just a quick heads up that our beloved Advanced Japanese Book Club will turn 4 (!) on July 1st
To commemorate this event, I’d like to kick off the poll for our next pick on that date.
Which brings me to the secret message of this post: If you’d like to nominate a book, the perfect time is now
We have 9 slots available, and they will get filled on a first come first served basis. Please use the nominations template in the OP and don’t forget to label your nomination as hard or fast. Looking forward to your nominations
The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.
There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine
Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.
Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?
Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, “The Konkatsu Killer”, Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.
I have been debating for months whether to nominate this one here, but you were faster it might still be a bit hard for me, but I’ll definitely join the club if it wins the poll
Oare rice, a miraculous rice plant that was brought to Japan from Kamigo long ago. The Umarites built their empire with this rice. Under the patronage of “Koukun,” the living god who brought this miraculous rice and knows all things by its fragrance, the empire continued to grow, until one day, the Oare rice plants were attacked by insects. At the same time, a young girl arrived in the capital. Aisha, a girl with an extraordinary sense of smell, soon comes face to face with the mystery behind the Oare rice plant. A new masterpiece by the author of “The Guardian of the Spirit,” “The Beast Player,” and “The Deer King” is born.
Uehashi Nahoko is a well known fantasy author who has written famous works like 獣の奏者 (read in an intermediate-level book club) and 精霊の守り人. This one is a bit longer and (based on the Natively rating, though only rated by @Naphthalene) a bit harder. I honestly have no idea what this one is about and plan to read it based on my love for 獣の奏者 alone.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
Author typically writes interesting, compelling worlds and fantasy flora/fauna.
Book is broken into chapters and sub-chapters, so should be easy to make a fairly consistent schedule with good break points.
Cons
Two volumes, so not sure how “complete” the first volume would feel on its own.
Author tends to mix in the political aspect of her stories poorly.
In the notes left behind by a painter who was murdered in a locked room, he wrote about a plan to create a perfect woman, Azoth, from the bodies of six virgins. After his death, six young women went missing and were found with parts of their bodies cut off all over Japan. Forty years after the incident, what is the trick behind the bizarre murders that have yet to be solved? The complete version of the shocking debut work that gave birth to the great detective Mitarai Kiyoshi!
Ebook and physical copies are both available. See Natively for links to the usual retailers.
Personal Opinion
I don’t remember how I found this book, but I like murder mysteries, and this seems to be a pretty famous one. It was successful enough to have an English translation (The Tokyo Zodiac Murders), so hopefully that’s a good sign?
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
Murder mysteries are fun to read as a group.
Cons
The premise is a little gruesome, though it might just be normal mystery novel stuff.
斜め屋敷の犯罪 - apperantly it’s been translated into English as Murder in The Crooked House as well. A booktuber I watch mentioned it ages ago as one of his favorites. He was like “it’s old but it’s so good!” which I remember finding hilarious because to me early 80s doesn’t feel particularly “old” for a book, but I guess it depends on if you’re used to reading mostly new releases like he is
Oh, I happen to have that one on my bookshelf! It has been there for so long that I do not even remember when/why I got it. And I had no idea whether it was any good. I am tempted now to read that for the bingo challenge over at Natively as „longest in my TBR list“.
Thanks!
It is one of the books I got before I took a complete break from Japanese for a couple of years. All books acquired after that break I consider to be my real 積読 pile. So I decided that for me any of the books I got before that break would count as „longest“.
Have a look at the List of Proposed Books section in the first post for details on each book. If you are interested, you can have a look at the books’ Natively levels through this list. The Natively level is also annotated in the poll in square brackets after each book’s name.
Do not rely solely on the levels 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 per week 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 Aug 17th (after a one-week break).
Poll duration: The poll will be closed on 2024-07-09T11:00:00Z. You can choose up to 5 options.
Oh, and if somebody could update the thread title to “Now voting!” that would be great. Thanks!
You can intersperse the insert-an-image markup and the poll options; here’s an example on the Natively forum. But it’s painful to get the urls for the images and do all the markup.
it might still be a bit hard for me, but I’ll definitely join the club if it wins the poll
