Now reading: 地球星人
Start Date: Nov 27th, 2021
Voice Chat
The club has a Discord server, which is sometimes used for voice chats / read-along sessions. See specific book threads for current activity.
Previous Books
Links to Discussion Threads
Book 1 | No. 6
Book 2 | Autumn Prison
Book 3 | An Unexpected Conclusion in 5 Minutes: Red Nightmares
Book 4 | The Devil is a Part-Timer!
Book 5 | Kino’s Journey
Book 6 | Convenience Store Woman
Book 7 | The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Book 8 | キッチン (Kitchen)
Book 9 | 氷菓 (Hyouka)
Book 10 | 夜市 (Night Market)
Book 11 | 聖☆おにいさん (Saint Young Men)
Book 12 | 博士の愛した数式
Book 13 | 君の名は (Your Name)
Book 14 | コーヒーが冷めないうちに
Book 15 | ヨコハマ買い出し紀行
Book 16 | 地球星人
Welcome to our Japanese book club! In this club we choose a Japanese book, read it together, and discuss what we've read. It could be meaningful discussion on the content, questions about vocabulary and grammar that confuse us, or just motivating each other to keep moving.
We’d love it if you joined the club! All you have to do is buy the next book lined up, read along with the schedule and join in the discussion!
Book Proposals
How to Propose Books
Proposal Guidelines
Courtesy of fl0rm and the beginner book club (adapted for this club).
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Nominate something you are ready to read
- This is a big cooperative group, but there’s always a minority keeping things active. If your pick wins, there’ll be some expectation that you contribute throughout.
- If you can’t read your own sample pages (at least mostly) you may not be able to judge the difficulty effectively, and won’t be able to help others much.
- Furigana does not imply something is easy (or vice versa); it’s just one factor contributing to difficulty.
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Books nominated must not be longer than 350 pages
- Our reading pace means this is the longest we could tackle within a reasonable timeframe.
- A book of short stories can be longer: we will only pick select stories.
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Do not nominate anything clearly NSFW
- This can be hard to judge without reading the book, but if you’d associate the work with fanservice or gore, even if just by reputation, please don’t suggest it for this group.
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Try to pick something reasonably well-known
- This will increase the reader pool as more people will be interested / already have a copy.
- People will be more able to re-sell or pass along their copy after reading.
- Popular works often have more accessible language.
- Some participants may have already read it, and themes are probably broadly understood, making it easier for members to help each other and for readers to draw inferences from context.
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Books that fail to score at least 20% on the last three round of voting will get automatically removed.
- This approach ensures that the list remains reasonably small and dynamic.
- You may nominate a removed book again, but please think about it before hand. Do you think there’s reasonable interest for that nomination?
Proposal Template
Taken directly from the beginner book club.
Copy this template into a new post when proposing a book/manga.
For page samples, you can either take photos of your own copy (try to make the three additional pages ‘representative’ if possible), grab photos from the internet, or use previews from e.g. Amazon, BookWalker, EBookJapan. Make sure the text is legible!
# Insert Title Here
## Summary
[details=“Japanese”]
Add Japanese summary here.
[/details]
[details=“English”]
Add English summary here.
[/details]## Availability
Insert link to book on amazon.co.jp here.
Insert link(s) to eBook here, or mention if an eBook is not available.## Personal Opinion
Insert why you think this book would be good to read, personally and for the book club here.### Pros and Cons for the Book Club
#### Pros
* Insert pros here.
#### Cons
* Insert cons here.## Pictures
[details=“First Three Pages of Chapter One”]
Insert images here (can be photos from you or the internet, or from ebook previews).
[/details][details=“Additional Pages”]
Insert a few more images here - try to make them representative.
[/details]## Difficulty Poll
How much effort would you need to read this book?[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]
Current Proposals
The nomination posts linked under each entry will give you further information, including sample pages.
1. ifの悲劇
Nomination Post
Page count: 240 pages
The novelist Kano who lives in Abashiri, Hokkaido, loves his cute sister Aya, but when Aya got a job at a trading company, she started living alone in Yubari. However, when it was discovered that her fiance Okutsu had an affair, Aya committed suicide by jumping off of a building. The elder brother who vowed to revenge on Okutsu invites Okutsu to Abashiri and kills him. On the way to Yubari to hide the body of Okutsu in the car and build an alibi, Kano causes a traffic accident.
From here the story splits into two ⇒
A: The murder is revealed through the traffic accident
B: The murder is not revealed through the traffic accident
… and how about Kano’s fate?
When two parallel worlds are combined into one, the impact becomes clear.
