"Flesh&Blood" Pirate Series Reading Club šŸ“ā€ā˜  ā›µ

Japanese Language Book Clubs
#1

Welcome to the ā€œFlesh&Bloodā€ Reading Club!

This is a BL series by ę¾å²”ćŖ恤恍 about a boy who time-travels back to the time of pirates! Despite the series being labelled as BL, it starts off very lightly on that topic and rather dives into English and Spanish history of the time as well as famous pirate and non-pirate figures.

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See also: FLESH & BLOOD | L31 | Natively | The book-reading community for Japanese language learners

This series has spawned some interest recently in the Read Every Day Challenge, and so I thought we might as well have our own thread to keep track of who is interested in reading, and maybe to also discuss the books.

This turned out to be more popular than I expected (yay :tada:) so Iā€™ve decided to go with one thread per volume to avoid too much confusion:

Interest Poll

  • Yay, Iā€™m in!
  • Keep me in the loop, but I wonā€™t promise anything.
  • Iā€™m good, thank you.

0 voters

Volumes Read

  • Iā€™ve finished Volume 1
  • Iā€™ve finished Volume 2
  • Iā€™ve finished Volume 3
  • Iā€™ve finished Volume 4
  • Iā€™ve finished Volume 5
  • Iā€™ve finished Volume 6
  • Iā€™ve finished Volume 7
  • Iā€™ve finished Volume 8
  • Iā€™ve finished Volume 9
  • Iā€™ve finished Volume 10

0 voters

Discussion Rules

Discussing anything is fine, be it about language questions, about the contents or about real historic events! Please state clearly which volume and chapter youā€™re referring to, and please hide spoilers. Also, donā€™t forget the forum etiquette, of course.

Buying the Books

If youā€™re planning to buy the books on Bookwalker or Amazon and if youā€™re outside of Japan, you will need a VPN to buy them. Afterwards, you can download them to the app without the need for a VPN. I think you cannot read them in the browser without VPN, though. Please see the individual threads for direct links to the volumes.

Historical Figures and Events

The book mentions a lot of real (as far as we know :sweat_smile:) historical figures and events. Here is a list of Wikipedia articles on them:
(Please be aware that if you want to go in 100% blind, this list will contain some spoilers for you)

Historical Figures, Events and Places

Please help sort them roughly in order of appearance :bowing_woman:

Land's End - Wikipedia
Plymouth - Wikipedia

Francis Drake - Wikipedia
Buckland Abbey - Wikipedia

Battle of Lepanto - Wikipedia (they used a very different name for this in the book - please add it here if you encounter it)

Elizabeth I - Wikipedia
Mary, Queen of Scots - Wikipedia
Philip II of Spain - Wikipedia

Francis Walsingham - Wikipedia

Spanish Armada - Wikipedia

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Nicole needs a thread to herself -- A Study Log of sorts
"Flesh&Blood" Vol. 1 - Pirate Series Reading Club :pirate_flag: :sailboat:
:books::books: Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 :cherry_blossom: :seedling:
#2

Iā€™m in but have a few other things to finish off so will likely be a few weeks before starting. Sounds fun though!

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#3

@ekg one of your favs isnā€™t it?

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#4

I think @eefara was planning to read Vol. 1 soon-ish as well? That sounds like a good start already :blush:

I have some reading clubs going on soon, plus JLPT is looming over my head :cold_sweat: so I will probably start Vol. 2 around August or even later. Maybe we can match our reading schedules to read Vol. 2 together then?

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#5

yeah, that sounds pretty manageable! I should probably also do some studying for the JLPT sometime, itā€™s approaching too fastā€¦ :sweat_smile:

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#6

Ooh, a whole thread and everything? This feels so official. :sparkles:

This would be great for me as well. That should give me plenty of time to work my way through volume 1, make sure I can pick out all that juicy historical vocab.

Also, itā€™s not mentioned in the OP, but you can also definitely buy the books on Amazon, as usual, though that also requires a VPN for your first couple of purchases.

