[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

Hey, welcome aboard! :smile:

I see! Good to know what I can expect from the Musume books.

F&B is pretty manageable wrt the text, but sometimes so many historical characters are thrown at the reader that it can be a challenge to stay on top of who is who and their connections. Especially Vol. 5 was very dense in that respect, and so I decided to make a chart of everybody to be able to keep up :sweat_smile:
We also added lots of links to wikipedia articles to the volumes’ threads, so please feel free to use them and add to them if you see fit (I guess especially for the first three or so volumes we did not capture everything).
Other than that, I’m looking forward to your comments! :blush:

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Chapter 3 definitely starts with an info dump, and volume 1 in general kinda goes back and forth on it. The later volumes do tone it down though, if you get that far; the exception being when we change to some entirely new locale (like the royal court, for instance).

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My main comment so far was that I was shipping 海斗 and 和哉 super hard and then went “oh” when the time travel happened.

I wonder if that’s the same with 村上海賊の娘? :thinking: That being said, at the end of book 1, she was on her way to meet new people, so, probably not. Considering I have an infinity of books to read ahead of that, I’ll probably never find out.

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I don’t know if that would count as spoiler, so I’m just going to hide it, but the latest 芥川賞 winner really hit the spot for me. I just finished おいしいごはんが食べられますように, and it was like watching a car crash in slow motion. The last couple of lines almost made me scream. 12 out of 10.
It’s also very short and easy to read, which goes a bit against my expectations for a winner of that prize, but that was a nice surprise.

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Also wanted to share a little achievement. I just finished reading vol 6 of Chainsaw Man and it took me only one evening surprisingly. I blazed through it :joy:.

Already planning to buy the remaining volumes, but will put it on next month’s expenses.

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I learned the hard way that many of them are quite tough to read :sweat_smile: but there are a few exceptions, e.g. コンビニ人間.

Thanks for the recommendation, by the way! I’ve extended the poll in The Akutagawa Prize Reading Challenge so you can go tick the box if you like :blush:

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Ticks aggressively

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Shiet, might get this. About 250 pages into 未来 it kinda lost my interest and was thinking about something new. Is this a book imma have to use literary skills for. I dont wanna be analyzing metaphors and shit, but I do appreciate some car crashes

Edit: damn 3.7 stars on Amazon doe lmao

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I’m also very intrigued. Can you tell us some more about it? The Amazon blurb is way too vague.

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In spoiler blurs please!

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Well yes, I don’t want spoilers, just an idea of what kind of story to expect. :slight_smile:

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I know, and I want that in spoiler blurs. I usually opt to not even read the arasuji or reviews for anything like this. Actually, 90% of what I read I don’t actually get any details for really. I just personally prefer it that way.

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I checked some of the reviews giving 3 stars and they basically say “those people are awful!” and, like, yes? That’s the point?
There were some that say “it’s drama for the sake of drama, not real” while some said “it’s eerily real, didn’t like it”. I guess your mileage may vary.

It’s… literally the plot. Wow, they kinda give everything away… but fine. If I make it clearer (limiting myself to the first ~25% of the book):

押尾 is a hard worker and the 後輩 of 芦川 (so has a slightly lower status). Meanwhile, 芦川 is physically weak (as in, she gets frequent headaches that make her go back home early) and the kind of girl guys want to protect. Also, 芦川 isn’t that good with social skills (she seems neurodivergent to me), but she is a great cook. Every time she goes home early, she brings back some home-made sweets the next day for everyone. That absolutely pisses off 押尾 who had to pick up the slack instead of her and do extra overtime. She thinks that if 芦川 was well enough to bake cupcakes, she was well enough to make the effing excel file.
Some day, while 押尾 is out drinking with 二谷 (the guy she has a crush on), she complains about the situation and asking him (as a “joke”) if he’d be up to secretly bully 芦川 (that sentence is the first one in the blurb). She doesn’t know that he is actually secretly going out with 芦川. But because he is a freaking sociopath or something, he still says yes. And then we get to alternate between their points of view through the daily life at the office.

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Aww yis. You didn’t say anything about the literary analysis though. I won’t have to use my head or anything, right

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Thanks! Your description made the very short blurb make more sense. Putting it on my list. Now to hope for some price reduction…

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Yeah, a bit takai but whatcha gonna do. Luckily I have…60,000 yen worth of gift cards left on my account anyways.

(And…I mean…I could always just give you the book if you don’t think you would buy it anyways)

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60,000 yen worth of gift cards! :heart_eyes:

Thanks for the offer, but I have a very long list of books I want to read and it only grows longer (need to read faster!), so I’m sure the book will be on offer at some point before I run out of reading material. :books:

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No, you won’t.

That being said, I’m afraid that with the kind of “awful people” you are usually reading about, those ones may feel a bit bland :sweat_smile:

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Lmao I’m not expecting nibanme levels but I guess there’s only one way to figure out. I’ve only been reading when I have free time at work and don’t feel like doing other study (so not much) so it’ll be a while before I get back with my opinions. It’s only 60k characters ish (around the length of ningen shikkaku for people who read that) but I’ll be pretty busy this week. Regardless, looking forward to it!

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It currently has a 50% coin cashback on Bookwalker (until the end of today Japanese time).

I just bought it on a whim, thinking I can maybe squeeze it in somewhere in December :crazy_face:
(reading group anybody? :grin:)

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