Comparison of Book Club Picks

@Naphthalene @seanblue
Good points! We’ll see when I could get my hands on it, and see if I could keep a good pace with both. I’ll see if my nearest bookstore has it. I’d really want to buy books used since they are a lot cheaper, but the nearest Book-Off is so inconventiently far away and the bus ticket price makes up for the difference ^^

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I’m currently reading Doraemon Vol. 1, and I found it very very approachable. Granted, there is quite a bit of text on the pages, so it might look intimidating, but I found the text very easy to read, with lots of simple vocabulary and plain grammar, and furigana for all kanji. (Actually, I will probably suggest it for the next Beginner Book Club poll.)

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I just added One Week Friends to this comparison. Does anyone who actually finished it have anything more insightful to add?

@Naphthalene want to update your thoughts on コンビニ人間 and ハルヒ?

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Indeed.

コンビニ人間

This book focuses on the everyday life of a 恵子, a middle-aged woman who’s been working at a konbini her whole adult life. It’s hard to say any more without spoiling the plot.

The story is emotionally charged and at the same time situations and vocabulary remain simple. I’d add that the writing is excellent (the author won a prestigious 芥川龍之介賞 for that book) and the story is quite short. Definitely a great book to transition into the “intermediate” level.

涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱

Yet another light novel, although this one is, as far as I know, particularly famous. The eponymous character does show up often in pop-culture at the very list.
It’s difficult for me to recommend this book. On the one hand, the plot, once it starts, is quite engaging. On the other hand, we have sexual assault used as comic relief. No matter how much the author meant it as a “joke”, I feel some people can get triggered by that (I definitely wasn’t happy about it).

That aside, the writing style is interesting, but difficult. The main character has long-winded, stream-of-thought internal monologues that can be challenging to parse without enough experience with Japanese texts. Additionally, people who read until the end were all advanced learner, meaning that past the first third of the book, there was no grammar or vocabulary questions, just comments on the story.

Overall, I’d say this book can be good for people who want a more challenging read while still having some support on grammar and vocab (at least for the first part of the story), with the caveat that some elements of the story can be considered untasteful, to say the least.

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I made it a wiki :sweat_smile: totally forgot you couldn’t edit it. I’m happy to add those bits though to save you even more work.

Thank you!

this entire thread has just been a long-con to trick Nath into picking books for me

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What level in WaniKani would you recommend being at to begin graded readers and what level to start Aria?

Is depends on your experience with grammar and vocab outside of WaniKani. Aria uses furigana for all kanji, so your kanji knowledge isn’t the most important factor.

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It’s minimal so far, I have dabbled with Duolingo but have that up upon realizing it’s not a great way to learn Japanese. I have also barely started Genki.

Yeah, Duo isn’t the greatest, unfortunately. If you’ve just started Genki, I would say finish at least the first book. Take advantage of the extra reading sections in the back of the book for good practice and prep for actual book reading. N5 level (the completion of the first Genki book) is a good base, I would say more so for graded readers than manga.

N4 (Genki II) is where reading will get LOADS easier, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still try in between.

There’s also a lot of material free on the web for reading practices at N5 and N4 levels, which would be worth looking at too. :slight_smile: Good luck!

If I could like your post again I would @Radish8! This is such a great write-up to help people decide what books to try out. :grin:

And I’m really interested to see your opinion of 魔女の宅急便 once you’ve read it with the re-read club. :slight_smile:

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That reminds me I have to write something about 氷菓.

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And probably final opinions on コンビニ人間 and ハルヒ.

? I did those already.

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Oh, I had only read your post with the first set of reviews and assumed you’d edit that one. Guess I should have searched harder. :upside_down_face:

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Oh, thank you! This was such a nice surprise to read as the first thing I saw this morning :blush:

I’ll give you a ping when I update it for Kiki :+1:

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Gah, I am so far behind on this.
Note to self: キッチン, 氷菓 and 夜市.
Also probably No 6, by the time I’m done with that.

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yaaay! :blush:

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Alright, here we go! I will put them in the OP as well, but just for the record.

No 6

The first book read by the club! Vintage! The book club thread feels much more like it would belong to the beginner club (focus on grammar question and sentence analysis) than to the current intermediate book club. I feel that it helps to balance out the overall difficulty of the book. While the sentences are fairly clearly written, we are dealing with an SF light novel with a focus on biology. Expect to learn a lot of nice words like 凝固阻止剤 (anticoagulant), 遺伝子 (gene) or サナギ (pupa).

Still, the book itself is very short (200 pages) and, while it is part of a longer series (9 books), stops at a nice breaking point. I feel like it’s a great book to start practicing for harder books while being short enough to not burn you out.

キッチン

A nice work of literature, which might be a better match for people who do not like light novels.
The book itself deals with romance and loss, and I thought it was pretty interesting but that might not be everyone’s thing.

The difficulty varies a lot during the book. Some parts will be crystal clear, then suddenly an internal monologue will use a fairly convoluted metaphor or a random dream sequence will destroy your ability to rely on context for comprehension. For those reasons, while the book itself isn’t that hard overall, I would still recommend it to people who are confident in their reading skills.
(Well, of course the threads will show you when we were scratching our heads as well, so it might be fine? :joy:)

氷菓

An other light novel set in a highschool environment. This one follows a literature club (a book club inside a book club! Going meta) as they solve mysteries going on around the school (?!?). It makes sense in context. The thing, though, is that those mysteries are “realistic”, i.e., pretty mundane. The good point is that it means easy vocabulary and situations all around! The bad point is that it can get boring at times, especially at the book club pace. However, if you are reading this, it means you can go as fast as you want!
In terms of difficulty, some characters tend to be quite verbose. It’s not as bad as キョン from ハルヒ, but it can be a bit challenging to parse at the intermediate level.

夜市

Written by the same author as 秋の牢獄, a lot of the comments on the other book apply here as well.
The book contain two stories, the titular 夜市 and 風の古道. Like 秋の牢獄, the sentence structure was clear and the vocabulary should not be too challenging at the intermediate level. For better or for worse, the stories were less dark and shocking than in 秋の牢獄. I guess that depends on individual tastes.

Being “more of the same”, this book could be read in place of 秋の牢獄 in the progression, or, if you like the style, as added practice.

Side note: there was some strange bug with the ebook version from Bookwalker/Booklive that added randomly the kanji 炷 in the middle of a sentence near the end (just before the actual use of that kanji). That certainly threw me off for a loop :joy: The printed version did not have that problem, and the kindle version used a different kanji altogether :exploding_head:

I’ll edit the progression as well.

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Having read each of these except one: did you enjoy reading No 6? Would you recommend it (not in terms of reading level etc)?

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Hmmm, I did enjoy it, because I like SF, but at the same time I don’t feel it’s revolutionary in any way. I’m not planning to read the rest of the series. So… I’d say it’s still a fun read, but it’s nothing special, except for the fact that it’s hard to find decent SF in Japanese.

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