Difficulty: [2.50 | 10 votes]
6. 天気の子
Nomination Post
Page count: 320 pages
7. ガイコツ書店員本田さん (Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san)
Nomination Post
Page count: 134 pages
8. リング
Nomination Post
Page count: 336 pages
9. City
Nomination Post
Page count: 161
From the creator of nichijou , this surreal-slapstick series revolves around a penniless college student, Midori Nagumo, who lives in an ordinary city filled with not-quite-ordinary people. And as this reckless girl runs about, she sets the city in motion.
10. TUGUMI
Nomination Post
Page count: 245
Tsugumi is a sickly but feisty and somewhat unpleasant young girl living in a small Japanese seaside town at the family inn with her parents, sister Yoko, aunt Masako, and cousin Maria (the protagonist). Following the divorce of Maria’s father, Maria and Masako move to Tokyo to be with him, where Maria attends university. Shortly after the move, Maria receives a call from Tsugumi to say that the family are selling the inn. Maria returns to the town for one last summer to remember her childhood and reconcile her strained relationship with Tsugumi while she still can. But then they didn’t realize the true display of true will.
Purchasing Books
Please see the Discussion Thread of the current book for direct purchasing links.
Physical Books
Two good options for purchasing physical books are:
The former has economy shipping options which are likely to be cheaper but slower. You can also check out the Amazon site for your home country, or might be able to find the book on Amazon US.
If you can’t find an online store that will ship to you, you can use a forwarding service like Tenso or White Rabbit Express to forward the package to you for a fee. Alternatively, you may be able to find the book at a local Japanese book store such as Kinokuniya; just google your area.
Book types:
- 単行本 (たんこうぼん): “stand-alone book”. Hardcover or paperback, denoted by ハードカバー or ソフトカバー. Slightly larger than 文庫本.
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文庫本 (ぶんこぼん): small-format paperbacks, cheap but usually well-bound.
eBooks
There are several places you may be able to purchase eBooks:
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eBook Japan | no regional restrictions; not Kindle-compatible | see this usage guide
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Book Walker | accepts paypal
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Honto | not Kindle-compatible; mobile reader app is region-locked – on Android, get an APK, on iOS, use JP App Store
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Amazon JP | check out sirvorn’s wonderful guide
Historic Votes
Book Selection Polls
| Poll # | Date | #Voters | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poll 1 | 2017-07-12 | 23 | No. 6 (conducted in the old thread) |
| Poll 2 | 2017-08-08 | 48 | Autumn Prison |
| Poll 3 | 2017-10-31 | 26 | Red Nightmares (An Unexpected Conclusion in 5 Minutes) |
| Poll 4 | 2018-02-27 | 18 | The Devil is a Part-Timer |
| Poll 5 | 2019-01-25 | 60 | Kino’s Journey (nomination) |
| Poll 6 | 2019-04-24 | 39 | The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (nomination) Convenience Store Woman (nomination) |
| Poll 7 |
2019-08-15 Tie-break poll |
41 | キッチン (nomination) |
| Poll 8 | 2019-11-22 | 27 | 氷菓 (nomination) |
| Poll 9 | 2020-04-01 | 24 | Night Market (nomination) |
| Poll 10 | 2020-07-10 | 29 | 聖☆おにいさん (nomination) 博士の愛した数式 (nomination) |
| Poll 11 | 2021-01-09 | 26 | 君の名は (nomination) |
| Poll 12 | 2021-05-07 | 34 | コーヒーが冷めないうちに (nomination) |
| Poll 13 | 2021-09-08 | 34 | ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 (nomination) 地球星人 (nomination) |
Favorite pick poll
Up to 10th book (poll #1 - poll #9)
Other Polls
Poll regarding the beginner-level book club - Result: Beginners’ Book Club formed
Poll regarding how many votes each person should get - Result: 5 votes
Poll regarding whether to read two books in parallel - Result: no!
Poll to decide how to break the tie on round 7 - Result: extra poll
Archive
Proposals that got turned into their own book clubs
| Name + Book Club link | |
|---|---|
|
君の膵臓を食べたい I Want to Eat Your Pancreas |
Nomination Post |
| 魔法少女育成計画 Magical Girl Raising Project |
Nomination Post |
| 青春ブタ野郎はバニーガール先輩の夢を見ない Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny-Girl Senpai |
Nomination Post |
| 世界から猫が消えたなら If cats disappeared from the world |
Nomination Post |
| マンガ✖くり返しでスイスイ覚えられる百人一首 Smoothly Memorise with Manga and Repetition: The Hyakunin Isshu |
Nomination Post |
Proposals that were removed due to lack of interest
In order to keep the list of nominations fresh and interesting, we might think about removing those that frequently get only few votes in the polls.
