An abandoned girl finds her way to a dragon’s lair, and becomes raised as his daughter. Later, the girl finds she has magical aptitude and finds her way back to human civilization, under the watchful gaze of her bone dragon guardian.
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.
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.
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).
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!
Proper Nouns
Pending
Page Numbers
The only page numbers to appear in this book are in the table of contents on page 1. If you’re reading on bookwalker, the page numbers are offset by 2 (i.e. page 5 on bookwalker is page 3 in reality) due to including the cover pages in bookwalker’s count. Each weekly thread will include the final panel for help in finding the stopping point.
Membership
Will you be reading with us?
Yes
Yes, but I might start late
Maybe
No
0voters
Which version will you be reading?
eBook
Paperback
0voters
Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to be notified when weekly threads get posted!
I think chapter 1 is the hardest chapter, since the main character is a very small child in it and speaks in entirely kana for chapter 1. She grows out of it by chapter 2 however.
So I’m going to offer three schedules to vote on:
Fast Schedule
Week
Chapters
Start Date
Page #s
Total Pages
Pages with Text
1
1p1
Jan 17
3 - 20
18
13
2
1p2
Jan 24
21 - 36
16
16
3
2
Jan 31
39 - 70
31
28
4
3
Feb 7
71 - 100
29
29
5
4
Feb 14
101 - 130
29
27
6
5
Feb 21
131 - 161
30
25
7
6
Feb 28
162 - 200
38
31
Medium Schedule
Week
Chapters
Start Date
Page #s
Total Pages
Pages with Text
1
1p1
Jan 17
3 - 20
18
13
2
1p2
Jan 24
21 - 36
16
16
3
2p1
Jan 31
39 - 52
13
12
4
2p2
Feb 7
53 - 70
18
16
5
3p1
Feb 14
71 - 82
11
11
6
3p2
Feb 21
83 - 100
18
18
7
4
Feb 28
101 - 130
29
27
8
5
Mar 7
131 - 161
30
25
9
6
Mar 14
162 - 200
38
31
Slow Schedule
Week
Chapters
Start Date
Page #s
Total Pages
Pages with Text
1
1p1
Jan 17
3 - 20
18
13
2
1p2
Jan 24
21 - 36
16
16
3
2p1
Jan 31
37 - 52
13
12
4
2p2
Feb 7
53 - 70
18
16
5
3p1
Feb 14
71 - 82
11
11
6
3p2
Feb 21
83 - 100
18
18
7
4p1
Feb 28
101 - 115
14
13
8
4p2
Mar 7
116 - 130
15
14
9
5p1
Mar 14
131 - 146
15
14
10
5p2
Mar 21
147 - 161
15
11
11
6p1
Mar 28
162 - 180
19
15
12
6p2
Apr 4
181 - 200
20
16
Fast (7 weeks)
Medium (9 weeks)
Slow (12 weeks)
0voters
I tried to make the breaks line up to sensible points in the story, except for chapter 5 where there’s no clean break.
The cover was so adorable that I accidentally binged the whole volume in 1 sitting, but I’ll try to also check in for weekly discussion when the club officially starts.
I’ll be joining this one It looks soo cute and seems to have decent art It sits right at the level, where it’s a bit harder to read, but still managable (thanks furigana!).
I haven’t joined a book club in a long time, but I think I’ll go for this one. The manga looks cute and I wanted to join a book club for my bingo this year. :3
So, Natively is currently giving this a level 25, suggesting it’s on the harder side for what we typically read in beginner book club. Looks like we might be a mix of more experienced and less experienced readers.
I wonder if a vocab sheet would be helpful for the bookclub? It says TBD in the OP.
Interesting, not seen Manga Kotoba used to support a bookclub before. That’s certainly very convenient, a lot of the work has been done already.
It didn’t look very easy to use to read along on my phone screen, but looking at it on a tablet or computer screen it’s a lot easier. Will be interesting to see how people get on with it. The words are grouped by page, but not ordered by the order they appear on the page.
I’m presuming there is no way for us to correct misparsings or add missing words? 棄てる and 呼ぶ are missing on the first page of the chapter for example.
I’m on the “pro Google Sheets” side, and I can create one if you’d like, @araigoshi, after I do my normal book club posting Friday afternoon (my time).
I think Micki hits on the reasons:
I would love to update the interface to be much better on a smartphone, but UI has always been my weakest point as a software developer. And since I barely do anything on a smartphone (outside of Takoboto and Pokémon GO, and previously iKnow, then Anki), I don’t have a good grasp of what makes for a good smartphone UI.
This is the biggest weakness of generating vocabulary lists via OCR. The software has no idea what order the dialogue occurs on the page.
I have done auto-generated vocabulary sheets in the past based on OCR, but that process includes a manual step where I go through every page of the manga and use my mouse/keyboard to capture the proper order of dialogue.
Not at this time. I’d love to add something like that if I thought it’d be used enough to justify working it into the UI somehow. But I’d probably have to limit it to logged-in users.
Google Sheets advantages:
Anyone can add/fix entries (even if they are not logged into a Google account)
If a word has multiple meanings, someone can put just the one meaning (translation) relevant to the dialogue
Here’s an empty Google Sheets ready to go if you want to add it to the book club posts, @araigoshi, for anyone who wants to fill out words as they go.
For anyone who hasn’t participated in populating a vocabulary sheet before, the main advantage for you personally is that it increases your engagement with the words.
If you’re given the meaning of a word instantly, it’s easy to forget it instantly. If you’re looking up the meaning, then typing out the word and the meaning, you’re increasing your interaction with it, giving yourself a better chance of recalling it later.
Thanks for making that! I’ve filled in vocab for week one so that should be helpful to people starting out, and then hopefully others can contribute going forward if we want to carry on using it.
I found several words that I’ve added to my SRS in the last few months cropping up so it was nice to recognise them. I also found a couple of phrases that have a specific definition that I’d glossed over on my first read, including the lovely 何の気無しに (unintentionally).
屑籠 (wastebasket) comes up several times in week one as the name of the forest, although sometimes with gikun - so this might be something to look out for. (Gikun are furigana that don’t give the reading of the kanji, but instead show a different word. This is a technique in written language for given extra depth to a word, but can be confusing for Japanese learners).
It looks soo cute and seems to have decent art