Something I’m considering as a goal in 2021 is to read through the whole Chronicles of Narnia series in Japanese. These books were a big part of my childhood reading and I bought the whole series in Japanese a while ago as a way to commemorate that (and found them far too difficult at the time).
I’m thinking of a pretty relaxed schedule, maybe ~7 weeks per book which would stretch the series across the whole year; maybe a little faster with a week break in between each one. Is this something anyone would be interested in? When I get home I can check page numbers and post some example pages.
Alright, so I dug my box set out of storage and checked the page counts. Including あとがき and all that, we’re looking at a total of 2,307 pages; an average of 329 pages per book with the first one, ライオンと魔女, being the lightest at 275.
So, to read the whole series in one year (assuming reading every single day), that’s a little over 6 pages per day. Now that I do the numbers I’m seeing that this is actually the same as the current fast pace of the Advanced book club so it’s maybe not quite as leisurely as I had anticipated it’s just a lot less than I’ve been personally doing.
Numbers:
7 books/2,307 pages in a year
1 book every 6 weeks, with a one-week break after each one (for rest or catching up)
54 pages per week
~7 pages per day
Concerns and caveats:
This is a pretty ambitious pace for my current reading speed. At the time of writing I’m struggling to read 10 pages per day of 狼と香辛料 (though it probably has to do with the subject matter being very much out of my wheelhouse) on top of keeping up with 本好きの下剋上. 7 pages per day is not a small commitment.
A bookclub that lasts an entire year? What kind of lunatic would get involved with that! I would expect retention to be rather low.
It costs about 5000円 for the whole series
Reading Japanese-native material is by-and-large considered to be the way to go
. There’s always the potential for something to be mistranslated or phrased in an unnatural way.
Sample
Bookwalker has a 試し読み version available here. There also seems to be a new edition with manga-style illustrations instead of the original ones by Pauline Baynes and full furigana, which may be of interest to some people, but I haven’t checked into it to make sure the text is a perfect match.
In case you’d rather have an embedded image, here are some screenshots of the first few pages:
Yeah, honestly before I added them all up I didn’t realize how long it all was! Even as a kid I could read one of them cover to cover in a day, so I guess I was expecting it to be a bit lighter. Fortunately the writing doesn’t seem very difficult but it would definitely be an undertaking.
it’s just a lot less than I’ve been personally doing.
