My bookclub is also quite flat right now, since I’m not reading at all 
Nothing really motivates me… These days, I just go through a couple of pages before doing something else, if I picked up the book at all. I read a single book in all of April.
Hopefully I’ll get over that slump soon.
11 Likes
random motivation bump
9 Likes
I think it’d depend on translation if this is intermediate or advanced, but anyone interested in a Japanese version of Dracula Daily? I figure this crowd could easily add it on to your other reading.
2 Likes
Just a quick heads up that the new poll will go live on Saturday, so if you still want to propose a book, now is the time! 
12 Likes
Alrighty, Sunday is the new Saturday, right? 
Off we go with the Poll!!!
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 “so much effort my head might explode”. 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 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: After the recent developments in our ongoing Tatami Galaxy club, it turns out that we will start the next book on June 17th (after a one-week break).
Poll duration: The poll will be closed on 2023-05-22T11:00:00Z. You can choose up to 5 options.
- Fast: クォンタムデビルサーガ アバタールチューナーⅠ [3.13]
- Fast: マスカレード・ホテル [1.9]
- Fast: 風の谷のナウシカ [3.13]
- Fast: 虐殺器官 - Genocidal Organ [3]
- Fast: 蛇にピアス [2.29]
- Fast: 感応グラン=ギニョル [3]
- Fast: 村上海賊の娘 [2.78]
- Fast: 砂漠 (さばく a campus life) [2.33]
- Fast: さわらびの譜 [3]
- Fast: 風が強く吹いている [2.5]
- Fast: マリアビートル [2.5]
- Hard: 檸檬 [3.67]
- Hard: 風立ちぬ [3]
- Hard: 午後の曳航 [3]
- Hard: 文字渦 [3.88]
0 voters
9 Likes
Lol all 3 of the ones I wanna read start with 風
11 Likes
Oh? Sounds like one of those might be worth reading, then. 
AKA finally Nausicaä’s time to shine!
4 Likes
I hope so! I have the whole set
3 Likes
@NicoleIsEnough – should we update the thread title to say “Now Voting” ?
2 Likes
Just going to call out that 虐殺器官 has an audiobook too 
3 Likes
Oh thank you! Totally slipped my mind. I guess I need to write up a procedures list now that I’m approaching old age or so it seems 
Fixed!
3 Likes
Maybe also change the thread title for the IBC while you’re at it? 
3 Likes
@Belthazar I noticed that Nausicaä is going strong this time around!
In preparation for the possibility of it being picked, do you have any idea of a possible schedule? Mainly, do you think it can / should be read in 6 weeks or below? Or would it take more time?
Trying to find out whether we’d read the second place winner right afterwards or not…
2 Likes
Hah, that’s a good question. It doesn’t have any chapters, so it doesn’t automatically divide into chunks (though when doing a re-read, I do sometimes keep an eye out for points in the story where I’d put breaks if I were adapting it into a 26-episode anime series).
There’s 128 pages in the first volume, and if we chopped that into six equal chunks, that’d be 21-22 pages per week. Flipping through the book with that ballpark in mind, good places to break, story-wise, might be:
| Week | Stopping page | Length of reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 28 | 20 |
| 2 | 50 | 22 |
| 3 | 71 | 21 |
| 4 | 93 | 22 |
| 5 | 112 | 19 |
| 6 | 136 | 24 |
Though this isn’t taking into account how many pages there are in each section with comparatively little dialogue. Perhaps it’d be preferable to move the stop at 112 a couple of pages later, but the whole section from 95 to the end is one long action scene that doesn’t really pause for breath.
As a test, I managed to read the first ten pages in about ten minutes, albeit without stopping to look up any vocabulary, so twenty pages in a week doesn’t feel too onerous. And also with the caveat that the first ten pages contains only dialogue from Nausicaä and noone else.
6 Likes
OK so that sounds as if 6 weeks or less is absolutely doable, I guess. Thanks, that’s what I needed to know right now!
We read books at 30+ pages a week – wouldn’t we want to be reading a manga at a higher weekly page count than that?
4 Likes
Definitely! That’s why I said “or less” 
I just didn’t want to kick off a full-blown schedule discussion unless the poll is in.
2 Likes
We might want to consider reading two volumes?
1 Like
Yeah I don’t know what the manga looks like but it sounds like the ABC pace should be closer to 1 volume per week? e.g. if you compare 30 pages of a novel at 15 pages per hour that’s 2 hours. Given Belthazar’s estimate of 1 page per minute that’s 120 pages in 2 hours which is all of volume 1. (Edit: I might skip this one btw since I’m not sure I want to buy the physical books and there’s no digital version afaik, so I’m just throwing this out there as a data point, feel free to ignore it)
4 Likes
I was gonna say one volume every two weeks, just because I think my enjoyment might disappear if I had to read a whole volume in a week.
It’s not that expensive thankfully!
4 Likes