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

No problem at all!

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Okaay, than I will make a thread when I find some time:3

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By the way, how long is Chi Sweet home? Because we might need to start thinking about the next book

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Yeaah, that also :thinking: I wanted to look through it to see how much text it has and decide on the pace, but I don’t think it’s gonna be long/hard

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I’ve just checked and it’s 162 pages in 20 chapters. Not much text, so maybe it can be done by 3-4 chapters per week? 5 to 7 weeks?

Yeah, I think it’s a good pace :thinking: So when Chii’s started + like a week we should change to also searching a new book/manga? How much time did the suggestions+poll take?

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It usually takes people around 4 to 5 weeks to get the book and I think it took us like 2-3 weeks to decide on one

Hmmm, then we should look for suggestions about now? :thinking:

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Definitely soon, unless we reuse many suggestions from the last pool

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I guess we should use them again in case they get selected? :thinking: We don’t have that many, so any new suggestions are more than welcome, but not like we should discard them right away?:3

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One consideration may also be, is the person who made the suggestion still around? I mention this because the “Guidelines for Proposing Books” section says, “if your pick wins, there will be some expectation that you contribute throughout.”

Since しろくまカフェ is my first time participating in a WaniKani book club, I don’t know how big of a necessity this is, so long as there are enough interested readers who can figure things out. So maybe it doesn’t matter so much if the person who proposed isn’t around, so long as enough people are interested in reading it.

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Sorry if this is slightly off topic but I just remembered: I accidentally bought a second used version of Chi‘s Sweet Home volume 1 last year. It might be a bit late for the book club start date but if anyone is taking the July JLPT in Düsseldorf and wants it, I’ll happily give it to you.

(@NicoleIsEnough I guess you don’t want to wait that long? Otherwise I‘ll just take it with me to Düsseldorf and see if anyone wants it)

Thanks for the offer :slight_smile:
I had not planned to read Chi‘s Sweet Home with the book club (too many other books to read currently) but if you have a spare copy I would at least like to take a look in Düsseldorf :wink:

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If we’re already talking about the book after Chii’s then I’m nominating one that I’m planning to read anyways.

おじさまと猫 (Old man and cat)

Summary

おじさまと猫 is about this ugly-cute cat who can’t get adopted until one day when an older gentleman comes to the pet store and adopts him. The comic is about the cat trying to make his human happy and the old man is learning how to be a good cat dad.

Availability

Amazon.co.jp (ships internationally!!!)
Originally published on Pixiv (you can read the first 8-ish chapters for free here but I don’t know how to read past that)
e-book available via kobo.com here thanks @ChristopherFritz

Personal Opinion

Volume 1 contains 15 chapters and ~7 omake chapters. Like しろくまカフェ the chapters are usually about 4 pages long, but there aren’t a calvalcade of puns. Like Chii’s Sweet Home, the subject matter is mostly about cat-human relations and the language used is generally pretty standard but it isn’t always quite as happy as Chii. I ordered this along with しろくまカフェ because I was able to read three chapters without a dictionary handy and it was such a rush. It’s real cute!

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Cute cat
  • Simple language
  • First 8 chapters are free (see above) so it’s easy to assess if this would be for you

Cons

  • Why are all the easy manga about animals? Especially cats?
  • Some people might not think the cat is cute and we would have to spend time explaining why they are wrong

Pictures

Chapter One

Chapter One can be read for free right here and it’s only 4 pages long so please just go look at it real quick (you may have to click the link and then scroll down till you see 1話)

Chapter Two

Here’s chapter two, because why not?

P.S. As a reminder, the first 8 chapters can be read for free at pixiv. Check it out!!

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 confess I’m a little bit disappointed that the first line isn’t 吾輩は猫である. :stuck_out_tongue:

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It’s a missed opportunity to be sure. But best to make mistakes like that up front so that the rest of it can be great.

Based on the first chapter, it looks like it definitely fits the title of Absolute Beginner. I see the Amazon listing puts it at 148 pages.

Best part for me, the book is available digitally.

I found the table of contents for it which reveals all the chapter lengths:

Chapter lengths
  • Chapter 1 has 4 pages.
  • Chapter 2 has 4 pages.
  • Chapter 3 has 4 pages.
  • Chapter 4 has 4 pages.
  • Chapter 5 has 4 pages.
  • Chapter 6 has 4 pages.
  • Chapter 7 has 4 pages.
  • Chapter 8 has 10 pages.
  • Chapter 9 has 4 pages.
  • Chapter 10 has 6 pages.
  • Chapter 11 has 4 pages.
  • Chapter 12 has 8 pages.
  • Chapter 13 has 6 pages.
  • Chapter 14 has 4 pages.
  • Chapter 15 has 10 pages.
  • Chapter 16 has 4 pages.
  • Chapter 17 has 6 pages.
  • Chapter 18 has 4 pages.
  • Chapter 19 has 10 pages.
  • Chapter 20 has 12 pages.
  • Chapter 21 has 10 pages.
  • Chapter 22 has ?? pages. (last chapter, so can’t tell)

I can understand if the book club skips this one for now to avoid too many animal books in a row, or too many cat books in a row (say what?), but I’m definitely gonna pick it up and read through it!

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Can you ever have too many cats? :laughing:

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I mean, one time, I was told I had too many cats in my dresser:

ezgif-4-3f13e8b4bdef

I don’t know what they meant by it.

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I can check the last chapter length for you when I get home from work in ~10 hours. A lot of the longer chapters are actually side stories that seem to be only in the printed version.

Edit: “Chapter 22” is 16 pages (incl. title page) and then there’s an Author’s Corner page afterward.