Advance Book Club with gamification Concept

Japanese Language Reading
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Hello all, I’ve been playing around with a new concept for an advanced book club. I just wanted to think of something more engaging and fun while reading at a quicker pace. So the foundation of this concept is to add some gamification, increase participation and read 1 book per month.

In order to do that I was thinking of putting page limit at 500 pages, meaning we’d have to read no more than 17 pages a day for each book that’s 500 pages or less. It doesn’t have to more than 350 though to consider it advanced, it can be any number of pages under 500. The advance part is reading a quicker pace.

Firstly, every member chooses what book they want to read. Giving a little background info would be nice too to let everyone know what they will be reading and to prepare for it. Say there are 5 members, then that reading season will last for 5 months as everyone will get a turn to have their book read.

The order to which books will be read will be determined by the amounts of points each person earns. There will be book points and season points. Book points will be earned per month and reset with each new book. Season points will tally all total points from each book for that Season and reset every season. The first book will be chosen either by a random generator or by a vote but once we start off we’ll never use this method again.

Once the first book is chosen we will divide the book in a way that allows us to finish it in 4 weeks. So there will be 4 discussion threads per book. The way we earn points are for example(point values are not final and are up for debating):

The one who finished the week reading first gets: 15+(what counts as a finish you have to read everything and write a review/critique of what you read to ‘check in’ that you finished it. )
Taking a Turns reading in the discord(if we still decide to do it since there could be quite the amount of reading to do will the pages being a higher amount): 5+
Answering questions about grammar/vocab
/comprehension, ect: 5+ per answer
Writing the best review/critique of that weeks reading(we vote on who had the most interesting/most insightful critique/review): 30+

All these points will be get updated every week on a leader board and whoever received the most points at the end of a book gets their book chosen next. Book points will be reset each new book and all the points added for that book and every book in that season will be tallied to the season points. You can not win for a second time and have a new book chosen for you again for the current season. At the end of the season, the one will the most season points will get their book chosen first for the new season, and then season points will reset and we’ll start all over again.

This hopefully ensures no one falls behind in getting their book chosen and each month they have a new and equal chance to get their book chosen next. And it also prevents an overachiever from constantly having their book chosen giving no one else a chance. Season points are to motivate those who’ve already ‘won’ to keep reading and still feel apart of the game.

I hope that we don’t prioritize one skill such as just speed, or just being helpful, or just being the most articulate. I hope that it’s fair and that everyone has an equal chance to benefit from their strengths and work on their weakness to ‘win’ their book being chosen. I also just want this to be a fun and friendly competition in order to add fun, motivation, and participation. It’s not to be taken extremely seriously.

Who’s ever book is being read will be the moderator of the weekly discussion threads. They have to post a new thread every week, tally points for that month and add polls to see who wins the 30+ for the critique post and polls for who’s keeping up ect.

If you don’t want to read someone’s book just let that moderator know, it’s not so serious. But I hope that the season points motivate you to try a new genre and step outside your comfort zone.

The start of a new season is the perfect time for a newcomer to enter. They can enter at any time, However, they can not add a book in the middle of a season, only at the beginning will this be allowed. This is to prevent an endless season in the case that someone new enters every month. But if Say a couple of people sit out for a book once in a while maybe the newcomer has a chance to win the season points for the first pick of the next season.

I’m not sure if the point values are fair and we can discuss it. If you’re interested please let me know. If there’s enough interested I was thinking of launching this club after the current intermediate books, or sometime later this year.

Oh, I was thinking of naming the club 上級読書会の戦闘.

Name is also up for debate I’m not so attached to it.

Please share any interests in the club, suggestions, and opinions.

