Advanced Japanese Book Club // Reading 虐殺器官 - Genocidal Organ

I hope the excerpts @Myria posted in the akutagawa thread and my fuzzy memory from when I read the sample pages when you nominated it before fused into an accurate assessment.

It feels weird to be one the same effort vote as @Naphthalene somehow. :joy:

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Time flies, and we’re already almost halfway through our current pick :slight_smile:
That means that the next poll is already around the corner, and if you want to throw your favorite book(s) into the ring, now would be a very good time for that :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

We currently have 11 nominations in the “fast” category and 5 entries in the “hard” category - this does not leave much space but we can take on 4 new nominations!

Looking forward to your books of choice :+1:

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On to the next round!

Have a look at the List of Proposed Books section in the first post for details on each book. Every book has a difficulty associated with it (based on the book club members’ votes, thus subjective) out of 5, where 1 means “no effort at all” and 5 means “impossible, even with everyone’s help”. The difficulty is annotated in the poll in square brackets after the book’s name.

Do not rely solely on difficulty when making a choice. Please have a look at the nomination posts and text samples if you haven’t already.

Expected reading pace: The proposals fall into two categories, Fast and Hard. We aim to read fast books at 30-50 pages and hard books at ~15 pages per week (that number might vary a bit throughout, depending on the book’s breaks and chapters). For manga, depending on difficulty and chapter length, we will probably read one to several chapters per week. The pick’s exact reading schedule will be negotiated before the book club kicks off.

Start of Book Club: We will start the next book on July 3rd (after a one-week break).

Poll duration: The poll will be closed within a week (and most likely before that), whenever it looks like voting has dried up. You can choose up to 5 options.

  • Fast: 86―エイティシックス― [2.67]
  • Fast: クォンタムデビルサーガ アバタールチューナーⅠ [3.29]
  • Fast: 狼と香辛料 [2.67]
  • Fast: マスカレード・ホテル [1.89]
  • Fast: 風の谷のナウシカ [3.13]
  • Fast: 海辺のカフカ (上) [2.31]
  • Fast: 騎士団長殺し 第1部 [2.33]
  • Fast: 化物語(上) [2.8]
  • Fast: 虐殺器官 - Genocidal Organ [3]
  • Fast/Hard: 薬屋のひとりごと [3.5]
  • Fast: 乳と卵 - Breasts and Eggs [3]
  • Hard: 薮の中・将軍 [3.6]
  • Hard: 檸檬 [3.6]
  • Hard: 風立ちぬ [3]
  • Hard: 午後の曳航 [3]
  • Hard: 人間失格 [3.14]

0 voters

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I haven’t joined this club yet, but I voted for the ones I’d like to read someday, so if they win, I’d tag along.

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There is no real “joining procedure” other than voting for books you like and then reading them - in other words, welcome to the club! :hugs:

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Yeah, I meant ‘tracking the thread’ by joining. :smiley: Thank you! ^^

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Welcome!

I do remember us talking that it’s at least expected to try to read the book with the club if you vote. At least I think it’d be a bit shame for someone to swing the vote if they are not participating, as it affects if current people get to read what they want :thinking:

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(I am only voting for 化物語 myself. And I have already started it, so…)

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I don’t remember what consensus we reached then if any, but that’s if the book you voted for wins, right?

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Oh, right, I may have misremembered. Seems it’s still applicable to the current poll situation :grin:.

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My mental model is that I’d hope for many (most? all?) of the voters to participate in reading the winning book (that’s my understanding of “book club membership”, at least) but in practice this is of course much more relaxed as we don’t have a strict formal “membership” procedure, we have a high fluctuation of members anyways, and because of course everybody is free to read what they like.

But I would definitely expect all those who voted for a given book to try to read it when it wins.
(But of course there is no rule without exception, and if life acts up or something, then that’s a different story again…)

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Obviously I will try to read them. I don’t want to trick anyone to read stuff I wouldn’t.
I’m also interested in how hard the pace of the advanced book club is for me - I usually finish the weekly sections of the intermediate one in one sitting.
It looks like now that I’m gonna find it out soon - except if a lot of people quickly vote on 海辺のカフカ which I just read in translation a few weeks ago, and really don’t want to read it again (for a while).

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Oh yeah, I’m definitely not gonna read a book I don’t want to read, and currently the only book on the list I want to read is loitering near the bottom, sooo…

This sort of book club is a bit different to the real-life book club I’m in - aside from the fact that there’s generally only four or five of us, it’s also a sci-fi and fantasy focused club, so I’d probably enjoy, or at least be able to tolerate, any book that won, even if I didn’t vote for it. In this book club, the only common link is they’re books that are written in Japanese, so there’s no guarantee that it’ll even be a genre I enjoy. Currently, the first book on that list I might want to read is in fifth place, but I’m also not looking to start another novel right now.

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My initial approach towards the book clubs here in the forums was „I‘ll try out each book and if I like it - great; if I don’t like it - I learned something.“ but I‘ve noticed that I‘ve started to become more picky recently. :woman_shrugging: So I can totally relate to your thinking.

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Voting has almost dried up by now, so I will close the poll tomorrow. If you were thinking of voting but haven’t done so yet, now is the time! :+1:

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It is official! The next book club pick is 人間失格 :tada:

I will set up the home thread in a minute.

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We also lose 藪の中・将軍 for lack of interest, and 騎士団長殺し is now on its last strike.

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Here is the home thread for our newest pick:

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I somehow feel sad about losing titles in the hard section. We have so few of those. :sob:

I’m really happy we’ll read this one now.

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I see what you mean… On the other hand, if nobody is really interested in them, it doesn’t help either I think :woman_shrugging:

We should simply add some more popular and hard books to the list :wink:

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