香君 上 西から来た少女 Advanced Book Club

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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Join the Advanced Book Club Here!

View this book on Natively (bunkobon four volume edition or tankobon two-volume edition).

Welcome to the 香君 上 西から来た少女 Book Club!

View the nomination post here!

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Where to purchase

Check the Natively links for digital and physical purchase options. Both digital and physical are or have been available as both two and four volume editions, so check which one you’re buying. The two volume edition books are marked 上 and 下; the four volume edition books are marked 1, 2, 3, 4.

Note that for the ABC we plan to read the first volume of the two volume edition, which is the same as the first two books of the four volume edition. We will likely then go on to finish the novel (reading the last book/two books) as an informal club.

Schedule

Page numbers are from the four volume paperback edition. Note that week seven covers the tail end of book one and the start of book two.

Week Start date Chapters Pages Page count
Week 1 May 31st prologue and chapters 1.1 to 1.3 pages 11-46 36 pages
Week 2 June 7th chapters 1.4 to 1.5 pages 47-81 35 pages
Week 3 June 14th chapters 1.6 to 2.1 pages 82-115 34 pages
Week 4 June 21st chapters 2.2 to 2.3 pages 116-150 35 pages
Week 5 June 28th chapters 2.4 to 2.6 pages 151-195 45 pages
Week 6 July 5th chapters 2.7 to 3.2 pages 196-234 39 pages
Week 7 July 12th chapters 3.3 to 3.5 pages 235-246 and 11-33 35 pages
Week 8 July 19th chapters 3.6 to 3.7 pages 34-63 30 pages
Week 9 July 26th chapters 3.8 to 3.10 pages 64-108 44 pages
Week 10 Aug 2nd chapters 3.11 to 4.1 pages 108-140 33 pages
Week 11 Aug 9th chapters 4.2 to 4.3 pages 141-178 38 pages
Week 12 Aug 16th chapters 4.4 to 4.6 pages 179-210 32 pages

(This is the end of book 2. Chapter 4 continues up to subchapter 4.16 for a further 125 pages in book 3.)

If you want to read on to finish the story, we aren’t doing that as a formal club, but there are some threads for an informal discussion on the remaining two books:

Discussion Guidelines

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

Membership

Will you be reading with us?
  • Yes
  • Yes, but I might start late
  • Maybe
  • No
0 voters
Which version will you be reading?
  • eBook (two volume edition)
  • eBook (four volume edition)
  • Paper book (two volume edition)
  • Paper book (four volume edition)
0 voters

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to be notified when weekly threads get posted!

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Oh wow; I’ve only been keeping an occasional eye on the ABC, so I wasn’t expecting 香君 at all. I’m really tempted to join, since I’ve been wanting to read more non-LN fantasy in Japanese, but my schedule is probably going to be horrendous this summer. I’ll be traveling both the second-to-last week of May and likely for a good chunk of July, at the very least, so I’ll have to keep a close eye on starting date polls, I think.

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Starting date is May 31st, since we just follow on from the previous ABC, unless someone wants to ask for a delay so they can get hold of their copy of the book.

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Start Date Poll

  • I’m OK with starting May 31st
  • I’d like to start a little later
0 voters
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The book helpfully has a table of contents which gives page numbers for both the main and subchapters. The ABC pace is 30-50 pages a week for modern books; here’s my first pass at a schedule based on that. Page numbers are from the 4 volume edition. (Note that all of the volume breaks fall in the middle of chapters: chapter 3 is split across books 1 and 2, chapter 4 split across books 2 and 3, and chapter 5 split across books 3 and 4.)

Week 1: prologue and chapters 1.1 to 1.3 (pages 11-46) : 36 pages
Week 2: chapters 1.4 to 1.6 (pages 47-94) : 48 pages
Week 3: chapters 2.1 to 2.2 (pages 95-131) : 37 pages
Week 4: chapters 2.3 to 2.5 (pages 132-176) : 45 pages
Week 5: chapters 2.6 to 2.7 (pages 177-216) : 40 pages
Week 6: chapters 3.1 to 3.3 (pages 217-246) : 30 pages
(This is the end of book 1.)

Week 7: chapters 3.4 to 3.6 (pages 11-48) : 38 pages
Week 8: chapters 3.7 to 3.9 (pages 49-93) : 45 pages
Week 9: chapters 3.10 to 4.1 (pages 94-140) : 47 pages
Week 10: chapters 4.2 to 4.3 (pages 141-178) : 38 pages
Week 11: chapters 4.4 to 4.6 (pages 179-210) : 32 pages
(This is the end of book 2. Chapter 4 continues up to subchapter 4.16 for a further 125 pages in book 3.)

This schedule stays within the 30-50 page guideline, keeps all the end of week breakpoints at subchapter endings, and doesn’t have a week split between two books.

Feel free to suggest alternatives, or to point out mistakes in my page counting arithmetic :slight_smile:

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Personally, I would prefer a slightly slower pace, especially at the beginning. It seems like the ABC varies their schedules wildly, presumably just picking whatever gives convenient break points in the book. As one example, 本の読み方 スロー・リーディングの実践 📚 Book Club: starting November 9th! was read very slowly for a “fast” book that has the same difficulty as 香君. I also know that some of the books around the low to mid 30s had a schedule around this pace overall, but they seem to start a little slower like 傲慢と善良 😤😇 (Advanced Book Club).

