Thanks for your proposal! Unfortunately 512 pages is way too long for this book club, though 
The Intermediate club usually reads at ~15 pages per week which would mean for this book to last about 8 months or so, and that’s just a very long time because those who are not interested or drop out need to wait the whole time.
If you like, you could submit it to the Advanced Book Club though! There we read at a higher pace and can tackle longer books. Just copy your post to the other thread and modify this posting to make clear you withdrew it. Thanks!
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Not a problem. I did think it might be a bit too long (:
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For future reference, the proposal guidelines in the OP say that 350 pages is the max length for nominations.
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I should learn to read better
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Boy, do I have the club for you.
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It’s POLL Timeeeee!
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 “so much effort my head might explode”. The difficulty is annotated in the poll in square brackets after the book’s name, together with the book’s level on Natively (you can find the links to Natively for all books in the first post if you want to have a look at the gradings in detail).
Do not rely solely on difficulty or Natively level 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.
Short book rule: If the first place ist taken by a pick that will take us 6 weeks or less to read, we will read the one in second place directly after it, without running a poll in between. I haven’t checked in detail, but I’d assume that this basically applies in case one of the manga wins the poll.
Start of Book Club: We will start the next book on October 29th (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.
- きらきらひかる [2.67 / L32??]
- 日本人の知らない日本語 (Manga) [2.4 / L28]
- 天気の子 [2.67 / L31]
- ガイコツ書店員本田さん (Manga) [2.45 / L32??]
- リング [2.67 / L34]
- Just Because! [2.17 / L30??]
- 笑顔のたえない職場です。 (Manga) [2.86 / L29]
- 穴 [2 / L37]
- 人質の朗読会 [2.43 / L30??]
- 死にたいけどトッポッキは食べたい [2.8 / L30??]
- おばちゃんたちのいるところ [2.5 / L31??]
- 嵐のピクニック [3 / L30??]
- 推しの子 (Manga) [2.83 / L31]
0 voters
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Alright, nothing much happened during the last two days, so I’m closing the poll.
Our next winner is
おばちゃんたちのいるところ
@Phryne, are you willing to run the club for this book? It is due to start on October 29th.
For the Bookwalker fans out there, there is currently a 40% coin cashback on basically all books, including this one, until 2022-09-21T00:59:00Z.
Whenever there is light, there is also shadow. And so we have to say goodbye to 笑顔のたえない職場です。and “Just Because!” as they scored low in three subsequent polls. 
Which also means that we now have a lot of space in our proposals list, so please keep them coming!
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Yay! Go for it 
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Pinging you in case you’re still interesting in reading this with us 
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Here we go!
Went with a ghost emoji. Feel free to suggest a better one though
Will have a look at the schedule in the coming week. I expect it’ll be a one-story-a-week 17-week schedule though. EDIT: Never mind, the first story is humongous
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We Live in a Society.
The intermediate book club just closed its poll, but if you still feel the itch to vote on something come over to the Beginner book club and have a look at that poll!
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Or, come over to the Advanced Book Club if you feel like upping your game a bit! 
We’re currently voting for our next pick:
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If you’re interested in adding yet another book to your busy reading schedule, come over to the Mystery Novel Book Club at Natively and vote for our next pick. The poll closes on October 17th, and reading starts at Halloween! 
(only a couple of days after the IBC’s next pick, おばちゃんたちのいるところ!)
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Before y’all disappear into the seasonal holidays, winter sports or summer sports activities, this is just a quick heads up that I will run the next book club poll early next year, probably from January 2nd!
In other words, if you have a book you would like to read with the club, now is a good time for proposing it. We currently have 10 (!) free slots for books unless I overlooked some nominations again , so please go wild 
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How do you all feel about me nominating a book that is part of a pair, but recommending the better of the two on its own rather than reading both, knowing that the one I’m recommending is better read second if you choose to read both? Technically there’s no set order, but I think the weaker one should be read first based on loose plot connections between the two, or skipped entirely. They are both on the shorter side, but combined they are definitely too long for IBC. So should I nominate the weaker of the two to accommodate people likely to read both? Should I nominate the better of the two knowing that it’s not ideal for people who end up reading both? Should I skip the nomination entirely because this is way too confusing?
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禎子の千羽鶴
Author: 佐々木 雅弘
Page count: 156 pages
Natively: 禎子の千羽鶴 戦争ノンフィクション
Summary
Japanese
広島で原爆にあい、10年後に原爆症となった少女・佐々木禎子さん。12歳で亡くなるまで、周囲の人を思いやり、明るくふるまいながら千羽鶴を折り続けた禎子さんは「原爆の子の像」のモデルとなりました。実の兄がはじめて書いた禎子さんと家族の物語。
English
This is the true story of Sadako Sasaki, who was 2 years old at the time when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and years later became severely sick from side-affects of the radiation and while hospitalized folded a thousand paper cranes because of the legend that doing so would grant the folder a wish. This book is written by her older brother.
Availability
Paperback (Amazon JP)
Paperback (Kinokuniya)
eBook (Kindle)
Personal Opinion
True take on the life of a girl that has become famous in Japan (and worldwide). See Wikipedia page for more history in English. Her story is often told to school children in Japan on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. This book covers from her birth through her death through the eyes of a family member and shines a more personal light on what would become almost a legendary story.
I struggle to read non-fiction sometimes and most often find myself sticking to only fantasy or sci-fi stories, but I picked this up on a visit to Hiroshima years ago and have wanted to read it ever since.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
- well-known story
- available in both hardcopy and ebook
- on the shorter side
- furigana for all kanji make it more accessible than the vocabulary would otherwise indicate
- contains footnotes for potentially unfamiliar terms (kindle version links directly to these)
- lovely charcoal illustrations
Cons
- some difficult vocabulary terms early on (not many after the first couple chapters except for some medical terms near the end)
- it’s a sad story
Pictures
First Three Pages of Chapter One
Taken from Amazon preview because I’m horrible at taking pictures of books:
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
First time nominating anything, I hope this looks okay! Let me know if I need to make any edits.
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The kindle version has some slightly more legible samples btw
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How about making one nomination and then if it wins we can vote on whether we read the first book or skip it? Only with the caveat that you only vote for it if you are willing to read together either way. Though I suppose the caveat might artificially reduce the votes it gets if, say, everyone just wants to read the 2nd book 
Having 2 different nominations may be good for more accurately judging who wants to read what. But it’s not great that it can eat up 2 votes, and it might be hard for people to judge whether they want to read the 2nd book while avoiding spoilers. Splitting up the votes might also reduce the chance of one of them winning 
Seems like the best option depends on how flexible voters are, which we can’t know a priori…unless—why not have a poll! EDIT: this poll is apparently not really relevant 
sorry for the confusion
- I only read books in order
- I don’t mind sequence breaking
- It depends on which book it is
0
voters
Disclaimer: Poll results are not conclusive and enforces no action from any actor, legal or otherwise.
Whatever you go for I hope you don’t skip the nomination. What if it’s something everyone wants to read??