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

I’ve got two books I want to nominate. Just trying to decide whether to put them in Intermediate or Beginner.

Or whether me nominating books is a death knell for them…

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Which ones are they?

Would telling you be as harmful to their chances of being selected as an actual nomination? :stuck_out_tongue:

But seriously though, they’re ラーメン大好き小泉さん (leaning towards Beginner for this) and 山と食欲と私 (leaning towards Indermediate).

Hehe you do seem to like that genre :joy_cat:
I agree with your verdict in general (of which book club they should go in). I’d definitely put the first one in Beginner, and the other one is debatable, but given the lack of furigana, it sounds fine to me to have it in Intermediate (of course with a higher reading pace).

山と食欲と私

Mountains, Appetite, and Me

Summary

Japanese

27歳、会社員の日々野鮎美は、「山ガール」と呼ばれたくない自称単独登山女子。美味しい食材をリュックにつめて今日も一人山を登るのでした。欲張りウィンナー麺、雲上の楽園コーヒー、魅惑のブルスケッタ、炊きたてご飯のオイルサーディン丼等々。読むとお腹がすく&山に登りたくなる! WEBマンガサイト「くらげバンチ」で最速で100万アクセスを突破したアウトドア漫画の決定版誕生!

English

Ayumi Hibino, a 27-year-old company employee, is a self-proclaimed solo mountaineer who doesn’t want to be called a “mountain girl”. Today, she packs her backpack with delicious ingredients and climbs the mountain alone. There are greedy wiener noodles, paradise coffee on the clouds, enchanting bruschetta, oil sardine rice bowl with freshly cooked rice, and more. Reading it will make you hungry & want to climb a mountain!

Availability

Amazon
BookWalker
Can also read chapters 1-3, and assorted later chapters, for free on the publisher’s website

Personal Opinion

Well, it’s that niche, ya know? Outdoor activities and yummy food. Laid-back camping without the laid-back… uh, or the camping. Wait, can I start again?

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Fun activities you can try at home!
  • Every chapter is precisely ten pages long, so there’s no need to worry about differing page counts from week to week.
  • There’s already twelve volumes out, so lots to get hooked on.

Cons

  • Dangerous to read while hungry.

Pictures

First Three Pages of Chapter One

Additional Pages

Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Moderate effort
  • Significant effort
  • So much effort my head might explode
  • I don’t know

0 voters

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I just got a copy of 「おばちゃんたちのいるところ」, which I think might fit with this club, but I’m hoping to read 「容疑者Xの献身」 with the Advanced club, so going to hold off nominating until next time.

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Well, I’m moving this over from the advanced book club, as it’s way too easy to read for that club. It should be a perfect fit here.

くま クマ 熊 ベアー

Author : くまなの (Not their real name, I assume)

Summary

Japanese

引きこもりゲーマーのユナが、いつものようにファンタジーRPGゲームにログイン! すると、可愛いクマの装備を身につけて、自分が知らない森の中に!? 装備も変だし、レベルも1に戻ってるし、ゲームがバグった? それとも、まさかの異世界に来ちゃったの!? クマ装備はへんてこだけど、かなり強くて手放せない。冒険者ユナ、最恐クマっ娘として爆誕です!

English

(By the US publisher)
A dedicated gamer and antisocial shut-in downloads an update to her favorite fantasy RPG–only to find herself sucked into the game world for real. Reset to level one and equipped with only a cute bear onesie that grants her impressive abilities, Yuna sets out to explore her new reality–even though the fact that she can’t seem to take the bearsuit off gives her paws, er, pause!

Length : 306

Availability

Amazon
Bookwalker

Personal Opinion

This is the first volume in a popular series. I got interested in reading it when I noticed it was often in the top charts for light novels aimed at women. It was also one of the only book at the top of the chart that did not involve being reborn as an 悪役令嬢. Turns out it’s an 異世界 anyway, but fine. Additionally, it turns out that the US publisher is marketing it toward men instead, so I guess it would interest a wide public?
Edit: I have read the first three volumes now and it should be okay for everyone indeed.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Easy (for this club), so we can just go faster and enjoy not spending ages on a single book
  • Popular series

Cons

  • I’m sorry I only suggest 異世界s

Pictures/Sample

Bookwalker sample

Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Moderate effort
  • Significant effort
  • So much effort my head might explode
  • I don’t know

0 voters

4 Likes

18 nominations is a great amount for our next poll! I will start it in ~24 hours.

In the meantime: Everybody who proposed a book, please make sure that it appears in the list in the OP - I double-checked but you never know… :wink:

Also, everybody who is interested in participating in the polls: Please have a look at the nominations to get an impression, and please read the sample pages and rate their difficulty! I will indicate the difficulty in the poll to serve as a rough guidance.

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BTW I just noticed that the manga 山と食欲と私 is currently heavily discounted at Bookwalker (it’s only 100 yen until Jan 20th or so).

Also, it is a very short manga (only 132 pages) so we could establish a rule similar to the Beginner Book Club: If a short manga wins, we will read the second winner immediately afterwards. (I think we did this already with the Saint Young Men manga, but we never set it as a rule.) I will check the other nominations to see which ones might also be eligible for such a double-winner rule, and try to come up with a suitable definition for “short”.

Now if that doesn’t help push your nomination in the voting process, then I don’t know what does :joy_cat:
No, I’m not biased.

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the first five volume are also on kindle unlimited. i’m considering renewing my subscription.

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here is a bilingual book on sake i really enjoyed :blush:

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Let the games polls begin!

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”. The difficulty is annotated in square brackets after the book’s name.

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

Expected reading pace: We aim to read books at ~15 pages per week (that number might vary a bit throughout, depending on the book’s breaks and chapters). For manga, depending on difficulty and chapter length, we will probably read one to several chapters per week. The pick’s exact reading schedule will be negotiated before the book club kicks off.

Start of Book Club: We will start the next book on Feb 13th (after a one-week break).

Poll duration: 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 .

  • 君の名は (Your Name) [3.21]
  • ブギーポップは笑わない [3]
  • ポーション頼みで生き延びます! [3.55]
  • All You Need Is Kill [3.31]
  • ifの悲劇 (if no higeki) [2.5]
  • 1リットルの涙 難病と闘い続ける少女亜也の日記 [2.4]
  • もやしもん - Tales of Agriculture [2.89]
  • 乳と卵 - Breasts and Eggs [3.13]
  • 変愛サイケデリック [2.5]
  • ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 [1.87]
  • 灰と幻想のグリムガル (Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash) [2.11]
  • きらきらひかる [2.67]
  • コーヒーが冷めないうちに [2.63]
  • 日本人の知らない日本語 [2.33]
  • City [2]
  • 言の葉の庭 [2.44]
  • 山と食欲と私 [2.57]
  • くま クマ 熊 ベアー [2.5]

0 voters

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I’ll join for the next book! But I wonder if it’s fine for me to vote since I haven’t participated yet :o I’m fine with anything that gets voted though.

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Of course it’s fine for you to vote! It would be quite mean of everybody to force a book upon you without you having a say in picking it :joy_cat:

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Hahah alright alright! :smile: Voted.

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き… 君の名は is in first place? Could it be the end of an era?!?

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Don’t jinx it :rofl:.

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I’m holding my breath already :joy_cat:

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Quick, close the poll!

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I wonder, how long has it been in the polls? I know there’s a running joke of it coming always at second place.

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