Okay, added to the start post 
I was so focused on the organisational aspects of this that I forgot I now have to read the book 
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Yes - mine is 5-11 as I changed the font size to roughly match the number of pages per chapter in the paper books.
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For all of the people in this book club who are just starting out with reading native content (whether this is your first book or not) and are feeling like this might be too much, I just want to encourage you all to stick with it!
I remember how hard the first 銭天堂 book was for me, but with this book I only had to look up two words in the entire first chapter, only one of those was a kanji related problem it was the 俗 in 民俗学者 for those curious, and it only took me about 20 minutes (I usually read much slower in Japanese). Reading has had an immense influence on my Japanese ability, even beyond just reading, and I never would’ve gotten here if I hadn’t gone in a little over my head to start with. If you stick with it, one day the dictionary won’t be such a crutch, and you’ll have picked up sooo much vocab along the way.
Happy reading everyone!
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Where’s the “I read it last time but still feel like I’m part of the tribe” button? 
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Just finished the first page! Super pumped, and definitely made it through a lot more smoothly thanks to the anki deck made from the last group’s vocab spreadsheet. Shouldn’t be any trouble making it through chapter 1 in a week.
There were a couple things on page one that gave me pause, or that my brain kind of skipped over due to a lack of understanding. (Red Book)
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この町は南へゆっくりさがる坂の町で - The flow on this one was a little rough for me, maybe because I rarely see へ as a particle. When reading it at first, I thought either the town was south of a gentle slope, or there was a gentle slope to the south. Really examining it now, I think it’s saying that the town is on a gentle slope that slopes downward to the south.
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ちょっとはなれたところにはかたまって - This one eludes me. I understand all of the component words. A little, Became, place, huddling. I get that the buildings mentioned after are huddled together, but not the whole meaning.
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木という木 - All I can grammatically parse from this is “A tree called tree”. I’m pretty sure that’s not the meaning, so I just sorta read it as tree. (Though my america-brain really wanted to read it as ‘a tree-ass tree’)
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またちっちゃなキキが足をひっかけたね - I read this as “Little kiki got her leg caught again, huh?”. I might be right on that one, I’ll have to read further for context.
Despite a few things I wasn’t sure of, I could broadly understand the whole thing! An actual page of a book, not a manga! This is super exciting to me.
EDIT: Just noticing that despite having the red book, it doesn’t look like my page numbers are represented by the pages in the main thread. While the book does start on the 9th page of the book, it’s actually labeled as page 3, making Ch. 1 pages 3 through 11.
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I’d say the vital part here is that 「南へゆっくりさがる」 modifies 「坂」. So, it’s “a hill which gently declines to the south” or “a south-facing gently-slopping hill”.
I read this as “In a place little distant (from the station), huddled together are (the school etc)”. So for the whole sentence, I get, “And, near the center of town, there’s a train station, and a little father away, a government office, a police station, a fire station, and a school are huddled together.”
Edit: Scratch what I wrote here, and go with what Kyasurin wrote before.
What I originally wrote (for the curious).
That part had me working on it for a bit. 「町の高い木という」 is a modifier for「木」. Out of all the trees there, the narrator is specifically referring to the tree which is “called the tallest tree in town”. Something along the lines of, “A silver bell hangs atop the tree called the tallest tree in town.”
That’s spot on =D Although, foot might be more accurate rather than leg.
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This is actually a specific grammar point: NというN, where the same noun is used in both places. It means “all of the N” 「すべてのN]
I recall some debate about this last time, as to whether it was one tree or many. But if you look at the picture of the town at the start of the book - and count the number of bells - I think that may settle the debate. 
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First page in, and I’m already learning new things =D So, this would be atop all the tallest trees in town, do you figure?
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I think all your questions have been answered now, but I just noticed for this one, you’ve translated はなれた as “became”. Rather than は なる they’re using the verb 離れる (はなれる) which means to be separated from, apart from etc. That should help you make sense of ChristopherFritz’s excellent translation.
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Hey just sat down and read through the first chapter. Enjoyed myself, but it was definitely a challenge. Sometimes I got the gist and other times the whole picture. I’m new to this whole thing so do people just chill out in the thread and like post random snippets and questions? Sounds nice.
One thing that was new to me was seeing じゃない tacked onto sentences. I think I understand how it’s being used, I’m almost reading it like adding ね at the end. Maybe I’m wrong. I was just surprised to see it like this outside of the beginner level usage of like blah is not blah.
それに黒猫だっているじゃないか
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That reminds me, I meant to put a kanjified version of the sentence in there, and forgot. It’s funny, I expected the lack of furigana on the kanji to be the death of me (which it still will be), but I’m finding は in the middle of hiragana to trip me up quite a bit. I had to look over ちょっとはなれた somewhat to consider if 「ちょっとは」 can be a thing or not before I settled on 「はなれた」.
Someone may give a fuller reply on this, but your view on it is fairly accurate. Both have a quality of “seeking agreement” to them (as I understand it).
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Ah, that’s the missing piece, thank you!
The important bit there would be the か. じゃない means ‘is not’, but turning it into a question makes it more like ‘isn’t it?’. Or adding no to the end of a sentence like “It’s beautiful, no?”. Though that only works in my head with a French accent.
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That’s exactly how I was reading it!
The entire chapter in a french accent. 
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Wondering if anybody else stupidly signed up for this thinking it was a Manga? 
No… just me? Ha Ha… First two pages down, took all morning. 皆頑張って！
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If it helps any:
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This, exactly! Trips me up all the time as well. Also didn´t help much when i thought 離れた was 放れた 
So far i made it to page 9 (V2) and it was “easier” (as in "not so bad"ier) than expected. Bunch of unknown vocab though (銅 → thank god for the vocab sheet). Apart from that in went relatively smoothly, especially grammar-wise. Only hiccup was the weird use of という that caught me off guard.
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I’m so sorry! If you could vote “reading along” this time, I’ll add a support option next week 
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Much appreciated. 
I ended up buying the first 3 books so I may just join in the actual reading portion of the re reading when they get here.
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Sounds about right to me 
yeah, the idea is basically to ask and answer each other’s questions, but also to talk about the story, how we’re finding the reading, that kind of thing.
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Thank you thank you, I’m feeling the love 
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