Can’t really comment on that, either, because novels often feel easier to me than manga. That’s part of the reason why I didn’t really follow the normal progression of book clubs and instead started my first IBC pick while still reading my first ABBC and second BBC at once. Horimiya, my only ABBC is still the hardest pick I’ve ever read. If I had a Natively account, I’d give it like L40, I’m not even kidding.
Manga have their own special things that can make them feel especially hard for me that you don’t get in novels, like bad scan quality, handwritten passages or exotic fonts. Lookups are also harder if you don’t use Mokuro. I also find highschool manga especially challenging because they often contain slang and extreme contractions and they tend to have scenes where the characters just joke around so that the conversation doesn’t have an actual topic to follow and I’m bad with that, too.
It is a shame. I really enjoyed Nausicaä book club discussions. You were a fantastic host. Bocchi is not my cup of tea, but I frequently vote for Slow Loop in the Beginner Book Club polls.
How did I not notice the poll was up until a full week later?! Just voted an hour before it closes
I have now set this thread to watching, so I don’t miss anything else
Sadly we need to say goodbye to one nomination as well:
天気の子
has failed to raise enough interest three times in a row
If you’re interested in reading the book anyway, please have a look at the Natively informal reading club that EBW ran for it early this year: 天気の子 Informal Reading Club ☁ - Book Clubs - Natively Forums and please feel free to join it and to comment there
I would be honoured to host! I was going to ask about what’s required since I’ve never run one before, but I see there’s already a whole thread about that
[DeepL Translation - needs review] The woman sitting next to me was that person I see at the library I often go to… A series of small miracles occur on a local train that takes only 15 minutes one way. The lives of the passengers on the train gradually intersect, and eventually a story of hope is spun. Beginning of love, signs of parting, stopovers - the train, with enough drama for the number of passengers, runs on the track that never ends. A heartwarming masterpiece of a long novel.
I grabbed this book because 3 people in my circle of family and friends, knowing that I’m learning Japanese, told me that they had just read the French translation and liked it, so I wanted to know what it was about! I’ve read it this past winter, took me around 2 months.
My review: (also posted on Natively)I didn’t really know how to rate this book. I hesitated to give it only a few stars, because I didn’t really like any of the characters (!). But I did enjoy reading the book, so that wouldn’t have been fair. I liked to travel along the Hankyu Railway. The descriptions were so detailed that I could look up a lot of the places online and spent some time looking at satellite images and maps and pictures and the like. I almost feel like I know this area between Osaka and Kobe well now! I learned a lot about the culture and love / family / work relationships. Also as other mentioned, there is a lot of Kansai-dialect used, so if you want to practice that, great practice.
I think it’s a bit on the difficult side, for example sometimes the sentences are complex descriptions of the train stations, or the character talk in Kansai dialect. I was thinking of nominating it to the ABC but then I read the guidelines for nominating and due to its “shorter” length it seems to fit the IBC better
Enjoy your first book club as a host! I see you already found the thread of good tips and suggestions, so I’m sure you’re excellently prepared.
In case you still have questions, please feel free to ask them here or there!
You can post it straight away if you like! But you can also delay it a little bit.
It would probably be good to have a discussion about the schedule (pace, ramp-up, maybe breakdown if there are multiple good options) and you would like to have that discussion in the home thread, not here (because it’s easier to find and refer back to). So I’d say if you post the home thread between now and mid-July, everything is fine
working on the nomination post as we speak
