 
島村, though, is garbage. I don’t get what she sees in him. He basically does nothing constructive with his life, just relying on money he inherited and leaves his wife and kids every year to go spend some time with her. What the eff.
5 Likes