I almost think it would be better to have physical copies. I’m a book hoarder, so having a copy of a book I finished would almost be physical proof that I got through it versus a file on my computer.
i’m fairly certain that pirating links are strictly not allowed. but i would personally check with a person of higher rank!
i took the cheapest shipping option with no tracking and i feel like that was a stupid move.
it appears to be that i’m screwed.
let’s hope it shows up!
Yes, it is against the Community Guidelines to post any 
content, so removing the link as soon as you can would be for the best, please! 
Sorry for the post yesterday,
Im fairly new and not familiar with the community guidelines.
I can assure that it wont happen again.
I’m Sorry!
it’s totally fine!!
Just got my book! 
Also, impatient me was like: “Why wait if I can start reading right away?” but discovered that the excel vocab doc is empty 
That’s the perfect opportunity to add to it. 
The vocab sheets tend to get filled in closer to the time of the book club start, since most folks won’t have read it and contributed to it just yet. 
If you want to start (even way) ahead, be my guest. The only thing you won’t get to partake then is the discussions while reading, and of course the vocab sheet. But on the opposite end you could then help people getting stuck. Your choice really.
I’ve had a bit of a start at reading my digital version, partly to see what I’ve let myself in for and partly because one of the first pages is so beautiful I wanted to know what it said. I’m probably going to leave it now and wait to start the book club with the physical copy when it (hopefully) arrives as I’m finding the digital format hard work
Hello everyone, I am an absolute absolute beginner, only level 2 here on WaniKani!
Other than that, I have completed the Japanase Assimil.
Anyways this is one of my favorite manga, so I’ll join and see how it goes, very much looking forward to it in any case!!
This is exciting! I love hxh very much, will try to join in on this for the first time! 
Will it only be the first volume?
It will be the first volume, but usually afterwards if there is enough interest, an offshoot book club starts where you can read the rest. (though let me preface this, those are much harder and are notoriously bloody, if that’s a pain point for you). I don’t think I’ll be leading the offshoot club, because right after this one I lead the next abbc book club as well, but someone will probably take over.
gotcha! 
i’ve watched the anime and read some of the post-adaptation chapters (in english thought) so no worries there for me haha
i been reading some manga probably around the same level if not bit harder so i think i’ll be fine if that regard as well, i’m excited!
Nah, I was just trying to see if I could read it without others’ input, but nope, I only got like 50-60% of what was going on 
Also, neither Jisho nor google translate are helpful when it comes to context, so yeah, I’ll just wait.
Google translate is usually quite bad at this, try deepl, that gets you way better results.
Hi everyone! First community post from me (woo!) XD
I really want to join in on this as I’ve been looking to join a book club for a while now and love HxH, but in everyone’s honest opinion would it be a bit too much for me as a mere LvL 4 person?
In terms of my general skills at the language I would consider myself an absolute beginner, having studied for only 3 months so far, though I have been going hard at it during that time. Still, I am not delusional and realise that I am basically still very much a complete beginner with years of intense study ahead of me. Having said that, if it would be possible to read along with HxH at this level and still get anything out of it at all then I would be very happy. I’m not sure how realistic that idea is though.
What do you guys think? Would it be a pointless endeavour at this point? Or do you think there’s still benefits that even absolute beginner’s like myself could get out of it? Or would it just be a demotivational exercise in frustration? XD
Thanks!
Depends on you really, but we generally tend to say, that you should have gotten through at least something like genki I (and II maybe), or tae kim’s guide. Without those, unless you like to read a sentence and then google for an hour, I wouldn’t really recommend it. Without that, it will be difficult to even recognize the verbs and such.
Having weak kanji or vocab knowledge is usually the lesser of the problems, because of the vocab sheet, but of course, that can be frustrating as well.
Try reading one or two of the sample pages. If you feel like you could read the entire thing at that speed without giving up, then try.
Of course the club won’t go away after the fact, even if you come back in 3 months or even a year, you can ask questions and someone’s bound to answer.
I appreciate your candour =) I feel highly motivated by what you have told me; it gives me a goal to reach by the starting time of the 27th Aug! I am half way through Genki 1, so I can prioritise finishing that and also Tae Kim’s guide (which i am also currently using as a resource), and though I realise I will most likely still struggle like crazy it will still be a nice reward for an intense month of study in prep for it and should act as good feedback as to whether or not i went about studying for it the right way.
I think as well; the aspect of the book club i would value the most is the actual reading along with everyone, rather than coming back later once it is all done and soloing it. I could talk to people that way and hear how they work everything out and just have some more live learning, as well as experience a live community of other Japanese-language lovers and HxH lovers!
As for reading speed and what that would need to be to count as comfortable reading; I have no idea how to conceptualise that XD I wouldn’t know what would be considered too slow, or what the rate of speed is supposed to be relative to the amount of time I’ve spent learning Japanese. I’m guessing you mean how slowly I would find myself reading before I got bored? Like the 1 hour per sentence example?
That reminds me actually! Sorry if this is a basic b**** question, but how can we look up unknown kanji from the physical copy of the book? I have no idea how I would go about inputting that info in order to search for it and find out what it means. Would that only be possible if there is furigana for me to use to search with?
It depends on a lot of factors, even reading experience funnily enough, you can expect to read faster by the end of the book club even if you didn’t spend a single minute studying. But it also depends on how much you can concentrate and such, so you wouldn’t know until you try to actually read a page or two.
This is not a physical only issue, the digital version is a bunch of images, so you can’t copy and paste text from it.
The manga has furigana though, so don’t worry, if you type that in, you can either have you ime suggest the kanji version, or the dictionary site you use.
If for some reason there isn’t furigana on something (this happens on signs in the background a lot), then the tried and true method is radicals. You already met the wk version of that, though real dictionaries use different ones often.
also, most of the time, unless you are a very early reader, the vocab sheet will have those as well (usually, not always)