Beginner Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: 約束のネバーランド・The Promised Neverland // Next: ひとりぼっちの〇〇生活

Yeah, I’ve read Howls moving Castle in English myself, different, but recognizable =)
Closer than Disney usually get with their versions at least :wink:
There really are more movie adaptions that differ a lot, towards unrecognizable, than there are “close to the book” adaptions I feel =P

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When I went to Japan two years ago, I looked in a number of book stores for digestible children books.

kowakute tanoshii obake no hanashi is a really nice collection of 90 short stories (each about 2-6 pages long). The stories are about fairytales and folklore from different countries :slight_smile: There are also different topics shown in amazon :slight_smile:Else i am currently reading the series リトル プリンセス, but it is more for girls, I guess (still nice to read) . Again, both have easy grammar and work with furigana. Absolutely recommendable :slight_smile:

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Wow! That definitely seems like a good option! :slight_smile:

I’ve seen used books costing 1円 on Amazon and I don’t get how it can be that cheap lol Are those donations or something?

I’d like to read something that’s not a manga, and, more importantly, that is easily available in e-book format. Shipping anything from anywhere into Brazil takes forever, by the time it arrived I’d likely be fluent already.

Great idea! I’d be interested in joining.

if you want to start out with something that’s easy for everyone to get ahold of, what about one of the Hukumusume stories? Loading... They’re really short, so perhaps we could read the whole thing and then discuss at the end.

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by searching for that princess book I stumbled across this cute Star Wars book series: Vader’s Little Princess
The text is cute and simple, very short lines of easy to understand text. Handwritten and no furigana, so still a bit of a challenge. Probably not book club material since there is about one line per page, but I’m getting the set cause I’ve always wanted it anyway! (both Japanese and English version)

Also grabbed the first book you mentioned, with the 90 short stories. I kinda collect those already =P
Put a few of the princess ones on Saved for later, might grab them some other time. they did look very girly, and i’m not, even though I am a girl :wink:

That is tempting, but I’m not sure if I want to buy the whole series right now… It’s tempting, but I can’t really afford it right now. Maybe I can… We will see. If you can get all 13 volumes for 500Nok, buying 3 for 200Nok seems like a bit of a waste.

How would the book club work? Would we be reading volume one, or multiple volumes? I’m new to this book club format, could somebody explain a bit more how it works? I’m guessing we wait for a bit, then run a poll on what to read, then we all buy the book, start reading it and discuss here. Something like that?

Yeah, this phase is just thinking up ideas and collecting material to be voted on =)

With mangas I assume we will only do 1, not full set. I just got the set for my own collection really.

Maybe we should set up a quick vote who will join if we do manga?
As there are some that will only join on books, it could be interesting to see what people think =)

Quick poll to see what people are interested in. If enough interest on both we can do whichever gets the most vote and vary between the two. If a lot of people will only do one we might need to focus our attention on the one.

There will only be one at a time anyway, to focus our attention =)

  • Will join both on book and manga
  • Will only join on book
  • Will only join on manga

0 voters

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I went with only join on manga but that’s solely because of the amount of time I will be able to dedicate to it at this time, not because it’s a type of book preference. I feel like I would have an easier time keeping up with a group that’s reading a manga than I would a novel or whatever else we go with. Maybe it’s silly of me to think that, but I guess I’ll find out? :woman_shrugging:

ETA : I won’t be upset or offended if the group decides to go the book route first. I’ll still be able to join up on book 2 or 3 when I have more time to dedicate to it. :slight_smile:

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Nah, that is a valid reason and probably correct. I find mangas are much easier. Which is why we consider them at all, since other material might be too difficult at first =)

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Ok I’m glad I’m not being silly then. lol

I just don’t want to burn myself out by trying to focus on too many things at once and end up setting myself back further than I could’ve been if I had taken it slower. Again, whatever the group decides is perfectly fine. I’ll still be studying and progressing either way. :+1:

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I wanted to check out the Japanese folk lore ones, cause I love those. But I found only option to be hiragana on the reading (as well as English, Chinese and Spanish that is :wink: ) No kanji? I prefer furigana over full kana only, I recognize so many words by their kanji it actually makes it hard to read. Maybe I just got lost, cause the site was a bit confusing.
I looked at first story, here: http://hukumusume.com/douwa/English/jap/01/01_j&E.html
I do love how we could put the Japanese and English line by line like that though, that was a nice touch =)

Try the bulleted links instead (Japanese Classic Stories, Classical Stories of the World, etc etc). Those are Japanese-only and have basic kanji in them.

EDIT: this page also sorts the stories by grade level.

I’ve actually never looked at the Japanese/English ones before, neat!

EDIT AGAIN: Oops meant to reply to @Abstormal not as a general reply.

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I went with just manga because the really easy books to read are usually boring in the long run for an adult. Manga looks like a good compromise to me. ofc if there was an easy to read book with an interesting story I would not mind reading it.

I would be interested, but I am not able to edit the post. Mind adding me?

Also, I personally prefer things like よつばと!and other reading that are less oriented toward young dudes, and more toward general audiences.

Thanks!

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Done :slight_smile:

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I will want to join only on books, but I am looking for something easier than No.6. Not that I can’t read it, but I am too poor in comprehension; also, I am too lazy to open a dictionary or bother if Kindle dictionary doesn’t work.

But I want something full length and deeper than a manga. Also, I want to eliminate help from images.

Thanks, @Abstormal for the poll.

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Please add me to the list since I cannot edit yet.

I have Yotsuba, so I am ready to go if we do it. I also picked up these when I got it to help me read it Yostuba Reading Packs but never did it. That is why I like the idea of the club, to help me keep motivated to read more.

With that said, I am also open to do doing a book instead of manga. I will be happy either way.

Thanks!

I’d like to be added to the list please.