I like this new scale proposition, even the last option (or the “all the effort” option, which is also fun)
Would this new difficulty scale be used across different levels of book club? (I’m only in the beginner-level one for now, just lurking here)
Pretty sure it’s intended for all future book club nominations across all the difficulty levels - so the old scale would slowly peter out in the future if people decide this is the way to go.
I don’t have any particularly strong feelings about particular effort nominators, so I’m fine with this too. ^^ Even if I really like all the effort and may use similar qualifications from time to time myself. Mostly in writing.
I get that it was a joke, but I think it expresses the intent of the previous label very well. Also, it gets the “it’s painful” / “it might not end well” aspect much better across than “All the Effort” which sounds like, “yay, go for it”, “all-in” or something. Therefore I’d like to stick with it
If there are no vetoes, I’ll use it in my first book proposal later in the day, and then we can all try out how this new poll wording feels.
I started reading it about 6 months ago and liked the funny situations they bump into.
But I found it a bit hard to understand back then, so I figured it might be better suited for the Intermediate club than for the Beginner club. (But maybe that’s just me…)
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
We don’t read that many manga in the Intermediate Book Club.
It’s not too long (134 pages, 9 episodes) and should be a quick read.
The humour might be a refreshing alternation after all those “serious” books.
There are currently 17 volumes available (not sure whether there will be more to come?) plus an anime and a movie with real actors. (Ok, maybe this is a con after all?)
Cons
It is about (making fun of) religion and so it might hurt somebody’s feelings?
The narrator’s housekeeping agency dispatches her to the house of the Professor, a former mathematician who can remember new memories for only 80 minutes. She is more than a little frustrated to find that he loves only mathematics and shows no interest whatsoever in anything or anyone else. One day, upon learning that she has a 10-year-old son waiting home alone until late at night every day, the Professor flies into a rage and tells the narrator to have her son come to his home directly from school from that day on. The next day, her son comes and the Professor nicknames him “Root”. From then on, their days begin to be filled with warmth.
I became aware of the author Ogawa Yoko (小川洋子) through this article, and independently one or two people recommended this particular book to me. So I thought it might be a nice pick for the book club.
The English translation of the book is called “The Housekeeper and the Professor”. It was also turned into a movie by the name “The Professor’s Beloved Equation.”
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
NOT a highschoolers’ book
Sounds like a heartwarming story to me
The book won the Yomiuri Prize (Booksellers’ Award), the author won the Akutagawa Prize
Cons
Might scare off people who are not a fan of mathematics? (although I don’t know how much mathematics actually appears in the book)
Pictures
First Three Pages of Chapter One
(these are ebook pages, so the real pages should be smaller, I guess)
The second son of a starter culture business, Soho Sawaki Naoho, has a special ability to see bacteria. He enters a certain agricultural college in Tokyo. Sawaki, the lab and other colleagues, and a campus life with or without fungi, set at Agricultural University. Moyashimon is a moratorium of university life and full of fungi. Please try it yourself.
I got turned on this by the Sake On Air Podcast. One of the hosts recommended this series as it had taught a lot about microbes and fermentation. I watched the Anime and drama and now I am making my way through the Mangas.
The Synopsis above isn’t actually that great, so here is mine.
Sawaki and his friend Kei turn up as first years at Tokyo Agricultural College. Sawaki is the second son of a mould started culture business supplying Koji to, among other businesses, his friend Kei’s family sake brewers. Sawaki has a secret power in that he can both see and talk to microbes as specially the friendly Aspergilus Orizae (koji) from his family home who hitch a ride to university on the miso his family sends. Sawaki and Kei join a seminar group on fermentation lead by professor Itsuki and Grad Student Hasegawa* and the fun ensues.
It’s a fun story with some real science behind it. The friendly Koji pop up in the margins to explain scientific points and there is some interesting stuff about fermentation and food culture interlaced within the text.
*Hasegawa, being framed, is subjected to the usual level of Japanese emanate sexism, in that despite being a scientist she is dressed in a bondage style minidress for the whole series this is explained as her rebelling against her father but it is stupid and thoroughly unsuitable for lab work.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
Fun introduction to Fermentation
good series if you get into it
Anime version is pretty true to the books but doesn’t cover all of it.
Some very topical information about the spread of diseases among student populations later on
Popular enough to get an anime, a drama and some spin off books about infectious diseases
Now I am more skilled with my reading and not travelling as much due to the plague, I’m very keen to get back on the book club train and both of these choices look good and I thought I’d throw in one of my own.
I’ve read this one, it’s a wonderful book. Also a very difficult one.
Unsurprisingly, the math stuff wasn’t hard to understand, but it contains a fair bit of baseball discussion and for a person who doesn’t know anything about baseball it was a pain.
The book is written in a very literary style language (I mean lots of metaphors, comparisons etc.) and the breadth of author’s vocabulary is amazing (I was constantly looking up words even near the end).
Even though the book is written from the first person perspective, it also has very few dialogues, so first 80 or so pages are just walls upon walls of text.
I am not discouraging people from reading this book, I just want them to be ready to what they are getting into. This book is actually THE BEST piece of Japanese literature I’ve read so far.
I’ve also read it, and I didn’t think it was too horribly difficult. However, I did kind of let some of the math flow over me, lol, and I know enough about baseball that it didn’t occur to me previously that that could be a stumbling block in this book. I think it’s on the harder end of books I’ve read, but it’s also one I really loved. <3
So, I’m hoping to open the votes when we only have 6 weeks left, leaving only ~10 days for nominations and grading. Could a regular update the title to reflect that we are now looking for nominations?
Breasts & Eggs paints a portrait of contemporary womanhood in Japan and recounts the intimate journeys of three women as they confront oppressive mores and their own uncertainties on the road to finding peace and futures they can truly call their own.
It tells the story of three women: the thirty-year-old Natsu, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter, Midoriko. Makiko has traveled to Tokyo in search of an affordable breast enhancement procedure. She is accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures associated with growing up. Her silence proves a catalyst for each woman to confront her fears and frustrations.
On another hot summer’s day ten years later, Natsu, on a journey back to her native city, struggles with her own indeterminate identity as she confronts anxieties about growing old alone and childless.
(from this review of an English version)
I like the subject of criticism towards society and its norms
Very short (only 133 pages), so it’s a quick read
There are at least 2 English translations available, called “Breasts and Eggs” (one of which interestingly translates Osaka-ben to Manchester dialect).
Cons
Kawakami’s writing often employs Osaka-ben
She also incorporates experimental and poetic language into her short stories and novels, citing Lydia Davis and James Joyce as literary influences
(I actually don’t think these are con’s, it might just make the book harder to read, so I listed them here.)
I know I’m not in this book club buuut Wow, I honestly didn’t think I’d see this book mentioned anywhere, ahaha. My professor recommended this book to me several years (because I did a presentation in class on math), and I don’t really know what the scale is for “intermediate”, but I’ll be the third person to say it’s a good pick
For the current proposals list, which books are you planning to remove because of consistent unpopularity? Like I said before, please remove Ame&Yuki; it was never that popular anyways and now I’ve read it on my own. Also, what about Hyakunin Isshu? As we are kinda planning to read this separately (are we, though? ) we can also exclude it from the nominations, I guess… ?
I already removed unpopular books from the list according to the rules we discussed a few months ago.
Roger that.
Right, that was also my plan. However, I’m currently drowning in book clubs (and work) so I’m not doing anything to set it up, and nothing seems to be happening. I do hope we set up something, though. I leave it up to @Belthazar to decide if we should remove it or not, but I’d leave it there as long as we do not have any solid plan to read it independently.