Middle school students Nishikata and Takagi sit next to each other in class. Takagi, who is in love with Nishikata, enjoys teasing him with embarrassing pranks and jokes. In response, Nishikata creates plans to get his revenge, but they always fail when she identifies his weaknesses and capitalizes on them.
The anime is often recommended for listening practice because the vocab is common and the sentences are relatively simple. It made me think that the manga might be suitable for this reading club. The anime is also very funny (and cute), so I think it should be an entertaining read.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Slice of life, so easy in the vocab department
No wall of kana, plus the kanji have furigana
Low text density, so can be read in 9 weeks (15 pages per week).
Kobo has been recommending this one to me off and on for over a year now. I may have to vote for it in the next poll just so Kobo can ease up.
I see there’s also a full-color version that is a third of the price per volume compared with the original. I don’t see anything on whether that’s normal or limited time pricing.
Amazon.jp doesn’t let me purchase Kindle resources. I think it doesn’t like me being outside of Japan. Is anyone familiar with this and have suggestions for a work around? Thanks.
Just be aware that you need to switch your Kindle contents between your Amazon.jp collection and your “normal” collection afaik; they can’t both be present on the same device at the same time.
I removed mention of Dragon Ball SD as a spin-off club in the main post. We started out at ~6 pages a week, but participation dropped to the point where only 4 people were reading, all of whom preferred a faster pace. We’re currently reading volume 2 at 18-20 pages a week. I don’t think it’s suitable for absolute beginners anymore because of that.
Hi everyone! I’ve been contemplating joining a book club for some time and finally decided that I’m ready to do so
I’ve read the information pinned in the top thread post, and I think I understand how everything works, but here’s my question: what would be a good time to join? Should I wait until the club starts a new book? I’m in absolutely no rush and have enough Japanese content to keep me busy, so I can wait, even for a few months. Should I?
How long is this 10 minutes biography book everyone’s currently reading? Are you halfway through, or close to the finish? How difficult, and how interesting it is compared to the other books you’ve read?
The current book is scheduled to be finished on April 24th, so still a couple of months left to go (about 4 chapters left).
This is my first time joining a book club, so I can’t speak to what other books have been like in comparison. So far it has been a lot of fun to follow along though!
You can join whenever you like! This is especially the case with the current selection because each chapter is self-contained (disclaimer: I’m not reading the currently the book, so I’m 99% sure this is the case, but I could be wrong)- so I would just do the reading for this week and dive straight into the chat. It’s a lot of fun to read at the same time as other people, so I’d take advantage of the fact that it’s happening right now and just go for it.
From my understanding, each chapter is a biography of a famous person - whether that sounds appealing, is up to you
For the chapters already read, look at them at your pace: you can always go back to the threads and read over other people’s questions/answers. You can even post in them now - plenty of people will still be watching the thread and will be happy to help.
Yes, this is the case. Each chapter is a mini biography of a different person and you don’t need to have read previous chapters. The benefit of reading previous chapters is that similar grammar/phrasing is used so it can make reading later chapters easier/fast/more familiar, but it’s in no way necessary.
Finally guys! This is a very accessible manga, mainly compared to しろくまカフェ and よつばと: からかい上手の高木さん is easier in my opinion. If you’ve watched the anime, then you’ll enjoy the manga even more because now you can actually pause and squeeze with a big smile to 高木さん’s teasing .
impossibru, everyone needs to embrace 高木さん’s cuteness
VOTING TIME! CAST YOUR VOTE NOW FOR THE NEXT ABSOLUTE BEGINNER BOOK CLUB PICK!
The next book is due to start on 1st May, so if you are interested in joining please vote for what you would like to read. Just as a reminder here are the nominations, you can click on the links to see more about each book.
And here is the poll! You get three votes and you can change your votes until the poll closes. I’ll keep it open for a few days until the votes dry up.
Voting for the next Absolute Beginner Book Club - starting May 2021
Japanese Fairy Tales (Physical book only, 16 books in the series)
Lucky Princess Fairy Tale Collection (Free online stories)
Kuuku the Bear Cub (Physical book and ebook)
Japanese folk tales - Issun-boshi and other stories (ebook only)
Atashinchi (Manga - physical book and ebook)
Wanted (Manga - physical book and ebook)
Teasing Master Takagi-san (Manga - physical book and ebook)
And we have a winner! I was going to ask if someone else could volunteer to run this one, so thanks for stepping forward Phyrne! You sure were quick setting up that home thread!
.
- starting May 2021