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Chances are I’d probably just read along without caring too much about the points, but the concept seems interesting enough. I’d probably join if it won’t start for another month or two(both because it takes time for books to arrive and because I feel like I’d have to learn a few hundred words more to really be able to keep up with the faster speed comfortably, at least for harder books)

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I love this idea - gamification is what keeps me going! :smile:

I was reading along, nodding to myself, thinking I’d follow the thread for now and see how the first round goes, then join in after the current intermediate books end because I’m already reading too many books at once, and voila:

So, no conflict there. I’m confident the current books will help raise my comprehension level a bit more and wanikani will continue to work its magic too, so.

This is me proclaiming interest, by the way. Really hope this takes off. :slight_smile:

I’m assuming after each person chooses their book, there will be some time for the book to arrive for people choosing the physical version, as with the existing book clubs?

There might be some downtime in between seasons, a month or so for new orders? Which might be a good thing, some people might like a breather, a chance to catch up with other thing etc.
Or maybe if people want to keep going, the next season’s members can introduce their books in advance while the previous season is still going? I think I’d prefer an off season intervall between seasons.

Anyway, it is not yet 5 in the morning, half of my questions are probably self explanatory. Consider me duly hyped for gamification
:+1: I’ll let this marinate a bit in the back of my mind.

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While I could probably read 17 pages a day in advanced-level Japanese, I’d have to give up my regular job to do so…

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Small price to pay! :wink:

It does seem a lot, but on the days I do read I usually read more than that. Haven’t managed to make it a daily habit yet, though…

It’s probably not going to be all 500 page books, either, so maybe it’ll end up with 10 page/day a lot of the time too? I know I won’t want to select a book much over 300 pages when it’s my turn.

Maybe I’m overly optimistic about this, but I feel like Haruhi will prepare me sufficiently. XD

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Just to be sure, if you participate, your book will eventually get picked no matter what, right? Even getting 0 points across the board, right?
‘cause I don’t think I’d ever get anywhere else than at the bottom of the leaderboard

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I’m glad! And yes what I would hope is that we have a list of everyone who’s participating and all the books at the start of the season and you should purchase every book at that time because you wouldn’t know who’s next. And some down time between season would also be a good time for rest and purchasing the next set of books.

Well it definitely depends, but for the most part in English, I can read about 50 pages a day easy. And my Japanese speed is catching up to my English speed not because I’m anywhere near fluent but because I don’t stop and look up every word. In the case of kino I only looked up about 3 words max per page, understood most of everything I was reading, and read it close to as fast I would in english.

I don’t personally see myself as advanced yet, but I think at the advanced level you should be able to read close to your native speed. How long does it take everyone to read 50 pages? I don’t know if my reading speed is drastically different from everyone else but depending on how engaged I am, reading 50 pages can take 30 minutes to an hour. Which should be an appropriate amount of time for daily reading?

Lastly like @Belerith it won’t always be 17 pages a day or ‘advanced level Japanese’, most books are 300 pages, But since the other book club caps it at 350 to open up more book options I put the page limit at 500 for an advance club. I think battle royale is 400. I don’t even know of a Japanese book that’s 500 pages atm.

My commute next semester is estimated to be 30-90 minutes both ways so I figured I could get my reading done on the bus.

Yup! And I’m trying my best to balance it. Do you think there are other things we could add points for to give everyone an equal chance? Maybe 1+ for making any post or reply in the threads? Or like some points for making an anki deck?

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You have a day job? I thought you just lived here…?

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Filthy lies

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I don’t really know how fast I read English, but for someone who reads a decent amount I’m on the slower side.

Regarding the question of getting all the books to be read at some point, what are you going to do if you get 20 participants? Split into groups?

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I feel like I’m a slower reader too. And a gamer. People read books and finish games in a day…And I take 3 weeks. So didn’t think I was asking for a lot?

And I don’t know, Sean. If people wanted to split in groups I guess? I don’t think I’d mind 20 people though, We obviously can’t read faster than a book a month. So I guess if we wanted to add breaks or sit out for a couple books you can.

I guess another option is if or when we get that high maybe we make a season only 6 moths and those who don’t win just have to keep trying until they do. But I worry that some people may never win and I don’t want it to be that extreme/unfair.

