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

By the way, what book are we talking about?

This one?

Did I nominate it?

This one:

Nominated by @Saruko

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Nice! I saw this one in a NYC Library. By the way, I saw they sell the “naze” one in Barcelona, but only that one :rofl:

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I might be wrong, but I don’t remember seeing you contribute to any of the 9 volumes of Yotsuba that we’ve read so far. But, as someone who reads the threads, are you really saying that rather than a thread per volume (9 so far) you’d prefer a thread per chapter… in which case we’d now be on our 59th thread!!!

However, you may well be right, for a long book in the ABBC, perhaps a thread per chapter, or few chapters or whatever, might be better. Personally I prefer one thread per book, but I can see your arguments too, especially how a longer thread might be discouraging for later readers.

In fact, I recently went through the first chapter of Girls Last Tour after the fact, and yes, I think having a thread per chapter in that case was actually useful. So yes, I can see both sides here, and the more I think about it, the more I think you might be right.

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I’ve only read the first volume so far, and I did comment when I finished it up: よつばと!Vol 1 Discussion Thread (Beginner's Book Club) - #837 by jaearess. I’ve bought up through volume eight so far, so I hope to catch up with the rest of the club, once I finish some other things I’ve picked up first.

Like I said, I haven’t personally had questions to ask in any of the threads, but I have always commented when I finished each book club. I also commented on a particular event in the middle of 時をかける少女, which I certainly wouldn’t have bothered doing in a single mega-thread, both because the discussion would have been long past that point and because of the risk of spoiling later events by jumping to the end of the thread.

I don’t really see the problem with having 59 threads across nine books. I haven’t looked into in detail, since I’m not reading the books, but the Aria book club appears to be up to 43 chapter threads and doing fine.

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Cheers for that. For the ABBC, I’m convinced. Thank you.

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As I said :woman_shrugging:t3:

But it is all the same to me. I don’t really mind if it’s going to be one thread or several with one for each chapter.

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I’m down for making a single thread for 結婚 since it’s really just 3 volumes of short stories (most are <5 pages) that take place throughout their married life so splitting by volumes doesn’t really matter. (And there aren’t really any spoilers, except maybe in the last volume)

If people don’t think its AB々C level material, and since about half the voters seem to be higher levels (I’m seeing some 60s!) and could probably read 2 books at the same time anyway, I don’t think it would take away from the book club.

But I don’t want to step on any toes so if people have a problem with this then we can leave it in the ABBC nominations / move it to the BBC :grin:

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If you want to set it up, you must love it and be full of enthusiasm for it! Plus, you already have at least one person saying they’d like to join in! If I were you, I’d go for it! What’s the worst that could happen? Would that be so awful?

でっかいすごいです!:joy:

Sorry, in house joke! But seriously, a thread for each chapter has been really worthwhile for us.

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I think one thread per story for the 10分 book would be fine.

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By the way, if somebody is interested:

https://www.alibri.es/index.php?route=product/search&nm=naze

As I once said a long while back…

All%20the%20Book%20Clubs

Except I guess in this context it should be “FOUND all the book clubs!” :thinking:

but maybe having like ten offshoots at once would not work so great

also every time I see this meme it actually makes me really sad that that blog stopped

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People seem to be good at curating all of the different book club main threads in the pinned posts, through which people can link to next threads with the chapters.

If this wasn’t happening, I’d agree more, but as long as we’re diligent with that, I don’t think it’s an issue.

I keep doing Aria in bursts, so it has been a GREAT help for me when playing catch up! =D
Speaking of, I’m behind again! :rofl:

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I went to buy the book. I have some already, but not that one specifically (I bought mostly first grade last time)

And I got the one mentioned a few times up as a suggestion
image

It’s just so purdy, so I grabbed it too :wink:
Thinking it could be a good option for next suggestion in the series =)

As for speed. Would 2 pages a day be too much? Cause then we could finish in about 3 months =)
If too much, then it will just take long, and that’s fine too. Spending 6 months on one book isn’t as bad as it sounds :wink:

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I remember how difficult or let’s say challenging just one page was for me in the beginning with naze. So I was glad that it was usually just 2-4 sentences for a day and not more than that.

I can handle more now as I got kind of used to it, so I wouldn’t mind two pages a day. But if we really want to keep it absolute beginner friendly… I’m not sure? I’d still suggest to go with 1 page a day and maybe go with a faster speed later on.

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Yeah, I was thinking that too, 1 first month or so, then 2, since it is always harder at first =)
And we can vote as we go, see how people feel at the time

Another possible plan would be to read one page a day for the first half of the book (or however much), then split it off into its own book club for those who want to continue (possibly at a faster pace?) and move the ABBC on to another book. Since it’s a bunch of short stories, etc., it would probably be easy to find a spot to stop reading it as part of the ABBC and spin it off.

That way, the entire book gets read, but the ABBC can continue on, since I suspect that, even though it would certainly be possible, brand new readers are going to be hesitant to jump into the middle of a club that’s been going on for months.

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I think the issue comes from not having a definition of “Beginner” and “Absolute Beginner.” Would it be around N5/Genki 1 grammar, N4/Genki 2 grammar? N5 kanji, 1st/2nd grade kanji, Level 10 Wanikani kanji? Kanji density? Everyday vocab vs. Some business vocab vs. Romance vocab vs. Specialized/Technical vocab? Manga pictures to help? Illustrated book pictures to help? No pictures to help? Everyone’s using their own definition so our reactions are all over the place.

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