I guess it depends on the audience. For someone who reads fast enough like us, I also don’t think it’s worth it. I did get the first 10 volumes when they were heavily discounted, so that was fine though. For people at the lower intermediate level, reading at the book club pace, it’s reasonable, I think.
It does get better around volume 3, IIRC. I guess the discount is not random.
The current pick will be finished on June 11th, so with the usual one-week break we will start to read our next pick on June 19th. We usually run the polls around 6 weeks prior to that to give people enough time to buy physical versions, so that means the next poll should be run in the first week of May, roundabout.
BTW I just watched the movie that was derived from コーヒーが冷めないうちに (it was aired as part of the Japanese Film Festival), and I loved it! Beautiful and moving. I do hope the book lives up to that, and I’m also looking forward to reading it
Have you had a look at the tadoku thread? At the bottom of the second post, you can find a list of reviews and also suggestions on how to find interesting books.
Become a full time illustrator so I can work anywhere.
Get reasonably fluent in Japanese
These are not necessarily hard and fast, depending on circumstances. For example, if I suddenly develop a huge following of Japan-fan artists, I could do a kick-starter. It feels far away, but I’m trying to stay open to it happening sooner.
Currently we have 16 nominations, that means there are 4 slots left (as the poll can only hold 20 entries). Also, a lot of the current nominations were unpopular in the last poll, so we might see a few of them drop out soon (which is totally expected given the long-lasting nature of this club). Therefore it is always nice to have some fresh contestants being thrown into the ring
Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san is based on a real life experience of the author Honda during her days as a bookstore employee. The story follows the life of the staff while explaining how a bookstore works. (from Wikipedia)
This is a comedy/slice of life manga about working in a bookstore, specifically the comics department. You can tell that the author has worked in that job herself, because some of the foreign customers’ behaviours just seem incredibly spot on. Early chapters focus on customer interactions, but later on it gets more into some of the behind the scenes parts of the job, which I thought was really interesting. Oh, and of course the main character is a skeleton.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
Finished series with only 4 volumes in total
Some foreign characters speaking Japanese at various levels of fluency - good for figuring out why certain expressions sound off to a native speaker
Learning more book-related vocabulary
Cons
Early chapters feature discussions of yaoi, though nothing explicit as far as I can tell, and there are no graphic depictions
Looking at the sample pages, I was of the impression it might be better suited for the Beginner Book Club? There is not too much text, easy sentences and furigana. What do you think?
My impression was that compared to recent BBC picks, it’s much more text dense. Haikyuu seems to be on a similar level, I didn’t read that one along with the club but from what I’ve gathered, many people seemed to struggle with it, so I thought this club was more appropriate. Also, my judgement might absolutely be clouded by the fact that I tried and failed to read this manga a year ago Of course I’d be happy to move it to the BBC if that’s a better fit
Ah, I’ve read that in English, and found it uproariously funny. Given the number of foreigners the character interacts with, I’ve actually been kinda curious as to how it works in the original Klingon Japanese.