As our current pick slowly comes to an end, it’s time for a new poll which I will start on Monday next week. That means, if you want your favorite book to be in the poll, please nominate it now! There are still 5 seats left, first come first served 
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Ahem 
In some part of this planet it’s still bound to be Monday, right? riiight? 
Anyway, without further ado, here is
The Poll!!
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 21st (after a one-week break).
Poll duration: The poll will be closed automatically on 2023-09-13T08:00:00Z. You can choose up to 5 options.
- きらきらひかる [2.67 / L33]
- 天気の子 [2.67 / L30]
- ガイコツ書店員本田さん (Manga) [2.5 / L32??]
- 穴 [2 / L37]
- 人質の朗読会 [2.43 / L30??]
- 嵐のピクニック [3 / L30??]
- 禎子の千羽鶴 [2.38 / L29]
- 西の魔女が死んだ [2.29 / L28]
- はたらく細胞 (Novel) [2.25 / L??]
- パレード [2.67 / L33]
- 掏摸 [2 / L30??]
- 少年と犬 [2 / L30??]
- かぐや様は告らせたい〜天才たちの恋愛頭脳戦～ (Kaguya-sama: Love is War) (Manga) [3.67 / L30]
- あなたも殺人犯になれる! [2.83 / L27]
- とんがり帽子のアトリエ (Manga) [2.86 / L25]
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voters
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I was fully expecting a twist as the closing time approached, but nope, あなたも殺人犯になれる! started in the lead, and has won the poll 
As I have nominated it, do I just go ahead and create its home thread? I will be OK running the club, will just need help for deciding on the schedule as it’s my first IBC (and first book ever I will read in Japanese too 
)
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Congrats to あなたも殺人犯になれる!
Yes, you can go ahead and make the home thread any time (no hurry, as it’s starting October 21st). For the schedule, the IBC usually reads about 15 pages per week, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more, depending on chapter breaks and book difficulty.
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Thank you to all who voted in the poll! We have a winner:
あなたも殺人犯になれる! 
Thanks to @Akashelia for the nomination! Yes please go ahead and set up the home thread whenever it suits you.
Unfortunately, we also have to say goodbye to quite a number of nominations due to lack of interest in the last three polls. These are:
- 禎子の千羽鶴
- 少年と犬
- はたらく細胞
- ガイコツ書店員本田さん
That means that the current number of proposals is down to 10. Please feel free to propose new books at any time!
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The home thread for あなたも殺人犯になれる! is live
Please join the discussion to help decide on the schedule!
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My first nomination post, so tell me if I need to fix anything!
旅猫リポート
Author: 有川 浩
Page count: 274 (according to Natively)
Natively: Level 29
Summary
Japanese
この絆は、恋愛を超える。カギしっぽのナナと心優しい青年サトルの、最後の旅の物語。
野良猫のナナは、瀕死の自分を助けてくれたサトルと暮らし始めた。それから五年が経ち、ある事情からサトルはナナを手離すことに。『僕の猫をもらってくれませんか?』一人と一匹は銀色のワゴンで”最後の旅”に出る。懐かしい人々や美しい風景に出会ううちに明かされる、サトルの秘密とは。永遠の絆を描くロードノベル。
English
(From Amazon; English version)
A book that “speak[s] volumes about our need for connection—human, feline or otherwise” (The San Francisco Chronicle), The Travelling Cat Chronicles is a life-affirming anthem to kindness and self-sacrifice that shows how the smallest things can provide the greatest joy—the perfect gift for cat lovers and travellers!
We take journeys to explore exotic new places and to return to the comforts of home, to visit old acquaintances and to make new friends. But the most important journey is the one that shows us how to follow our hearts…
An instant international bestseller and indie bestseller, The Travelling Cat Chronicles has charmed readers around the world. With simple yet descriptive prose, this novel gives voice to Nana the cat and his owner, Satoru, as they take to the road on a journey with no other purpose than to visit three of Satoru’s longtime friends. Or so Nana is led to believe…
With his crooked tail—a sign of good fortune—and adventurous spirit, Nana is the perfect companion for the man who took him in as a stray. And as they travel in a silver van across Japan, with its ever-changing scenery and seasons, they will learn the true meaning of courage and gratitude, of loyalty and love.
Availability
Physical:
Amazon jp
Honto
Rakuten
Ebook:
Bookwalker
Ebook Japan
Personal Opinion
I came across the English version in my local library a week ago, decided to read it and liked it a lot! It’s very wholesome and heartwarming. Cat lovers especially will love this — it’s told from the perspective of a cat. It was a candidate for the Shugoro Yamamoto Award, Futaro Yamada Award and the Keibundo Grand Prize in 2013.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
- A feel-good story
- No foul language, sex, violence, or any taboo themes
- It has a movie!
- Each chapter is mostly self-contained, so people who are behind can more easily catch up
Cons
- Not sure
Pictures
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
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voters
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@NicoleIsEnough When I was about to answer @Akashelia 's question about deciding the schedule, I looked in the OP for confirmation, but couldn’t find any mention of average pages per week or maximum weeks per book (maybe the info is there but I couldn’t find it?). The ABC for example does mention number of pages:
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I couldn’t find anything either, but I have it in the intro text for the polls, so I copied that paragraph into the OP. Thanks for pointing this out!
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Ah, of course, I knew I had seen it somewhere! 
Thanks for adding it!
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Quick heads up for those interested: We are currently planning to read the IBC nomination きらきらひかる soon as part of the ‘Profoundly Weird’ Book Club, so I’ve set up a reading thread for it. Please don’t be surprised as the thread is being hosted on Natively instead of WK due to people over there being interested in reading it as well. I’d be happy to see some of you over there!
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Thanks for sharing! It’s a pity I just joined 本好き over there, otherwise I’d join it as well. Does this mean きらきらひかる will be removed from the nominations here, by the way?
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I’m wondering about that as well! But I guess I’ll just keep it in, and in case nobody is interested in it any more, it will be removed naturally anyways (nominations that score less than 20% in three polls in a row will be removed to keep the interest level high).
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I’m thinking of starting an IRL book club in college that will be following this book club once we start reading あなたも殺人犯になれる！. Not sure whether that’s a good idea.
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Sounds like it could be fun, if you can manage to find a few interested people. You could even do read-aloud sessions in person! We‘ve done this for a few book clubs in here, but ofc it was always on discord. I think it would even be much better IRL 
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Now I want to do that too! Not sure I could muster up enough people though…
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Something well received in another book club I’m in is letting people read in English or Japanese, so if you need more people, that could be a way to make it easier for others to join
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Those read-aloud sessions on Discord were so fun! Used to do the narrator for ゆるキャン△ 
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Sounds really fun with read-aloud session.
How did you go around about organizing them? Was it weekly at the same date or something else? Were you reading the week’s assignment?
Sorry for all the questions, I’m very curious, maybe it’s something we can also do with the next pick
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We voted on the time that would suit the most people (there was a lot of people from different parts of the world), and then did that weekly at the same time, sometimes changing it if a lot of people couldn’t come, or whatever else. Yes, we read the week’s assignment, and I think we read the previous week’s reading. So, if Saturday came with chapter 116, we read aloud chapter 115. That way, everybody can be familiar with the reading.
Another way you can go about it, and now that I think about it, this is how we actually did it. If the new week’s chapter came at ex. Tuesday, we did the live reading on Saturday or whenever. That way, everybody had the time to read it for themselves and prepare for the reading.
In the end, however, people just mostly fell of and it was only @Belthazar and I, if I’m remembering that correctly.
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