It’s really week 2 that is my biggest concern. What would it look like if week two was just 1.4 to 1.5 and would that negatively impact the rest of the schedule? I’ll also look at my kindle version later, because these might be small page big font bunko pages, and maybe it’s not a big deal.

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We read 本の読み方 slowly for a mix of reasons: non fiction rather than the club’s usual fiction; it includes extracts from classic lit which are harder difficulty than the book proper and which the book actively encourages you to read through multiple times; and it would have been ironic to read a book about slow reading at a fast pace :slight_smile: (We classified it as “slow” pace for ABC, not “fast” pace.)

If we make week 2 be chapters 1.4 and 1.5, that’s 35 pages. We could then do week 3 as 1.6 and 2.1 (34 pages), week 4 2.2 and 2.3 (35 pages), week 5 is 2.4 to 2.6 (45 pages) and week 6 is 2.7 to 3.3 (51 pages, but the last page is only 4 lines of text). That makes weeks 5 and 6 both pretty long, but splitting them in 3 would mean either splitting inside a chapter or having a sub-30-page week. (We could do either of those things, of course. I personally prefer week boundaries at chapter ends because I find it easier to avoid overshooting the endpoint when I’m reading.)

The bunkobon volumes with these page numbers are 39 characters per column, 17 columns per page.

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I think I prefer this to the original schedule. I’d rather weeks 5 and 6 be a little longer if it means the first four weeks are on the shorter side. Curious to hear what others think.

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Here’s a more “relaxed” schedule, which takes one extra week but has only two weeks with a page count in the 40s. It does mean that week 7 is “end of book one and start of book 2”, and that we never finish a “big” chapter on a week boundary, but I think that’s not a big deal.

Week 1: prologue and chapters 1.1 to 1.3 (pages 11-46) : 36 pages
Week 2: chapters 1.4 to 1.5 (pages 47-81) : 35 pages
Week 3: chapters 1.6 to 2.1 (pages 82-115) : 34 pages
Week 4: chapters 2.2 to 2.3 (pages 116-150) : 35 pages
Week 5: chapters 2.4 to 2.6 (pages 151-195) : 45 pages
Week 6: chapters 2.7 to 3.2 (pages 196-234) : 39 pages
Week 7: chapters 3.3 to 3.5 (pages 235-246 and 11-33) : 35 pages
Week 8: chapters 3.6 to 3.7 (pages 34-63) : 30 pages
Week 9: chapters 3.8 to 3.10 (pages 64-108) : 44 pages
Week 10: chapters 3.11 to 4.1 (pages 108-140) : 33 pages
Week 11: chapters 4.2 to 4.3 (pages 141-178) : 38 pages
Week 12: chapters 4.4 to 4.6 (pages 179-210) : 32 pages
(This is the end of book 2. Chapter 4 continues up to subchapter 4.16 for a further 125 pages in book 3.)

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It’s all one book to me :zany_face:

For what it’s worth, I’m sure that happened when we read 獣の奏者, and I don’t recall that being an issue.

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I think an 11-week schedule with this split would be ideal for me, I’d prefer not to split across volumes midweek due to reading physically. Starting slower and having a longer middle few sections is probably better. However, the 12 week schedule also looks alright, other than the mid-book split being a bit annoying, but I don’t see an easy way around that other than making Week 6 long and week 7 quite short.

Either way though, I don’t mind that much, 11 or 12 weeks is fine and if there’s people prefering to go slower I defer to them. If it’s the 12-week one I can just read ahead in week 6 to the end of volume 1 to resolve it.

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OK, let’s have a quick vote on those schedules. Please pick your preferred option:

  • The initial 11 week schedule (with a heavy week 2)
  • The modified 11 week schedule (easier to start but weeks 5 and 6 are heavy)
  • The 12 week schedule
  • Something else which I will describe in a comment
0 voters
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The twelve week schedule seems most popular, so I have written that up into the top post of this thread.

I think that’s all the admin stuff, so we’re all set to start on the 31st!

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Natively glitched out and also added volume 1 of the four volume edition to the two volume edition’s series page. :sweat_smile:

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Yes; there are also two items for each of the four volume books. I’ve left feedback notes about that but it will probably be a while before Brandon gets to it.

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Yes, I think I’m responsible for that :sweat_smile: I wanted to somehow add the four-volume version to Natively as well and pressed the “sync” button; the rest is history :rofl:

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Which is really to say that Amazon screwed up their own series page, since Natively just pulls from there.

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Hi, first time here. Can I join?

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Absolutely! Anybody is welcome to read along and join in the discussion.

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Yesterday I was on a long-distance flight, and so I had the choice between reading ahead of one of my four started or soon-upcoming book clubs, or starting a fifth book :zany_face: and since my schedule going forward is a bit unpredictable, I picked this book club (mainly because I had hoped that the story would pull me along even after a few hours of reading, just like in the other series I had read by this author).
Which means that if there are any general questions regarding the book structure, difficulty, or the like, I’m happy to answer them ahead of time. (But of course not the contents, which we can discuss in the weekly threads once they are due.)

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