Ok, thanks a lot! I’m excited (⌒▽⌒)☆
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OMG OMG both titles! I’m so excited.
@soggyboy Which are the requirements to run the club?
Greetings.
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The person running the club is responsible for posting the weekly threads, getting the vocab sheet up and running, running polls to decide the club schedule/pacing, etc. You can take a look at the club threads for other picks to see how other people have done it.
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And check out the three stickied threads here with tips, instructions, and book club references that book club leaders keep updated! Just ask here or one of those threads if you’re not sure what to do!
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あやかしこ - Ayakashiko
Summary
Nestled within Tokyo’s Asakusa district lies a quiet mansion known as Ayakashi-sou. Despite its size, the mansion is home to just a single sixteen year old girl, However, Ayakashi-sou takes its name from the ayakashi— Japanese spirits and ghosts who inhabit it. Kuuko and Yukine, a prank-loving fox girl and gentle snow-woman, call this place home, while the childlike Zashikiwarashi Kii watches over the building. They are soon joined by the newly created cat yokai named Nene, who has nowhere else to go.
Living with the ayakashi is the building’s owner, Mahoro Miyatsuka, who inherited it from her late grandmother due to her ability to see and interact with the spirits. While her ability allows her to connect with the ayakashi, Mahoro’s habit of talking to invisible people has led to her peers avoiding her. Despite this, Mahoro is content with tending to her ghostly friends as they spend their days watching fireworks, playing games, and otherwise living life one day at a time.
Availability
Physical:
Amazonjp
CDJapan
Digital:
Bookwalker
Rakuten
Natively Level: 22
Personal Opinion
The average sentence length is about the same as the end of Genki 1, maybe a little bit longer, and there was hardly any difficult grammar, so I think it would serve as a good first step into native material.
I read this during a slightly stressful time, with lots of doctors appointments and school paperwork stuff, and this manga always managed to distract me from my stress and calm me down a bit. It’s one of the few series that made me forget that I was reading in Japanese.
Their newest member is an ex-cat, so she still sometimes moves and acts like a cat, which is funny to watch.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
- Cool character designs
- You get to learn a little bit about different yokai, like 雪女
- The plot isn’t very deep, I think it would be okay to skip a panel here and there if you don’t understand, it won’t hurt your overall comprehension.
- Funny cat-girl character
- Easy grammar
- The hard part is the vocab, and that’s what we have vocab sheets for
Cons
- Some pages have a high text density and might seem intimidating
- Cat-girl is a turn off for some people
- Higher end of the difficulty range, but given the grammar used I still think it’s doable, and absolutely worth it
Pictures
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This is just a suggestion, but wouldn’t it make sense to have a tie breaker vote between just those two options? While I totally understand the enthusiasm for wanting to read both, but the timespan until we would read the other book is so long… I am maybe a little bit worried that a few months from now, there might be a more popular pick, but we’d be pigeon holed into reading either of these ones. Or maybe the people who have now voted for one or the other might not even be around to read it anymore?
Ie – just because both are really popular now, doesn’t mean that they will still be popular in like… June, when it would start being time to read the next book, and I wonder if it might be a better idea to do a tie-breaker on what to read now, and then see if the other book is still going to be popular once time comes for the next pick?
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Hey! I’ve been going by the precedent set by this club in the past, where multiple winners were read in a row instead of holding a tie breaker. As you can see, even the very first vote ended in a tie!
’
You mean a more popular pick in the nominations? That would just have to wait until the next poll, and then we could read it.
Always a possibility. But we have so many previous club picks that if anyone really doesn’t want to read what’s chosen first, they can choose an older club pick to read while they wait!
Since older club threads are watched by lots of users, it is totally fine to read an older pick and post questions, read the discussion, etc. I recommend this route for anyone who is disappointed by the poll results or doesn’t want to read the current choice.
Even when there’s a normal vote with no tie, there is the risk of someone being disappointed because they wanted to read something else. So I don’t really think that a tie situation is much different.
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I’m voting Scary Stories first, because I’m gonna go read Look Back on the Beginner Book Club and then maybe the ABBC will be onto Sign of Affection by then, so it works out! 
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I don’t understand it either… Is this real?
But this sounds like an adorable manga. I usually don’t like anything to do with the paranormal but this I can deal with!
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I don’t understand either how someone could not like cat-girls But even though they’re wrong they must still be acknowledged 
But yes it is a very cute and relaxing manga! Any time I felt stressed out I ran to this manga, I bought the remaining volumes and plan to use them for comfort during tough times.
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I swear, that scene nearly sank that book club lol
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Since I haven’t seen any proof yet, I choose to believe that you just wanted to mention “cat-girl” again in the cons to make the manga more attractive.
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Did not realise Hunter x Hunter and Cells at Work were the same poll winners
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We don’t talk about The Incident here.
(But yeah - that’s literally the only way that this mistake could’ve happened twice. Voted for in the same poll before anybody could learn from it.)
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Ssshhhhhhhh, I’m garnering support any way I can, don’t blow my cover 
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Hey, totally fine if that’s how ties are being handled, but just to clarify; It’s not about anyone being disappointed or not wanting to read either pick, just about making sure that the picks are really what the (current) group actually wants to read. Maximising the group’s interest (and not minimising individual disinterest).
I was once part of an (English speaking) book club, where the 8 of us picked all books we wanted to read in the year in January. Only that, come September, out of the original 8, only two people remained and we had five other people join us – of which nobody was interested in the September pick anymore, as the people who voted for it had moved on. Situations like that can just be prevented if there’s another vote.
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Like the ABBC, the BBC also has a precedent for reading both picks. The issue you raised was also voiced at the last tie there, and if I remember right didn’t get a lot of traction in discussion (despite the ironclad logic!). I suspect that means most people really want to read at least one of the two that tied and they’d rather wait than risk it not getting voted in the next time. The clubs running second have still been successful with good participation, so in practice the current precedent works well (in these beginner clubs, where beginners typically spend a lot longer reading something and it is typical to plan ahead).
The IMC also reads all tied books, and that works because they read faster / clubs are way shorter.
The IBC do tie breakers (or at least last time). Those clubs can be longer than ABBC/BBC, and due to the smaller size of the club, is probably necessary to gauge interest for each club at the time. I don’t know what the ABC does. Getting to those rarified heights means you can just settle it between the last persons standing with a handshake right? 
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Agree completely! I was appalled when i read that part! I’m still not over it… Literally haven’t finished the manga! 
but thanks for the reminder @ChristopherFritz!
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