Intermediate Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: セーラー服と機関銃

Thanks for the reminder, but I am holding off on new nominations until next round. I am still recovering from a surgery in March and not fully confident in being able to read. Hopefully I can try to keep up with the next selection.

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Edit: I just realized I forgot to put difficulties in the poll. Oh well.

You know what time it is? It’s polling time!

Have a look at the List of Proposed Books section in the first post for details on each book. Every book has a difficulty associated with it (based on book club members voting, thus subjective) out of 5, where 1 means “no effort at all” and 5 means “impossible, even with everyone’s help”. (Or some other thing, depending on what is the current difficulty polling fashion).

Do not rely solely on difficulty when making a choice. Please have a look at nomination posts if you haven’t already.

We will start the next book on Aug 15th (Obon!) or Aug 22nd. (1 or 2 weeks of break, respectively)

I will close the poll within a week (and most likely before that), whenever it looks like voting has dried up. You can choose up to 5 options .

  • Your Name
  • ブギーポップは笑わない
  • ポーション頼みで生き延びます!
  • All You Need Is Kill
  • 空挺ドラゴンズ
  • ifの悲劇
  • 1リットルの涙 難病と闘い続ける少女亜也の日記
  • 最先端の日本酒ペアリング ー SAKE PAIRING
  • 聖☆おにいさん – Saint Young Men
  • 博士の愛した数式 - The Professor’s Beloved Equation
  • もやしもん - Tales of Agriculture
  • 乳と卵 - Breasts and Eggs
  • 変愛サイケデリック
  • ヨコハマ買い出し紀行

0 voters

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Yikes, things I’ve voted for are basically the bottom 5. Amazing :joy:

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ah! I read this one in english a while ago. seemed to neatly fit into this category of literature i have in my head : modern-short length-translated-japanese-fiction that somehow leaves you cold :relieved: the novels Kitchen, The Guest Cat, Strange Weather in Tokyo, Nakano Thrift Shop sit on that shelf for me too.

the maths stuff was really interesting, but I’ll grant myself a lifelong pardon for not understanding maths described in japanese. I’m tickled enough reading about maths in english.
but. I daresay this club can handle all that. together if not individually. now if i could just catch up with my reviews and start studying enough again to read along with the next book…
in the meanwhile, i’ve got my electronic dictionary and this to keep me company

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Is that ねずみ男 from ゲゲゲの鬼太郎? :astonished:

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はい!he appears in one of the stories.

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Maybe we should have a second poll for the top 3 or something to avoid the vote manipulation (I guess it wouldn’t remove it completely). It always feels really sketchy. Or is it possible to make a poll where you can’t change your answers after voting?

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But why though? :thinking: I feel like vote “manipulation” is perfectly fine. It’s the process of people crystalizing their votes toward something they want to read.
I’m more worried about the fact that it is indeed a tight race.

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I also think it’s totally fine for people to adjust their votes based on others’ votes. (We’re not doing politics here after all. (I hope.) :upside_down_face:)

If the votes remain that close together, we could indeed have a follow-up vote among the top 3 (or 4?) candidates. Or we could decide to read #1 plus the manga. Or decide to read the manga plus have a follow-up vote on the other three. Or … :exploding_head:

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As long as no one starts campaigning like “if you’re not voting seriously then pls vote for the books I want to read :pleading_face::joy::grimacing:

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“if you’re not voting seriously then pls don’t vote at all :pleading_face:

While it’s fine to drop a book club (things happen), I 100% expect people who voted on a given book to at least try to read it.

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Hmm, I feel when people move votes from books they voted for, but realize have no chance of winning, it kind of changes the result from “this is what most people want to read” to “this is what most people are okay about reading, instead of that other book”. I guess you could argue that is ok…

But take for example a situation where 50% of people have voted and some books are on the lead. The rest of the voters vote, but when they see the current situation, they can immediately move some of their “loser votes” to make them effective by votin for the top books. This can create a situation where some books would have had a chance in blind voting, but because of the beginning advantage of other books, they lose. Kind of how like US election system fails with third party candidates. No one votes for them because they have no chance of winning.

At least it makes it hard to make conclusions about the popularity of the books. But yeah I guess most people don’t want to game the system too hard, but theoretically it can become unfair.

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I see your point about it having a feeling of “manipulation”. But…

I would argue that this is exactly what we are looking for in the book club :woman_shrugging:

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When I vote, I’ll vote for the one I really want to read, and the two or three I kinda want to read - that way, a book I kinda want to read has a better chance of winning than a book that I don’t want to read. But if it turns out that one of the kinda-wants is beating the really-want by a vote or two, then you can bet I’ll remove my vote from the kinda to give the really a better chance.

Basically, when it’s against the whole pool, then any vote goes, but when it’s against the subset of books I’d like to read, I want to make my vote count more specifically.

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My biggest problem right now is that the book I voted for both here and in advanced book club is winning. Reading two books in addition to 獣の奏者 is gonna be tough. :sweat_smile:

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I don’t think that’s completely true. We have five votes and I think it would be uncommon for people to have 5+ books they absolutely want to read. I guess they are more likely to remove votes from a book that was at the bottom (that’s not my case though, I would basically move my votes around like @Belthazar) but I don’t think it would really change the chances of those books. (Sadly, since all the books I’d like to read this round are at the bottom). It does change the percentage of those books, though, which will eventually decided if they remain nominated or not. But that’s also mitigated by the fact that you need to perform poorly three rounds straight…

Tl;dr: there’s probably a negative effect, but I think it’s pretty minor.

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Good point, I’m very likely overestimating the effect :stuck_out_tongue: I guess it’s more the feeling that it’s possible to game, but in reality it probably doesn’t matter much.

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Check out these short informative videos on voting:
First past the post (most like the US): Minority Rule: First Past the Post Voting - YouTube.
The Alternative Vote: The Alternative Vote Explained - YouTube

We’re closer to first past the post because, like morteasd said, people are going to look at the results and pick between the front runners. (I probably contributed to killing “Your Name” in the last poll because of a last minute vote after looking at the results). A blind ranked choice vote would probably be better, but is a lot more work to pull off.

That said, I’ll read whatever you all decide on. If you say let’s read a ham sandwich, well, I’ll read a ham sandwich.

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I don’t understand what you don’t like about last-minute change. I mean if the book is not gonna win then you want to at least read a book you are interested in. The goal of the book club is the read book that the majority want to read. When people change vote last minute then you get a book that the majority want to read no? Instead of having for example 5 people that really want the book and 7 that do not want we have 3 that really wants and 10 that are interested. That makes more people ready, participating, and make it more democratic. The voted don’t get diluted that way and the real majority win. Have I missed something?

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Just FYI, I was posting from a voting theory perspective. It’s a really interesting topic to me. I really don’t care how you choose the books, to be honest. The method you’re using is probably suited well enough for the task at hand. It’s not like we’re electing a president, here. I like that you can choose multiple. I forgot about that.

I’ll probably do what I did last time. Wait until everyone else has voted, then read the descriptions of the top two contenders (last time it was Night Market and Your Name, and it was tied), then vote for the one I’d rather read (in that case, it was “Not Your Name”).

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