For our list of proposals, sadly we had to say goodbye to ifの悲劇
きらきらひかる, 山と食欲と私, City, and くま クマ 熊 ベアー remain on the list of books with low interest. If they get low interest in the next poll as well, we need to say goodbye to them as well.
TUGUMI, ガイコツ書店員本田さん, 笑顔のたえない職場です。, and Just Because! entered the list of books with low interest, while 天気の子 (which came in second place!) and リング (which came in fourth place) are now back in the game and got removed from the list of low interest books.
Due to the removal of two books from the list of proposals (one due to low interest, one because it got picked) we now have 13 proposals, which means there are a few slots waiting for your proposals! If you happen to come across a book that you think might be interesting for the other book club members as well, please feel free to nominate it in this thread.
Sweet! I’m looking forward to something funny. I managed to find a copy for sale in my country on EBay, so if you haven’t gotten yours yet, try that. Saves a ton on shipping and customs!
Hello! This is my first time making a book proposal! Hopefully everything is okay and this books level fits here! I’ve had this book for a while and keep meaning to get around to reading it haha.
Also, are books translated into Japanese okay?
死にたいけどトッポッキは食べたい (I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki)
(From Foyles)
PSYCHIATRIST: So how can I help you?
ME: I don’t know, I’m - what’s the word - depressed? Do I have to go into detail?
Baek Se-Hee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her - what to call it? - depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgemental of others. She hides her feelings well at work and with friends; adept at performing the calmness, even ease, her lifestyle demands. The effort is exhausting, overwhelming, and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can’t be normal.
But if she’s so hopeless, why can she always summon a yen for her favourite street food, the hot, spicy rice cake, tteokbokki? Is this just what life is like?
Recording her dialogues with her psychiatrist over a 12-week period, Baek begins to disentangle the feedback loops, knee-jerk reactions and harmful behaviours that keep her locked in a cycle of self-abuse. Part memoir, part self-help book, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is a book to keep close and to reach for in times of darkness.
Seems like an interesting read and was recently popular in Japan. This book is almost always in clear view whenever I go to any bookstores. I think it should be okay for this level of book club, but if it is a little on the easier side it might also be good for people who are join the intermediate book club for the first time?
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
Recently rather popular in Japan.
English version hasn’t been released yet (will be later this year). So you can read it ahead of others.
Not very long (tankobon is only 200 pages including the table of contents and extra pages)
There seems to be a second volume for those that enjoy it and want to read more
Cons
Not originally Japanese (translated from Korean). Some people may prefer content originally in Japanese.
Thank you for your proposal! I noticed that you changed the poll from how it was in the proposal template… is there any reason for this? If not, could you please change it back to how it was in the template, i.e. like this:
[poll type=regular public=true]
No effort at all
Minimal effort
Moderate effort
Significant effort
So much effort my head might explode
I don’t know
[/> [poll ]
I’m asking this because with your format it is more difficult for me to calculate the average difficulty for the book (which we will indicate in each poll and therefore need to calculate for each poll).
Replacing the poll means that the votes up to now will get discarded, but that shouldn’t be a big problem as only very few people voted until now (only you and I, I guess?)
Oh! Sorry about that!
It was my first time making a poll, but for some reason when I tried to copy it from the template, it wasn’t showing up correctly.
I’ll try to fix it now.
Sorry if I came across as being nitpicky! I just figured I would potentially be confused by it for quite some time, depending on how quickly the book gets picked, and so I thought a quick repair might be acceptable…
Can someone tell me how many pages I should expect us to read for books at 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん’s length? It seems a very easy read if you’re N3 level. It’s written so even 3rd graders can understand it, but the lack of furigana make it more suited towards 小学校上級 (according to my husband), so I’m assuming we’ll be going through this pretty quickly.
I just started reading and got through the Prologue and want to have a good start in before we officially start because I still lack a lot of kanji knowledge to read without having to look up a lot of words. (I look up a lot of words anyway for confirmation purposes but also having to look up kanji I can’t read takes additional time.) It’ll be my second book for a book club (first book for Intermediate level) while reading 夜カフェ at the same time for the Beginner book club, so I’m worried about falling behind.
