Larger chunks, another interesting idea! Might be good for manga, especially. アオハライド is set up that way officially, and I like it a lot. (Though there isn’t much discussion, which might or might not be related)
Aha, you (aka the intermediate book club) tried to get me, but you have failed, for I have already read 博士の愛した数式. 
But whatever comes after that I will most likely have to figure into my plans. <3
How’d you like it? And how is it difficulty-wise compared to 獣の奏者 and 本好き?
I liked it a lot, and I’m curious to see what the book club people think of it. I’m not sure about the difficulty–I had to look up a lot of words (and sometimes google in English because I don’t know a lot about math), but otherwise it didn’t seem that much harder than the books you mention. The one I think felt about the same difficulty-wise was Kitchen, though I don’t know if you read that one. Both could be contemplative in a way that I sometimes find difficult to follow in Japanese.
For someone who never used to like manga, I sure do buy a lot of manga. 
I very rationally planned to try to finish 魔女の宅急便 to reduce my ongoing book club load, but when I got to the end of last week’s section of 獣の奏者 I didn’t stop. I finished the book last night, so I guess my goal of reducing my novel book clubs to two was a success! I think I just am not enjoying 魔女の宅急便 very much, honestly, though I’m not ready to give up on it, and 獣の奏者 is one of my favorite things I’ve read in Japanese. Wanting to know what happens next really pulled me along–I read almost nothing else during the last few days. With this book I also hit my novel goal for the year.
I am now behind on 魔女の宅急便. I have two more manga book clubs starting this week. I’m also in the middle of recklessly flinging myself against the remaining new cards of my RTK deck. Should be an interesting week!
Are you going to read books three and four of 獣の奏者?
I intend to start book 3 at some point, but I haven’t decided when. It seemed like (from your posts and the book covers, etc) the first two were a set–are the third and fourth separate-feeling or do they carry on in the same way? Also, book 2 was quite long, and book 3 is even longer, so I might take a break.
I know you’re thinking to mix in another book or books by the author, but are you also planning to read 3 and 4 at some point?
Yeah, that’s right. The first two books were published together. The third and fourth books were also published together about 3 years later. It might just be a difference in publishing approach, but in the U.S., the books that were released together probably would have just been bound together and sold as a single book.
I don’t know anything about the third and fourth books. The anime only adapted the first two books. I have no idea if the author was always planning to release more books or if she wrote them as an afterthought.
I know there was a lot of votes to keep reading, so it’s certainly possible. My biggest concern is that it would take over a year to read those two books if we continue doing one chapter a week since they are so long.
Thank you for your answer–I thought of googling about the books but you’ve helped me avoid the spoiler risk. Also nice to know that I could now watch the anime, if I wanted to!
Seeing how long books 3 and 4 are makes it more likely I will take a break. The length of the break most likely depends on how interesting the books are that I read in the meantime.
I accidentally added a book to my “read” list on Book Meter and it was super hard to figure out how to remove it…
Right? That’s really difficult! I wonder whether they did that on purpose so that it is hard to accidentally remove a book…
Might have been easier to alter reality to match the list. (Which is to say, read the book. 
)
Ha, I accidentally marked one of those “x volume set” books as read, so…
It’s pretty stupid that Book Meter even includes those to be honest.
Well, I did catch up to all book clubs a few days ago… but then I started playing Crusader Kings 3… I might have (as in I definitely have) already clocked in 10h+ in the past four days (so, basically using all my free time). Needless to say reading has stalled right now.
Still, I’m hoping to find a better balance soon (probably reading first and then playing).
Just got:
I love the cover art for とんがり帽子アトリエ. Is the story good too?
I suppose I’d describe the story so far as “intriguing” more than “good”. All the seeds are there for a really great story, but not enough has happened in the first three volumes to say how it’ll turn out quality-wise.
On the positive side, the artwork inside the manga is as amazing as the covers are. Really consistent, high quality drawings.
Today I am thinking about defragmentation of my reading (to borrow from @NicoleIsEnough), and also about only reading things I really enjoy. The first part I already know I struggle with, but I am surprisingly bad at the second as well. I don’t like leaving things partly read. Lately I’ve been better at stopping (or as I tell myself, pausing) manga that don’t grab me, because I can finish a volume and consider that a stopping point, at least. I can put them in my 積読 pile and say that if the mood strikes, I’ll come back to them later. But I’m still not very good at it, and what about non-series novels? (And even series novels–I’m going to read the whole volume just to get to a stopping point?)
I was thinking about this last night because I forced myself through a few pages of 彼氏彼女の事情 and then sank into ふしぎの国のバード with such joy… if I gave up the things that I don’t truly enjoy (consistently), wouldn’t the additional time mean I could find more things that make me as happy as 7SEEDS, マダム・ジョーカー, or ふしぎの国のバード*? What if everything I read made me that happy??
(* I haven’t even finished the first volume yet so I don’t know if it will be good long-term.)
Reading in Japanese takes a lot more time for me than reading in English. I should probably be pickier about what I give my time to. But there are also things that I only mildly enjoy at first and come to love later… I don’t know.
That’s funny, I have an opposite problem: I can’t force myself to read consitently because manga/novels don’t grab me much. Add this to poor reading speed and I end up reading only a few times a week.
I’ve estimated that it takes me about an hour to read 10 pages of コンビニ人間. I can go faster if I don’t look up everything (I guess 多読 would call for skipping non essential vocab lookups but I am usually curious to understand the meaning to the best of my ability).
I am trying to just allocate certain time per day for reading and not set a page goal for myself. Reading for 1 hour dauly is in any case better than not reading at all.
It sounds like it makes sense to set a time goal instead of a pages goal–actually, I do that too! Setting a pages goal makes me feel constricted, like, why can’t I read faster and why did I set the goal to this anyway, but a time goal feels more manageable, for me~
