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

There’s definitely a point. Maybe someone forgot they were supposed to start the thread this month. Maybe it’s March. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Out of curiosity, is there anything that makes it clear when a new book club’s home thread should be created by? Offhand I don’t see anything in the first post of this thread, nor in the tips thread.

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No, there isn’t a rule for it or anything, strictly speaking.

Personally, I like to have it up as early as possible to try and drum up interest in it for those who might not frequent this particular thread, but it’s really up to the host.

I would say within two weeks or so should be the absolute latest, though, imo.

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Hmm. I wanted to first figure out a more exact schedule suggestion by giving it another pass, which I haven’t found the time to yet, but I guess I can just post it and edit the exact schedule in later.

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It also gives you a good place to discuss the schedule, so I definitely think it wouldn’t hurt. :grin:

Totally up to you, though! I was just sharing my thoughts, not intending to give any hints or anything. :joy:

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:sparkles: :dragon_face: :sparkles:

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It honestly seems to have been inconsistently applied. When I follow historic polls in the ABBC, the first poll had two winners (Shirokuma Cafe and Chi’s Sweet Home). Some picks seemed like they were just chosen without the formal poll as well. :joy:

Shockingly, Takagi-san, which is a prime example of a quick manga, was a solo pick. Ayumu and Wadanohara were dual picks, though, and that worked well. Mitsuboshi Colors and Happiness were dual picks, though the former ended up running longer at the request of club members.

It might be a case of trying to judge right out of the gate on whether a pick is going to run longer or shorter and adjusting at that point… But even then, I have to say, I would have got it wrong in this case. I would have expected Ruri Dragon to be a shorter read based on the preview. :joy:

Ookami-chan should definitely be a quick read, though, so I’m not too worried about Ruri Dragon stretching a bit longer than I would have expected.

Anyway, long preamble, but let’s just do a poll here, everyone:

For future selection polls, should we treat manga and books equally and only have a single winner each time?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

A couple of my thoughts to explain my vote:

I like the current system of two victors for a couple of reasons. First, in the situations where we do have short runs, it’s honestly a bit less work for me two have two of those together because it’s a single set-up for two books. I don’t mind running and organizing things more often in this thread if I have to, but I am lazy, so I’m going to naturally favor the option that is slightly less work. :joy:

Second, we have had some pretty good nominations rolling in, as well as a good amount of them. Having two victors when there is manga means we cut through the pile of nominations at a quicker pace, keeping us from having to throw out quite as many older nominations to keep room for newer ones.

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I don’t know if I understand the vote correctly. Are we voting, that always only one book or one manga is voted for?
I still think it would be most beneficial to vote only for one book at a time and only, after one has been decided a new vote should start with maybe one or two week space. I see several opportunities with this. On one hand, it gives the book club time to start make a plan and see how it goes, on the other hand, votes might change after experincing a manga or a book and take a look at how good one can work with the material.
I’m also not sure if it makes sense to keep Books and mangas at the same club. maybe it would even make good sense to have a abbc(book) and a abmbc(manga). I don’t know how the situation is today, but at least a few years ago I remember there were many people who simply didn’t like to read books and waited for the next manga.

(side note: at the moment is it always a swap between book - 2mangas - book -2mangas? )

if we would split this bookclub into one dedicated for books and one dedicated for manga, that would make the decission for many a lot easier. For example usually I prefer to read books, but they are scarce in here it seems. That’s why I join in on ルリ.
if one would time it right also another option would open up. having two things at the same time. having always a manga and a book be read at the same time. Could be handled for example in a way that after the first half of one manga the book would start in parallel.

But whatever, could somebody please tell me, if it is always 1 book 2 mangas at the moment? :thinking:

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If a book is selected, it’s one, because they are always more text-dense than a manga, and thus always need a longer schedule.

With manga, if the top 2 are both manga, we read both. Realized now what happened with Takagi-san: top was a manga, but second was a book, that’s why we only read the manga.

Apologies if I come off a bit blunt, but I think splitting into separate book and manga clubs would be a bad idea. :sweat_smile: If it were a higher-level club, I might be more on-board with it, but with an absolute beginner’s club, potentially having to force members to split between the two would introduce some issues. For those who actually do want to read a mixture of both, having two clubs running concurrently would likely be overwhelming. As an absolute beginner, the demand of keeping up with two clubs would mean you are forced to choose to join one or the other. For those who want to experience a club live, that’s not ideal, even though they could theoretically loop back to the other club at any time. It would also probably be a bit confusing for new members to the forums who aren’t familiar with the setup (which is the actual ABBC? Which should I join?).

We don’t force an alternating schedule, no. We go purely by the votes. The club is manga heavy, but that’s mostly due to a lack of interesting books to nominate at this level, I think.

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well, i see what you mean. but with that perspective, wouldn’t it make even more sense to only vote for one thing to read at a time? :thinking: i mean think about it. books are not often nominated and not voted much for, so how does it make sense to always take two mangas if two get in the top positions? since it is likely that always a manga end up in the top it would make so much more sense to always only choose one thing to read at a time. (right now we are looking at atleast 3 months for ルリ and a simmilar number for the next manga. so the next opportunity for a book would be in 5 or 6 months, and it is still nto likely a book will be choosen. I think it would be fair to give more voting opportunities in that regard.
the possibility for a book will get higher the more mangas are been read (maybe) since some people might get tired of mangas :thinking:

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I tried working out a tentative schedule for Ookami-chan, but Google Sheets said I ran out of rows.

image

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I 100% agree here. That’s why selecting 2 makes sense to me (as long as they are actually short runs, which is what we should be sorting out from the start now I think). :joy: you cut through more mangas, so the chance of a book being selected next goes up (assuming books are getting nominated at all).

If you only pick one manga, then the manga that was in second place remains in the poll. Odds are good that’s your next pick, anyway, after a short run. With 2 being selected, you’ve removed 2 nominations from the pool, increasing the odds of everything else remaining (of course, that gets diluted by new nominations coming in, but that is going to be the case regardless of if one or two are picked).

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Maybe there could be a total page limit. For example if we say “at most 200 pages between the two”, then it’s either one manga with 200 pages or two with 100. Page count isn’t the best metric for this, but at least it’s somewhat decent.

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It would be better than a “general gut feeling” for sure. I like that idea!

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that’s true, but if “Odds are good that’s your next pick, anyway” then you can also just do another vote, right? :sweat_smile:

But I just had another idea. If the problem with books is sometimes, that they take longer because of a lot more textdensity. The stuffe appearing in here is usually a collection of individual storys. So why not considering doing only half of that book with the option to continue in an individual bookclub afterwards? :thinking:

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That is already being done if the book is too long for the club requirements.

I don’t think the problem with books is the length (one book takes the same amount of time as 2 manga, generally), tbh.

The reason the books don’t get selected is usually purely lack of interest. The titles tend to be targeted towards young kids, and they just aren’t very fascinating to read. :sweat_smile:

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Only issue with it really, is that if the top two picks is a manga with 50 pages and then a manga with 700, then there might need to be an additional vote made with only the short picks. I think this was done with the bbc’s shadow house pick, but correct me if I’m wrong on that.

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As a fellow lazy person, I wonder how much of this process can be automated with scripts. Hm…

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In fairness, it really is only like 20 minutes of actual work. :joy:

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I’m sure I can spend 10 hours scripting that down to 18 minutes.

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