That’s not really the case for BBC manga though, right? Doesn’t the club almost always read one chapter a week except for the first week and exceptionally long chapters? I could imagine maintaining that one chapter a week pace (not sure about the first week) regardless of whether the manga is level 27 or 33.
EDIT: Okay, looking back through recent picks I see more exceptions than expected. But my point is we can enforce a BBC pace to make sure the book club works for people at that “just graduating from BBC” level.
I mean, there’s definitely no other club competing with mangas above BBC, so the worst thing that could happen is that the audience is too small. I’d be surprised though. Go for it, only one way to find out!
I haven’t read manga as hard as that yet. Isn’t one chapter/week for L27 and one chapter/week for L33 a pretty big difference? In the range that I know of, e.g. L20 to L26 is a pretty dramatic jump in difficulty. (But it might be fine too and just sound hard to me right now…)
If that’s the goal I’m good either way, and we can correct the course when we see what is working and what isn’t.
I’d definitely suggest only “Intermediate” in the club title then though, both to set clear expectations/focus and to make it less daunting for people coming from the BBC.
I’m probably showing my upper intermediate / advanced bias here, but I don’t see a big difference. If it takes me 10 minutes to read a chapter of an easy manga and an hour to read a chapter of a hard manga, that’s still not a big deal if the assignment is just one chapter for the whole week. Granted, I don’t take part in 20 book clubs like some people, so maybe some people don’t have as much time for each club.
If the people who want the new club want that to be a goal of the club I think that’s totally fine. It’s no different from how we enforce max page lengths for novel book clubs in both BBC and IBC. (That said, take everything I’m saying as just a (hopefully) helpful suggestion, since I’m not the target audience of this new club. Though I’ll still join if there’s a manga I’m interested in.)
Have you never been in a book club where “just” one chapter “for the whole week” was already hard for you? Now imagine 6 times that. That’s what I mean by “a pretty big difference”.
I’d imagine it’s only bigger for people who, unlike you, are slowly starting to consider L27 but aren’t even dreaming of tackling L33 yet.
I approve. I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m outgrowing the BBC, but I feel ready to try taking on more of a challenge! Would definitely be excited to see this club start up here.
Umm, not since like 4 years ago probably? I also tend to read L26 and lower just because I read whatever I want for enjoyment and that’s where they tend to be. L30+ manga are indeed a lot harder than L27, and I don’t read them very often at all. The ones I’ve read from 30-32 don’t take me longer than an hour for a chapter if I had to guess though. I think Nausicaa (L35 and read with ABC) did take me several days to read, largely from taking breaks due to mental exhaustion, not actual reading time.
Also, for what it’s worth, I don’t read that intensively. I look up many words I don’t know, but if I only “sort of” get the meaning of a sentence I tend to just move on. If I dissected every sentence to get near-100% understanding it would certainly take me many times longer to read a level 33 manga compared to level 27.
Oh hey, I know an ongoing club doing that which updates every Monday.
It seems like you definitely could based on your book club posts. I think it’s also worth considering that natively isn’t dead accurate. For example, Part 1 of JoJo has a lvl 30 ranking, while Parts 6 and 7 are listed as 26 and 27 despite the first volumes being more difficult than Part 1’s (due to court language, slang, etc.). But beginners aren’t usually jumping into those later Parts first. I’m guessing they try Part 1 first when it’s still relatively difficult for them and then either come back to or gradually get better at reading when they try the later Parts.
I just hope there’ll be an offshoot bookclub. It’s not like the first volume is boring or anything, but for me, the series didn’t really get addictive until the demons entered the stage.
Judging from the current proposed schedule, we’ll get to Usuzumi in about mid July but I have a slight inkling that you won’t leave it be for that long
Yeah, I saw the proposed schedule was super long… that’s why I don’t like selecting two books at once (even if the one I preferred would have lost the tie break anyway).
Nah, I’ll probably wait. I have so much else to read and haven’t been reading as much lately anyway, so I’m not in a rush.
The schedule for Frieren is up (weeks commencing April 19th - June 28th), so @Gorbit99 you can hang the schedule for ウスズミ off of that. (The last week of reading starts June 28th)
I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m outgrowing the BBC, but I feel ready to try taking on more of a challenge! Would definitely be excited to see this club start up here.
I also tend to read L26 and lower just because I read whatever I want for enjoyment and that’s where they tend to be. L30+ manga are indeed a lot harder than L27, and I don’t read them very often at all. The ones I’ve read from 30-32 don’t take me longer than an hour for a chapter if I had to guess though. I think Nausicaa (L35 and read with ABC) did take me several days to read, largely from taking breaks due to mental exhaustion, not actual reading time.
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