[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

I’m sure you’re not the only one! … But no, I didn’t think that. :grin:

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The story so far

Well, the first five volumes are currently heavily discounted on Booklive (probably bookwalker as well) and the daily discount random generator gave me an additional 20% on top of that… so I just bought them. Well, it doesn’t change the fact I don’t plan to read it just now. I still have two book clubs to catch up to, then ダンまち and 乙女ゲーム, then most likely 鹿の王 :thinking:
Just for fun, I checked and I’m still 14th in the waiting list :sweat_smile: moving twice as fast as I expected, but still too slow.

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That’s exactly the story of my Bookwalker bookshelf :joy_cat:

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Alright so…for the first time I’m actually going to add a daily goal – I want to finish しあわせの花 (one of the light novels for 鬼滅の刃) by the end of the month if I can. That works out to about 8 pages per day from a few days ago when I started it.

When we were reading 夜市 I finished most weeks’ portion in one day already, so this would just be that same pace but every day of the week instead of just one. It might be a bit more than I can handle (especially with 本好きの下剋上 coming up) but I want to give it a try at least.

oh and I totally bailed on finishing 少女終末旅行 – two volumes back to back was a bit too heavy for me so I’ll come back to it in a little bit

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As soon as I posted my good intentions of not starting a new book I felt rebellious and started a new book. Luckily these sorts of bad choices don’t have any real repercussions!

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Polls out of curiosity and to poke this, my favorite thread.

How many book clubs are you participating in right now?

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How many book clubs are you running or helping to run?

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And I don’t think I can make write-in answers as a poll, but two more:

What has been your favorite book club to participate in so far?

Whether you participate in book clubs now or not, or have nominated this at some point or not, what is your dream book club material?

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Flying Witch! Just such a good series

本好きの下剋上
I would also like やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている at some point

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I’m following 7 book clubs right now :sob: 3 of which I run or help run.
Wait, or is it 8?
(BBC, IBC,AdBC, Yuru, @, Kiki, Re0, KnS)
Yep, 8. Woooweee. I need to do something about that.

The Aria book club! The series was nice, but that’s one instance where reading it along with people made it so much better.

Something that would just give me the same feeling as the Aria bookclub. I guess I should stop trying to join everything until I find something like that though. Do I want to have a bad time? Megalovania starts playing in the background

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It feels like many of the book clubs have been unique in their own ways, but I can’t really peg any specific one as better than another.

I’m enjoying the initial energy of the 「レンタルおにいちゃん」 club, but I’m sure it’ll die down quite a bit over time. (Here’s hoping that’s later rather than sooner!)

Of course, I do have bias of it being my nomination…

Without a doubt, 「レンタルおにいちゃん」 would be my pick =D But that’s being read now, so should I say something different? Hm, if I weigh both a series I think would be a good book club read and one that I think could hold on to at least a whole eight readers in an off-shoot club for many later volumes, I might go with 「三ツ星カラーズ」.

Coincidentally, these are probably some of my more highly remarked-on series in threads, as I’ve been working diligently at subliminally preconditioning everyone into wanting to read them. (Hopefully no one figures this out.)

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:heart:

I still think 此花亭奇譚 / このはな奇譚 would fit this mold nicely. And of course, I hear that ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 is similar to Aria, but I have no idea personally. If you look for 癒し系 manga you’re bound to find something, and then you just gotta get a group together!

My favorites have been Aria and 獣の奏者. I agree with @Naphthalene that the community aspect is as or more important than the books themselves.

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I just realized I never got back to you on the このはな奇譚 book. Mostly because the preview was a bit too short to get an idea :sweat_smile:
Otherwise, I did indeed nominate ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 for that exact reason :sweat_smile:
At the end of the day, I do need to reduce the number of book clubs I am currently part of first, though, or else I really won’t be able to enjoy it anyway.

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Ahhh, I didn’t realize the type of poll I chose meant I wouldn’t be able to see what any specific person answered. Regrets! Also, people are in more book clubs at once than I thought, wow.

@Kumirei

Flying Witch

I might have to pick this one back up! It seems like people are enjoying it more than ever.

@Naphthalene

It seems like most of your book clubs will be going a long time, too… there’s no escape.

@ChristopherFritz

レンタルおにいちゃん as your top pick, interesting! I might have to look into that one after all.

@seanblue

I am going to have to get back to my Aria reading. Right as I was starting it I fell into the Haikyuu black hole, but it’d probably be a good thing to work back in sooner rather than later–much less stressful, probably better to read before sleeping. :smiley:

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There are a few things that factored into it:

  • It’s the easiest manga I’ve ever read. I thought, “Maybe I’m just getting better at Japanese?” Then I repeatedly found the harder chapters of 「よつばと!」 are still far more difficult than almost any part of 「レンタルおにいちゃん」 for me!
  • Even though the story is fairly simple, I found it to be very enjoyable.
  • Doesn’t have the typical manga/anime trope characters. Feels more like a “real life” story than “could only ever happen in a manga” story.
  • It’s only four volumes long (and has completed). Anyone who wants to keep reading the series after the first volume, it’s not a huge time (and money) investment.

There is a really big con, however:

  • Advanced readers might go through the whole first volume in under half an hour.

Since I’m replying anyways… I’m in six and running/assisting with two =D

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Definitely Kemono, because I like the books but more importantly because I like our weekly Read Aloud community.

The stuff I nominated in the Advanced Book Club, i.e. well-written books (new or old) aimed at adults.

Hm, I don’t even know how you made this poll :joy_cat:
I thought maybe you can still switch the options after you established the poll without losing the votes (because I imagine the votes are tied to the poll options only), and I wanted to try this out but couldn’t figure it out easily. Anways!

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Unless there is :eyes:
CaptainKirkChair-thumb-450x298

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@ChristopherFritz

Those are good reasons! Perfect for a book club, I agree. Thanks for indulging my curiosity about the numbers, too–you’ve got a lot!

@NicoleIsEnough

Maybe I could change it… how about a test poll to try it out!

You can only read one in Japanese for the rest of your life, giving up the other. What do you choose?

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  • manga

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All right, so I can change the type of poll but then I lose any votes. Good to know~

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Hm but what if you only change the participation information? Nah, still loses all information. Sad :frowning:

EDIT: On an unrelated note: @valkov did you recently buy a 宮部みゆき Complete Edition or something? :rofl: Was quite surprised to see the long list on Bookmeter!
I’m also keen on reading some of her books… but first I should cut down a little on my 7-soon-to-be-9 bookclubs :woman_facepalming:

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My library system has a lot of Japanese books, and if I find things I want to read that are in there I count them since I use my 積読 list to choose what I want to read next. :smiley: I haven’t read anything by her yet–but I want to!

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Oh that’s amazing! I never thought of the possibility to get Japanese books from my local library tbh (and I haven’t been to a library in, uh, well, let’s better not think about that :laughing:)

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結婚しても恋してる. It taught me a lot. It was funny and sweet. I kept up with it mostly. Just the right amount of challenge so reading with a book club made the experience better.

るろうに剣心 because I saw the anime as a teenager and liked it. And now I got the whole series in manga and I suspect both the topic specific vocabulary and old fashioned grammar used will make it a hard series to read initially. So having a bookclub at least for the first volume(s) would be nice.

I guess after I get my books from Japan (should hopefully be shipped this week!), I could try and figure out which bookclub they would belong in, but they are really old so who knows how easy they would be to get. And if anyone would be interested.

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