Intermediate Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: セーラー服と機関銃

I’ve been really busy with school so I didn’t vote, but starting next week I’m gonna be less busy so I’ll join!! I already own your name, kinos journey I don’t have. Is it true that it’s part 1 of many?

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Kino’s Journey is an episodic slice of life story, so you can safely read one volume without feeling like you have to read the rest of the series.

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That sounds really good. I love slice of life

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Which one?

You have about 1h left to change your vote actually :slight_smile:
Click “hide results” and you can then edit your votes.

I guess はたらく魔王さま
No worries, though @mjbeaver the old thread is still there if you need to ask questions, and it was an entertaining book :slight_smile:
come read with us too, tho

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Actually, a majority of people mentioned being up to read both (49% at the time of writing), so I think it’s the right way to go.
Plus, we have volunteers to put up threads for both subgroups. Thank you everyone :blush:
(A bit self-serving since I’m one of them, but let’s just ignore that :sweat_smile:)

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Even better if we can do that, but I wasn’t quite sure. Yayyyy

So is it more or less decided that’s what we’ll be doing?

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I had a different interpretation. If we read both at the same time, I see 51% likely to stick with Kino’s Journey (31% only, 25% both) and 30% likely to stick with Your Name (8% only, 22% both). Everyone’s time and abilities are different of course, but I wouldn’t count on most people being able to read both books at the same time. So in my calculation I assumed everyone who said “both” will drop the one they aren’t prioritizing.

Then take those percentages and apply a typical dropout rate and there’s barely anyone left reading Your Name.

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That’s exactly how I feel now. haha

I wanted to say to everyone in the group, participating on this thread. Thank you so much for bringing activity back here again. :grinning:

It seems that what I had said earlier about group attrition has stemmed into a conversation that has made others kind of uneasy. As one who cameos on threads that are started to stir the figurative pot in order to ask such OPs what was the purpose, I’ve done something similar here by broaching a topic in a way that was essentially whining. Without going further into justifying my earlier comments, I’m going to leave it with that. Please accept my apologies.

With that being said, I’d like to press on to the other poll at hand. @seanblue Are we intending to leave the group preference poll (I can’t think of an accurate way to describe it) out for the same amount of time as the original book selection poll? I think it would be only fair to do that since this is the first I’ve seen it since waking up this morning.

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I’ll leave that up to @Naphthalene since they’re running things this time around. Maybe it doesn’t have to stay open for the same duration (3-4 days) but 1-2 days is probably needed. I want to emphasize though that I don’t think this poll has to directly translate to a specific outcome. As I said earlier (which you may have missed with all the replies), this was mostly to figure out if there’d even been enough demand to warrant splitting the group. I think we can make a judgement call from there.

It would be unfair of me to push for reading just Kino’s Journey (since I don’t want to read Your Name), but I am concerned about the group being fragmented right after things are picking up again.

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Well, “barely anyone left” is par for the course, as far as I’m concerned, so I’m not too worried about it. Participation above that level (which might very well happen!) would be amazing.
So I only see “neutral” or “great” results possible from those numbers :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
I may be over optimistic, but even so, if one side dies out, the other one should still be fine. (And people happy with reading both can probably manage to catch up if they had fallen back)

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But wouldn’t it be nice to have 20+ people still reading by the end of the book like with 時をかける少女? I’d really like to avoid another situation like 魔女の宅急便 where only four of us finished…

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Why don’t we wait for the book that wins to start, check participation during the first week or so… and if everything is going well, we start immediately with the book that got 2nd place?

Biggest problem with that is if people want to bundle their purchases. But I guess people that are interested in both can just bundle anyway? :man_shrugging:

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530Yen for キノ on eBook, not too bad, I’m kinda tempted because I’m just able to read Japanese books so I’m just reading everything I can, because being able to pick up something that would have been impossible a year ago and is doable now is exciting (it feels like I have a sudden magic power).

Maybe I’ll try キノif 君の名は doesn’t get a simultaneous book club reading (seeing as I already own a copy) or if it doesn’t win at all.

I think キノ almost won the Beginner’s Club a few times for memory.

I’m not really sure if I’d be able to read it super fantastically though.

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I don’t mind the fragmentation, I just want to avoid a situation where people who want to read a book as a group are unable to because the group didn’t have the support it needed. I feel that experiencing success is critical to learner growth. But I think we’re of similar thought processes.

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Yeah… that’s kinda my point. People willing to read both are probably going to purchase both anyway. This is just a matter of reading both at the same time or not, I guess.

Ooh, I didn’t even notice that in the first post, thanks! I would love an ebook still, but I’ll think about it :slight_smile:

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Wait sorry I’m stupid. I blame sleepiness.

If people really want it, we can do both books at the same time. Worst case scenario, Your name’s book club dies because people won’t handle 2 book clubs at the same time and they’ll run away to prioritize Kino.

But tbh, most people wanting to have 2 book clubs are the ones wanting to read Your Name? Oo So everything is fine, I guess.

Add a delay between book clubs (beginner included) and we’ll all be happy.

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