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o.o Can I join?

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My point was more so that booking up over a year’s worth of books ahead of time doesn’t sound like a good idea. A lot can change in that time. People might get busy and drop out, while others might want to join. I’m not planning to join by the way, I just wanted to mention this so you can consider the options.

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No I know what you mean, I just don’t know how to solve it. I think the best option might be to split into groups or just sit out on books that you don’t care much about once in a while.

I guess those who are participating we can offer a bunch of solutions and choose what we feel is best and fair.

Yes :3

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This sounds so cool. Too advanced for me (I’m looking forward to the Genki I study group starting in 2 days and the AB々C manga starting in a month or so after Chi’s is done), but it does sound like a really cool concept. Knowing myself and how well (or not so well) I keep up with things like this, I would only (assuming for the purpose of argument that my reading skill was up to the task, which it’s not, but assuming that for now) be able to keep up with it for relatively short seasons, say, 6 mo. or less, and would probably end up doing every other season or so. I enjoy competition, but I know myself and I would get burned out eventually going at a fast pace, even if (as we are assuming for the purpose of argument) my reading skills were up to the task.

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I don’t really know :thinking: Somehow my brain just keep feeding me ways to break and exploit the system, which isn’t helpful. The way I see it, if you have a nice small group of people reading together, things will probably self-balance (i.e., you can’t really exploit the rules, because, even if you just broke the spirit of the law rather than the law itself, others won’t let it fly), so it might be fine anyway?
And, as you said, things will probably adapt as we* go along.

*Randomly inserting myself in the group.

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I’m really glad you like the concept! And 頑張って. You know, not saying you must, but even when you find yourself at an intermediate level don’t be afraid to join. You could also read tadoku style to bring up your reading speed and while you might not understand everything at first when you keep at it you will.

I’m thinking Sean’s suggestion might be best in that we split into groups. Perhaps we can see who’s interested in what book and try to put overlapping interests in one group, and make each group 6 people.

Welcome! Lol, and yeah we’ll just have to see. I think most people here are honest so I don’t think someone would exploit the system. And it would only benefit them once to do so anyway.

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I think the same sorts of thoughts.
I was going to link to the xkcd comic about how fandoms are the least toxic when they are either very large (and thus approach the average proportion of *******s), or very small (and thus the members can just kick out troublemakers), but I couldn’t find it anywhere even though I searched for over an hour. I think the alt-text was something like “The fans of [some show] are the nicest people I have ever met. All two of them.” Does anyone know which comic this was? Or maybe it wasn’t xkcd?

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Sounds like fun :kissing:
Not sure if I can handle the pace yet, but I am seriously considering it.

In a group of potentially avid readers, I imagine it might often come up that some people has already read any given book proposal. Would be quite lame if this happens to someone too often and they don’t get many more books to read.

Maybe each person makes two propositions and people vote simply if they’ve read it or not for both. The one least read gets picked as that person’s proposed book. Unfortunately this increases complexity and is sort of approaching a popularity vote, which I assume you wanted to avoid.

Or maybe it won’t happen that often, and everything will be fine. Either way, excited to see where this goes :+1:

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Maybe I’ll try at least with one book and see how it goes from there. :slight_smile: Right now I’m reading 絵本 meant for toddlers, so I’m probably in way over my head. XD However, I reckon I can read the book again at a later time and hopefully understand more of it then.
But when thinking about how I started to learn english, I remember how I would plunge into books way over my level of understanding and just read through them without looking up much and it really helped me in getting a grip of the language. So why not try the same technique with Japanese!
Hopefully I’ll get over that block in my head that tries to tune out everytime I see a wall of kanji ™. I had the same problem with russian text and it got better by making myself read things, although I didn’t understand all of it (And my Russian has gotten truly neglected for some years now that I think of it :frowning: . Why isn’t there more time in a day?) .

tl;dr
I’d like to join! :durtle_tomato:

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