Aria the Masterpiece Home Thread (Beginner Book Club / Aria Book Club)

I’d considered nominating it for the book club, but it’s a hard sell to read only one volume out of the five when it’s so story driven.

This is true; but that’s not to say that you/me/we couldn’t do a separate reading of our own, and invite others who may be interested to join. :point_up:

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Rather. It drove me nuts that ninety percent of the plot is driven by the fact that she’s too shy to do anything, even when she’s aware that (a) her shyness is the cause of everything, and (b) not being shy makes things better for her.

I enjoyed it otherwise, though. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I tried to find some Aria bookmarks on Amazon.jp, but I couldn’t find any that would ship to me (or were new or reasonably priced for that matter).

So what are you using now?

I finally got my copy \o/ I was worried; cd japan had it on backorder for quite a while.
I’m really excited~ this’ll be my first book club

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Just some not so great bookmarks I had lying around. :frowning:

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You could always use a fork?

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Today was the latest expected date for my book to be delivered, but nothing arrived yet. Perhaps customs snatched it, but they shouldn’t as it’s below the minimum value. Can’t do anything but wait I suppose and hope it’ll be here by the start date.

I use an old bus ticket. Are you judging me? :stuck_out_tongue:

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That’s interesting, at least.

I just read the first chapter because I wanted to try an experiment.

  1. Read the whole chapter without looking anything up. (I ended up looking up a few words I got really curious about, but otherwise I did this.)
  2. Read the whole chapter again, looking up everything that I don’t know and adding all of those words to the book club’s vocab sheet.
  3. Add all those words to an SRS program (Kitsun) and study them over the next two weeks.
  4. Read the chapter yet again with everyone else and see how much more I understand.

Also just some observations from reading the chapter:

The first few pages are a bit tough vocab-wise because it involves some world building. Hopefully the vocab sheet will help less experienced members, and if necessary we can work together to write up a full translation of those first few pages for those that need it. And remember, the first few pages are always the hardest. :slight_smile:

Second, there are some words that have made up furigana for the world/series. I’ve heard that this is done sometimes in manga, but it was interesting to see. I’m going to add guidelines for how to handle these in the vocab sheet.

And finally, based on the first chapter, I think the book will be as beautiful and interesting as we all hoped. :blush:

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y-you’re as beautiful and interesting as we all hoped!

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Rather. Some of those furigana are quite a bit of fun.

I never said they weren’t fun. :slight_smile:

Though the furigana can be hard to read since it’s so tiny.

I am N4 grammar, but still WK LVL3 (probably for 23rd of June, LVL 4/5) will I be able to follow up or should I wait more levels?

I’d say as long as you understand the grammar, the vocabulary is something you could easily look up. Even more considering the vocab list, so go for it! :slight_smile:

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It’s a manga written for natives, so there’s always going to be parts using grammar of any N level.

If it helps, I’ve almost finished volume 2 now (this manga is so good), and I haven’t had any major grammar issues (other than a certain character that may as well just be speaking gibberish). I passed the N4 a year ago, so I’m a bit above that level.

@seanblue is this bookmark acceptable? :slight_smile:

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That bookmark is amazing! Where did you get it?

From the Japanese Premium Edition of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana for the PSVita :slight_smile:

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