Therefore we set a threshold of 20%. A book will be removed from the list of nominations if it reached this percentage or less in three polls in a row. (The polls overview seems to always round down, so we need to manually recalculate if it is a close call.)
This table is used to keep track of the books that were removed or are in danger of being removed:
| Book | 1st time | 2nd time | 3rd time | Removed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Manga) Made in Abyss | 08/2019 | |||
| (Manga) Land of the Lustrous | 08/2019 | |||
| The Familiar of Zero | 08/2019 | |||
| 紅霞後宮物語 | 08/2019 | |||
| The Closet of Nightmares | 08/2019 | |||
| Door D | 08/2019 | |||
| Wolf Children Ame & Yuki | 11/2019 | |||
| A lollipop or a bullet | 11/2019 | |||
| Tokyo Cat Stroll | 11/2019 | |||
| 最先端の日本酒ペアリング ー SAKE PAIRING |
07/2020 | |||
| 空挺ドラゴンズ | 07/2020 | |||
| １リットルの涙 難病と 闘い続ける少女亜也の日記 |
Poll 9 (12%) | Poll 10 (10%) | Poll 11 (11%) | 01/2021 |
| 灰と幻想のグリムガル | Poll 11 (11%) | 01/2021 (by nominator) |
||
| City | Poll 11 (7%) | 01/2021 (by nominator) |
||
| 変愛サイケデリック | Poll 10 (13%) | Poll 11 (3%) | Poll 12 (0%) | 05/2021 |
| All You Need Is Kill | Poll 11 (15%) | Poll 12 (11%) | Poll 13 (14%) | 09/2021 |
| もやしもん - Tales of Agriculture | Poll 11 (15%) | Poll 12 (17%) | Poll 13 (11%) | 09/2021 |
| ブギーポップは笑わない | Poll 11 (11%) | Poll 12 (17%) | Poll 13 (5%) | 09/2021 |
| ポーション頼みで生き延びます! | Poll 11 (3%) | Poll 12 (8%) | Poll 13 (14%) | 09/2021 |
| ifの悲劇 | Poll 12 (17%) | Poll 13 (14%) | ||
| きらきらひかる | Poll 13 (17%) | |||
| 天気の子 | Poll 13 (17%) | |||
| 山と食欲と私 | Poll 13 (17%) | |||
| City | Poll 13 (14%) | |||
| くま クマ 熊 ベアー | Poll 13 (14%) | |||
| リング | Poll 13 (11%) |
Other
| Title___________ | Synopsis | Pitch | Store Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| ナナブンノイチ One in Seven |
Seems to be a tale about a band of fraudsters / con artists planning an operation - with some double crossing intrigue going on between the members. Don’t know for sure about this book, but in general the author is known for having a comic style to his writing. | Post | Amazon |
| ネガティブハッピー・チェーンソーエッヂ Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge |
This is by the same author as Welcome to the NHK and seems to contain some similar themes. However, it has a Kindle edition and is aimed at a youth audience so ought not to feature some of the more questionable content some people were worried about.
Story is about a high school boy who is riding home on his bike one day and comes across a girl fighting a man wielding a chainsaw. From what I can understand this is not really explained and is more a representation of the boy’s desire to find someone to ‘save’. The two team up and form a bond while the girl continues her nightly fights. |
Post | Amazon |
| アフターダーク After Dark |
Murakami’s shortest and probably easiest to read work. Set over the course of a single night and the first (I believe) of his novels not to be written from a first-person 僕 perspective, this centres on two sisters - one asleep in a mysterious room and viewed through a camera, the other out and about in Tokyo where she encounters various unusual characters including a jazz musician and a love hotel manager. | Post | Amazon |
| Classics Club | Oreki Houtarou is a self-proclaimed “energy-saver”—that is, he refuses to actively waste energy doing things that aren’t necessary. Though he had no interest whatsoever in participating in any clubs upon entering Kamiyama High School, he was commanded by his older sister, Tomoe, to join the club she was once a part of, the Classics Club, as it was in danger of being abolished due to its nonexistent member count. Together with his old friends Fukube Satoshi and Ibara Mayaka, as well as with the elegantly ladylike and curiously inquisitive Chitanda Eru, the newly reformed Classics Club ends up finding themselves involved in all sorts of mystery-solving escapades. Houtarou quickly learns that life in the Classics Club, just as Tomoe had promised, would be an interesting one indeed. And so begins the “Classics Club Series”. | Post | - |
| ほしのこえ | In this timeless, interstellar love story, the power of love must conquer the distance of outer space. Rated for teens. | Post | Amazon |
| 怒り | A grisly unsolved murder links three seemingly unrelated people in three different Japanese cities. | Post | Amazon |
| クリムゾンの迷宮 | From a rising new star of horror comes a killer read that will make you lose track of time and reality. The Crimson Labyrinth is a wicked satire on extremist reality TV in the tradition of The Running Man-if that indeed is what it is. Welcome to THE MARS LABYRINTH where things aren’t what they seem. Welcome to the world of Kishi, where the plot is as gnarly as the humor is twisted. When an unemployed former math major wakes up one day, he wonders if he’s somehow ended up on the red planet. The good-looking young woman with aid-she says her name is Ai and that she draws erotic comics for a living-seems to have no clue either as to their whereabouts. Their only leads are cryptic instructions beamed to a portable device. Has the game begun? There is no reset button, no saving and no continue-make the wrong move and it’s really GAME OVER. In the cruel world of THE MARS LABYRINTH, mercy and compassion are only for the weak or the very, very strong. The stakes are nothing less than your life-and apparently a lot of money. If you’re a fan of Lost or Battle Royale, don’t miss this one | Post | Amazon |
| やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている | Hachiman Hikigaya is a cynic. “Youth” is a crock, he believes–a sucker’s game, an illusion woven from failure and hypocrisy. But when he turns in an essay for a school assignment espousing this view, he’s sentenced to work in the Service Club, an organization dedicated to helping students with problems in their lives! How will Hachiman the Cynic cope with a job that requires–gasp!–optimism? | Post | Amazon |
Proposals that were removed for other reasons
言の葉の庭 (too long)
Discussion Instructions
Discussions about the story start at the end of each reading period, but other discussions (for example on the language or on the book club itself) can of course be performed at any time. Just make sure to use [spoiler] tags for sentences that contain spoilers!
Early Book Club Members
はたらく魔王さま Member List
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Snowflying
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fl0rm
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scaso
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LucasDesu
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Naphthalene
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NickNickovich
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Momoiro
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AngelTenshi
Red Nightmares Member List