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Master List of Book Clubs
#7

It is. I started in on volume one but somehow didnā€™t really get going.

@NicoleRauch Thanks for making this book club! I might finally get to reading some text only media in Japanse! :grin: Count me in!

So, are people already reading vol 1? Would be great to read with everyone else, if there was a schedule.

Having a Vocab list would also be nice I think, so we can help each other out with kanji and words we encounter while reading. :slight_smile:

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#8

Does anyone know where to find a translated version of this. I was looking but coulnā€™t find. I am not at the level where I can comfortably enjoy this in Japanese yet but wanted it in English.

#9

I kind of doubt there is a translation of FLESH & BLOOD. :thinking:

#10

@NicoleRauch has already finished vol. 1, Iā€™m not sure if @eefara has started yet? If you were okay waiting a couple of weeks before starting (so maybe start of next month?) then thatā€™s about when Iā€™m planning on starting reading (could potentially push back a little further if that helps).

Unfortunately I wouldnā€™t be much help with that as I use monolingual dictionaries, sorry!

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#11

Sounds good to me! :+1: :slight_smile:

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#12

Ah! Thatā€™s fine. Everyone has their own method. I might start my own vocab list though for the time being. :thinking:

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#13

Hey, lots of activity here already :heart_eyes_cat:

Thanks to @eefara for adding this to the Master List! (I keep forgetting this, grrrā€¦)

Iā€™ve turned the OP into a Wiki so everybody can edit it! @eefara maybe you can add the buying info for Amazon?
Also @ekg I was not planning to make a vocab list but please feel free to link yours in the OP as well - Iā€™m sure others will contribute as well.

Also I was thinking of adding a list of Wikipedia links regarding the real historical figures and events to the OP. Of course now that Iā€™ve already read the book, I donā€™t remember everything but if yā€™all want you can of course add to the list as well.

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#14

Man, I close my eyes for short nap and thereā€™s so much activity. :open_mouth:

I would definitely contribute to a vocab list; if you start one up, post it in the OP and Iā€™ll definitely contribute!

Thereā€™s nothing as far as I know, not even a fan translation. There might be fan translations of some of the drama CDs still hanging around, though; you could check those out.

I havenā€™t started yet myself. Would you guys be interested in informally starting at the beginning of June? Thatā€™d give me time to finish up my current books as well.

:+1:

Youā€™re very welcome, and will do. o7

Thatā€™s a really good idea! Could be fun to compare F&B vs. real versions if things start going off the rails, haha.

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#15

Sounds like a plan! :+1:

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#16

Vocab sheet created and added to the OP wiki! ^>^

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#17

Thank yoouuu~ Do you know if thereā€™s a good was to subdivide the first book @NicoleRauch? I took a quick peek at it earlier; seems it should be divided into chapters, but my Kindle copy doesnā€™t explicitly list out how many there are.

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#18

For sure. I merely started a couple of sheets, one per volume. But that might easily become difficult to navigate. :thinking:

I guess, one sheet per chapter makes more sense. Then maybe to create a new one for the next volume?

Edit: i remade the sheets - > chapter 1, 2 and 3. We can make more later. :slight_smile:

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#19

Yes, the book is comprised of 9 chapters. After that there is a chapter called äŗˆę„Ÿ (this seems to be a preview of sorts? Is this a common thing?) and then there is a short 恂ćØ恌恍.
(Unfortunately I juuust deleted my chapter markers :sob: so I cannot tell you the exact percentages. The chapters are of varying lengths so if you want to subdivide the book in order to have weekly allotments of roughly equal length, it might be better to go by page count in factā€¦)

I think that would be a reasonable thing to do.

Oh and I forgot to ping @MissDagger who is also interested iirc?

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#20

Made 9 chapters. For some reason, it refused to accept the 8th and 9th chapter names. Dunno whatā€™s going on with that. XD

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