Absolute Beginners Book Club // Now Reading: Granny Girl Hinata chan!

ah :frowning: thanks for telling…

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Hey all, I thought I’d do some shameless cross-advertising in this channel :grin:

小川未明童話集・Ogawa Mimei: Collection of Children’s Stories

It is a book (not a manga) which consists of a lot of short children’s stories (of which we will read a select handful). The author is pretty famous, and the stories are rather old (I think the first ones are about 100 years old) but the Japanese has been modernized so there shouldn’t be a problem. (Also, I’m trying to read ahead to be able to pick out and explain unusual grammar up-front, but I can’t promise that I will be able to do that each week…)

We’ll start off with a very short story (5 pages only) and slowly increase our stamina by moving to longer stories (up to ~10 pages per week). I read the first story and I found it pretty comparable difficulty-wise to the 10-Minute-Biographies book that you read here a while ago. So if you were able to get along ok-ish with that book and you would like to slowly migrate to more Beginner Book Club material (or if you are adventurous and just want to hop in without prior book reading experience), then maybe this is your chance!

You can even try it out without any financial investment as all the stories are available for free on Aozora as well. The links are in the book club home thread that I linked above. I’m looking forward to seeing you in the club :slight_smile:

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Oh my god I totally forgot to mention that this is the next Beginner Book Club pick and we will start reading it on Saturday :joy_cat: :woman_facepalming: :sweat_smile:

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Could someone change the thread title to reflect we are now reading Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea please?

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Done!
I hope I assumed correctly that “please” is not part of the title :sweat_smile:

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Doing posting also here in case someone missed it (ノ´ з `)ノ

The offshoot club for それでも歩は寄せてくる is gonna start from next Saturday! Come and say hi, we have cookies! (◕‿◕):heart:

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The next ABBC book will be due to start on Nov 13th. So it’s nearly that time to vote on choices again. If anyone has any other nominations now is a good time to make them.

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Here’s one I’ve been tossing back and forth on whether to nominate for ABBC or BBC. After seeing what’s come up in each for the past year or so, I think it would be a much better fit for ABBC.

三ツ星カラーズ

Summary

「三ツ星カラーズ」 is about three young girls, Yui, Sacchan, and Kotoha, who spend their afternoons defending the peace of their neighborhood.

Each chapter puts the girls into a slice-of-life scenario, such as searching for a cat, selling bananas, visiting the zoo, or disarming a (fake) bomb.

Availability

Personal Opinion

The slice-of-life genre and the young cast of main characters make this series a good fit for a manga-reading beginners. The difficulty is comparable with the oft-recommended よつばと, minus the easiest and hardest chapters of that series.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Slice-of-life genre.
  • Younger characters speak clearly.
  • Older character dialogue is mostly with the younger characters.
  • Topical words appear often in a chapter.
  • Chapters average 14 pages.

Cons

  • ???

Pictures

First Three Pages of Chapter One

Additional Pages

The first three chapters are also freely available on the author’s Pixiv site (no login necessary to view):

Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Just right
  • Challenging
  • Impossible, even with everyone’s help
  • I don’t know (please click this if you’re not voting seriously)

0 voters

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I just joined the [read every day challenage Fall/Autumn] (📚📚 Read every day challenge - Fall/Autumn 2021 🍁🍂🦝 - #496 by popleraa101) and wanted some good books to read… looks like I found the right place

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Vote For The Next Book!

It’s time to decide which book the Absolute Beginner Book Club will read next!

If you are interested in reading along, please look at the nominated books and cast your votes. Each link below will take you to the nomination page for that book, which gives an overview of the book, and shows some sample pages.

We would be planning to start reading this book around the 13th November. If the first choice is a shorter book/manga then we will read the book in second place immediately after.

Guidance on book difficulty:

The number next to the books is a guidance on book difficulty, as rated by forum users. A score of 3 means the difficulty was judged to be “just right”. A higher score means it has been judged more challenging. The maximum score is 5.

This is only a very rough judgement of difficulty. Do look at the sample pages for yourself in the original nomination posts.

The Choices

Books

Book Title Description
日本昔ばなしアニメ絵本 Japanese Fairy Tales - Set of 18
福娘童話集 Lucky Princess Fairy Tale Collection (Website)
こぐまのクーク物語 春と夏 Kuuku the Bear Cub’s Story, Spring and Summer
日本の昔ばなし Japanese Folk Takes Collection (Issun-boshi & other stories)
もしかしたら名探偵 Detective Milky Sugiyama
ミラーさん Mr Miller
都道府県のおはなし 低学年 Stories of the Japanese Prefectures (Lower grade reader)

Manga

Manga Title Description
あたしンち My Family
Wanted Short stories from the creator of One Piece
こばと Kobato
ハピネス Happiness
三ツ星カラーズ Mitsuboshi Colours

Vote Now! Which book would you like the Absolute Beginner Book Club to read next?

You can vote for up to three choices. I will keep the poll open for a few days.

  • Japanese Fairy Tales Set of 18 [2.7]

  • Lucky Princess Fairy Tales Website [3.2]

  • Kuuku the Bear Cub’s Story [2.9]

  • Japanese Folk Tales Collection (Issun-boshi & other stories) [2.4]

  • Detective Milky Sugiyama [2.4]

  • Mr Miller [2.8]

  • Stories of the Japanese Prefectures [3.0]

  • My Family/Atashin’chi [3.1]

  • Wanted [3.5]

  • Kobato [3.6]

  • Happiness [2.8]

  • Mitsuboshi Colours [2.9]

0 voters

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EDIT: the bookwalker reduced price is still the same as Amazon and Rakuten ebooks pics here.

It looks like Bookwalker is having a 50% off sale on 三ツ星カラーズ1 for the next few days

Link to their larger sale (2021年10月1日(金)00:00~10月5日(火)09:59まで).

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Bookwalker staff 1: “We have a few more slots to fill for the half-off sale. Any idea?”
Bookwalker staff 2: “Let me check WaniKani’s latest book club nominations.”

Although…the sale price there is the regular price on other sites (Amazon, Kobo), which surprises me. Or is it half-off the displayed price? Edit: Looks like the displayed price is the half-off.

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There definitely does appear to be some kind of trent, a few of the last book clubs lined up with free books which was even nicer!

Hmmm you’re absolutely right!
Bookwalker is saying normally 627 円 but now reduced to 314 円.

But wow you’re right, that appears to be the normal Amazon and Rakuten prices =O

I’ve updated my earlier post to mention this T.T

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Has the deep, dark secret to Bookwalker’s sales finally been uncovered???

I only kid. It surprises me because normally when I hear about a Bookwalker sale on something I want to buy, I check Kobo only to find it’s a higher (regular) price there. (Some manga get the same sale at the same time across platforms, which is why I check.)

If I didn’t rely on Kobo for the ease of removing DRM so I can read on any device I choose, I’d definitely be looking at Bookwalker.

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Would someone mind changing the thread title so that it states we are currently voting for the next book please?

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There’s also 199 coin back on Book Walker, so effectively it costs 86 yen for the book at the moment, assuming you will use the coins in the future.

Only til midnight tonight Japan time though.

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Great point, looks like the coins are only until end of today, but maybe the price reduction is longer? I was a bit confused as the dates seemed to disagree.

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The sale ends October 11. It’s the coin back that is only till midnight tonight.

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I changed the title. Let me know if you‘d prefer a different wording or any other change!

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Thanks Nicole - looks great.

Mitsuboshi colours coin back on Book Walker is now 142 coins til the 5th October - so still very good value if you buy it in the next few days.

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