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LucasDesu
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Naphthalene
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NickNickovich
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Steffy47
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Ell
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Snowflying
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Toyger
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Rain32
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Angel
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charlesfm
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Dorotheian
Autumn Prison Member List
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Angel
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Caracal
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chrispthompson
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DuncanDean
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Hgbearawesome
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katiesaccount
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Kumirei
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LucasDesu
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mitsuki777
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Nath
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NickNickovich
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polv
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: saiakuma
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Scaso
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Snowflying
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Toyger
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Mechturk
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StellaTerra
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Alineiwane
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AnimeCanuck
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Answa
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Atrejub
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Ddleighc
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downtimes
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EiriMatsu
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ish93
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krokorock
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mechmouse
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Mohkargan
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Nehaahmed
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Netru
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Oryantge
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pgoonghang
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Riccyjay
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chofas
- Ell (lurking, will participate with next book and read the discussion of 秋の牢獄)
No. 6 Member List
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Addietaylor
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Answa
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Arnagos
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Caracal (slowly)
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Carlap
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Chrispthompson
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Downtimes
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GaijinInu641 (reading, but really slowly)
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Hgbearawesome
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Icefang97
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Ichou
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katiesaccount
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KuzunohaXIV
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LTMumfordIII
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LucasDesu
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Plumenator
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Scaso
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SilverRose009
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Snowflying
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Softlyraining
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Toc
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Aemaeth
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AmethystPersona0
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AngelTenshi
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Dimono (have the book but planning to just read at my own pace and read the discussion afterwards)
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Dnmj95
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Dokuchan
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Egd001
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Eucibous
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Hanalee
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Jhamonnet
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Jintanuki
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JKO
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Kumirei
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LankyAusMan
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MissMisc
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Obskyr
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Polv
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riccyjay
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Toyger
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Trishcakes
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Tru
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Anchang
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Annshin
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Bakugou
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Ersikan
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Humla
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Maxkao
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Tapatun
- AnimeCanuck (still working on grammar)
- DuncanDean (lurking, has ordered 秋の牢獄 for the next round)
- Kyayna (lurking, will participate with next book)
- Megbc (lurking, will participate with next book)
- NathaliRe (lurking, will participate with next book)
- Pydron (lurking, will participate with next book)
Key
: Has book and is currently reading along.
: Has book but is not yet reading.
: Has ordered or will order / buy book.
They were actually the final push that made begin learning Japanese. Before I was like I don’t really like subtitles so I think I’ll learn Japanese. But then these came out and at the time I couldn’t find translations, so I began my Japanese studies!
) but I can’t order it through either account… any tips? D: