While I support your sentiment to keep the number of nominations at a reasonable number, I’m not sure whether it makes sense to throw nominations out before voting. Maybe it would be better to remove the lowest-scoring nominations after each poll (or maybe those that scored worst over the last 3 polls or something, to get a more consistent picture)?
3 Likes
I’m considering doing that for the intermediate book club, but at the same time low scoring entries have little to no impact since, by definition, almost no one is voting for them. So I have decided for now to just leave them in there until we get 20 entries. I figure we could do the same here.
2 Likes
But this would be a cull to follow on from our last vote 
When we introduced the cull it didn’t make sense to keep doing it for the next couple of votes, because we didn’t have all that many nominations. So I’m just wondering whether it makes sense to revisit it now. It’s not a problem if we decide to keep everything though ^^
Everything definitely gets to appear in at least two polls before being kicked: how well something does can vary widely between polls. I’ll add my comparison of the eligible nominations in a bit, as that might be helpful to the conversation.
I kind of agree (that’s why I don’t mind if we decide to keep everything), but I also think it’s a little overwhelming for new people to have to look through 20 nominations…
5 Likes
OK, fair enough 
Technically it makes no difference do remove them right after a poll vs. before the next poll. I was just thinking, if I was looking forward to voting for somethng because I discovered it in the nominations list, and if it then disappeared, it would feel weird to me…
I also think it makes a bit of a difference to have lots of nominations in the intermediate book club versus having lots of nominations in the beginner book club. So like I said, if you want to trim the list for this club, by all means go ahead
1 Like
That’s a very fair point. We still have about a month to go until we start voting, so I guess I hadn’t considered that people might already be eyeing things up.
Editing to add comparison
table & essay
These are the manga which have appeared in at least two polls. I didn’t include books because we only have three and I figure the variety is a good thing.
| Title | % Poll 1 | % Poll 2 | % Poll 3 | % Poll 4 | Notes | Average % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Laid-Back Camp | 6 | 30 | 31 | Topped two most recent polls | 19 | |
| Nordic Girl | 21 | 21 | Highest average | 21 | ||
| Attack on Titan | 17 | 12 | 14.5 | |||
| Haikyuu | 22 | 15 | 14 | 17 | ||
| Dragonball | 11 | 8 | 10 | 21 | 12.5 | |
| Detective Conan | 17 | 8 | 10 | 29 | Came third in most recent poll | 16 |
| Naruto | 15 | 9 | 6 | 10 |
So if we were going to remove any nominations, Naruto would be top of the list: it has received less than 10% of the vote twice, in the two most recent polls, has the lowest average, and has the lowest ‘high score’ at only 15%.
Dragonball would be next: it has had four chances, received less than 10% on one occasion, and has the next lowest average. It’s never done better than ‘middling’.
After that it gets a little harder to distinguish; I think Detective Conan gets a pass because it came third in the last poll though. Haikyuu has a higher average than Attack on Titan, did better in the last poll and has a better ‘high score’, but Attack on Titan has only had two chances. I would only get rid of these if we really needed to trim the numbers and were looking at getting rid of both.
tl;dr - get rid of Naruto and maybe Dragonball, only get rid of Haikyuu and Attack on Titan if we’re desperate (which we’re not)
/essay
5 Likes
If it is still a month to go, then I see no problem at all. I was more thinking of removing it right before the start of the voting.
Also, I fully agree with your conclusions regarding what to remove.
2 Likes
Yeah, I enjoyed 聲の形, but I don’t think I’d vote to do it in book club…
1 Like
Can you think of any non-slice of life, non-action manga that would work well for book club? I know you’ve read a lot in English so maybe you have something.
1 Like
Ah, I suck at distilling huge lists of things down to a concise set of suggestions. I’ll go have a poke through and see what I can come up with.
ナウシカ? 
2 Likes
For the nonexistent Advanced Book Club? 
1 Like
Well, here’s… a list. Not sure of all of their names in Japanese. And certainly not their difficulty levels.
Delicious in Dungeon
Noragami
Silver Spoon
Mushishi ()
Bakuman
Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer
Planetes
Twin Spica
Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro
Excuding “slice of life” and “action” rules out probably the majority of my collection, though. And kinda nebulous - is, say, Interviews with Monster Girls slice-of-life? Because it sure doesn’t resemble any slices of my life that I’ve ever seen. Is Food Wars action? Because all they do is cook, but they do so with all the flair of Light Yagami eating a potato chip.
6 Likes
Isn’t that also kind of risque too though? Maybe not best for book club.
I still need to read my English copy of this…
I don’t know some of the others you mentioned, so I’ll look them up later.
I always interpreted slice-of-life (within the manga/anime sphere rather than generally) as being about the level of driving plot. Lots of series I would consider slice-of-life have fantasy elements that take them away from the mundane, but are still just depicting ‘the day-to-day’ without much overarching narrative.
Much though I love Food Wars with all my heart and soul, I think it’s probably too ecchi for this book club and therefore we don’t have to worry about classifying it
5 Likes
What about music-based stories, like Blue giant or ハレルヤオーバードライブ?
Are they slice-of-life as well? 
Personally I think reading music stories could be disappointing since there’s no actual music.
2 Likes
that makes sense. I really liked both of those, though.
Otherwise, is sports considered action?
1 Like
By action I really meant stereotypical shounen action like Dragonball or Naruto.
1 Like
Oh, what about ボールルームへようこそ? Got it recommended to me a while ago and completely forgot about it.
That being said, do we really need more manga recommendations? I don’t know what I’m doing.
1 Like
I don’t have much manga on my plan to read list, and some of it would be too hard for the beginner book club. For example:
- 青い花
- がっこうぐらし
- かくかくしかじか
All three of those have no furigana.
Only other one I’d consider nominating is この美術部には問題がある, but I don’t own it yet. I don’t remember if @Ditto20 was going to nominate やがて君になる even though it’s a niche topic.
I’m not personally interested in that.
I don’t know. I’m bored.
2 Likes
I decided not to since I’ve already nominated one manga that may be a bit niche, but anyone else who wants to nominate it is free to.
1 Like