Anyway, just a long-winded way of asking how many pages a week should I expect so I can keep up?
Thanks for the ping! I was unexpectedly busy over the past two weeks (in a good way) so I had forgotten to post the home thread and schedule discussion
But here it is:
I’ve started a discussion regarding the schedule - happy to hear all of your opinions!
Hello! Figured I would finally propose another one of the books I own and have been wanting to read!
(Please tell me if you think this would be better suited for another group. I was having a hard time deciding what level this book is (Intermediate or beginner wise.)
(Quick google translate and a little editing)
Weakness in 5 minutes and laughter in 5 minutes. An unexpected twist from the “5-minute series” that can be read in 5 minutes. Carefully selected from over 20,000 short stories posted on the novel posting site "Everystar”. Fifteen short stories that are have a surprising ending.
I’ve recently seen these kinds of short story books a lot in Japan. They are very popular with children. Definitely think it would be fun and interesting reading practice. The short stories also makes it easier to consume.
This book’s stories also seem to be selected from a novel publishing site, which is interesting.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
Recently these 5分後 type of books have been very popular in Japan.
Many short stories from different authors, so possibly a little variety for everyone and easy to digest.
Not very long (about 200 something pages) (may be a con to some)
If people enjoy this read, they can continue other 5分後 books.
Cons
Not all the kanji have furigana (can be a pro for some)
Some may prefer one continuous story instead of many short ones
Just a quick heads up that we will start our next pick on Saturday, so if you want to participate, please proceed to the entrance gate and get ready to buy your ticket!
We’re currently deciding on the final schedule for our current pick, and if we decide to stick with the schedule that’s currently in place, then we will have our next poll soon! We already have a good number of nominations, but there are still a few free slots for new ones. So if you have a book that would fit the Intermediate Book Club length requirement (i.e. below 300 pages, ideally below 250 pages) and difficulty, then please feel free to nominate it (using the template in the OP)!
In order to maintain the state of peace between the rival nations of Westalis and Ostania, a Westalis agent codenamed “Twilight” is tasked with spying on Donovan Desmond, the leader of an extremist political party within Ostania. However, due to Desmond being notoriously reclusive, the only way Twilight can get close to him is to enroll a child in the same private school as Desmond’s son and pose as their father. To accomplish this, he creates the alias of Lloyd Forger, adopts a young orphan girl named Anya, and marries a woman named Yor Briar, to create the image of a happy family. However, Yor is in fact a professional assassin, with neither her nor Lloyd being aware of each other’s true identities. Both of them are also unaware that Anya can read minds, and knows their true professions. Despite these unknown factors, Lloyd must learn to play the role of the perfect father and husband in order to carry out his mission. (wikipedia)
This has been blowing up all over the internet because of the anime that is currently airing. It is honestly super hillarious, esepcially the daughter Anya has some of the best reaction faces in any manga I have read.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Popular so hopefully a lot of participants
Has an anime so one could read/watch both (to get that sweet listening practice)
Furigana
Funny & interesting story
Cons
Pretty hard according to learn natively it is level 30 so just below Death note
This makes me think maybe I should move 5分後に笑えるどんでん返し down to the beginner book club based on the responses here (5 votes for minimal effort, 1 vote for no effort).
Can I just delete or edit the post? (and edit the main post too?)
Or should I leave it here for one run of voting?
I’m still kinda new to the book clubs (and haven’t participated in the intermediate one yet), so not sure how everything works and definitely not sure on how to properly rank the difficulty levels of some of these books
You could just delete the post or put a big comment at the top of the text, but given that it has not been in any polls yet, I’d probably lean towards just deleting it.
That would be kind of you! (Although if you don’t feel comfortable doing it then I will take care of it when I prep for the poll.)
Whatever you feel like makes sense, really
Ah no worries, we’re all here to learn and help each other on many levels And it’s really hard to rate books by difficulty, especially those you haven’t read yet