Intermediate Japanese Book Club (Now Reading: 地球星人)

Japanese Language Reading
#1545

I actually just finished ペングイン・ハイウェイ a couple of days ago. I agree it is quite long. But I wouldn’t say it’s particularly hard. It repeats a lot of the same vocab/phrases so once you get used to them, reading gets a lot smoother. I read the 60 pages in a day just because it was the climax.

It’s a cute story and the protagonist is adorable (minus the obnoxious amount of breast mentions), so I recommend it!

Also: Off-topic but, does anyone have a bookmeter? Just found out that it’s the Japanese equivalent of goodreads.

Add me if you do!
https://bookmeter.com/users/962464

6 Likes
#1546

On a scale of 0.1 to 9.2/10 how would you feel if I nominated it out of sheer obstinance

3 Likes
#1547

ドアD (Door D)

Summary

Yuna and her 7 university tennis club friends were kidnapped and woke up in an unknown room. With only one locked door, and water filling into the room fast, they must figure out a way to escape before they all drown.

There’s a lever that opens the door. But it only holds the door open while pulled. One person will have to remain.

And this is just the start. Through a series of death trap rooms, and chances of survival slim, each other’s humanity will be tested. Will the group make it out alive? Will anyone make it out alive? And what awaits upon getting through the final door?

Availability

Personal Opinion

Psychological thrillers are one of my favorite genres, I also like the esacpe room theme. Much like the zero escape series, the American movie " Escape room" that just came out 2019, and I think the saw movies was the same setup? It’s a good lenght, 235, and it should be around the same difficulty as autumn prison.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Ebook available
  • short
  • Interesting premise

Cons

  • Japanese people don’t like it
  • Might be scary for some people

Pictures

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Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Just right
  • Challenging
  • Impossible, even with everyone’s help
  • I don’t know (please click this if you’re not voting seriously)

0 voters

3 Likes
#1548

Wow, those reviews on Amazon are bad! :grimacing:

1 Like
#1549

I know right, I heard a lot of people hate the author for his outrageous ideas but it his work does better overseas which fuels more hate. I understand if its off-putting. But some of my favorite movies/books have been horribly rated so I don’t mind giving it a chance.

1 Like
#1550

悪夢のクローゼット 悪夢シリーズ

Summary

Japanese

清冠学園野球部のエース・長尾虎之助は「キラキラ王子」と呼ばれる国民的アイドル。ある日、学園のマドンナ教師・みな美先生の寝室に誘われた。ところが、“いざ、これから♪”という時に、突然の来客があり、クローゼットに押し込められる。虎之助がその扉の隙間から見たのは、意外な人物の登場と、殺人の瞬間だった。明るい未来が約束された虎之助の人生が、一気に暗転。この先、どう乗り切る？！

English

High school baseball star Toranosuke is a bit of a national idol. Known as the “sparkling prince” by his fans, he was invited to the house of his beautiful teacher Mina. Before he knew it, he was in her bedroom being seduced, the dream of any teenage boy.

Some unexpected visitors show up right when the mood gets right, and Toranosuke is forced to hide in the closet. This would destroy his reputation and his blossoming baseball career if a scandal like this were unearthed.

While waiting for the visitors to leave, everyone enters the bedroom. Hoping they leave soon, things turn for the worst. His teacher is murdered right before his eyes, as he peeks out from a crack in the closet door. Sex scandal and now witness to murder? Is there anyway Toranosuke can come out of this unscathed and keep his sparkling prince image?!
Source

Availability

Personal Opinion

It sounds really funny and I think we would enjoy it, and it’s just something really different that we haven’t tried yet and we should!

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • proper length
    Not impossible hard
    funny and interesting

Cons

  • So far as the sample reads, there is isn’t any explicit sexual activity while they do take their clothes off to their underwear and kiss.(as far as I can read, I didn’t look up any words and I don’t know many sexuality explicit words) I don’t think this counts as NSFW as I think scenes like this are in pg13 movies, but may I ask why for some reason are we queasy about NSFW? Like is it that serious?

Pictures

Awkwardly enough, some of the scene is in the first three pages…

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Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Just right
  • Challenging
  • Impossible, even with everyone’s help
  • I don’t know (please click this if you’re not voting seriously)

0 voters

#1551

Personally, I have zero interest in reading anything sexually explicit. PG-13 is fine for me, but nothing more than that. I think that rule was included to make sure not to scare people off (it was copied from the beginner book club’s rules). With that said, if others want to get rid of that rule I’d be okay with it, as long as explicit books were marked as such so I could know to not vote for them.

2 Likes
#1552

Having read some other books by the same author in the 悪夢 series, I guess things will start happening before anything NSFW has a chance of happening.

Your mileage may vary, of course, since the foreplay already presented can make some people uncomfortable, but it won’t get any worse.

Unrelated, but I was reading the reviews of door D on amazon, and the single 5* review is actually a joke (something around the line of “it’s so rare to feel pure anger when reading books, amazing”). The single 4* review says that it’s not so bad, just not very imaginative, so still fun for people who aren’t so familiar with the genre. Reading way too many 1* reviews, I think that’s indeed the case. It’s kinda weird to me that people got so agressive over a “meh” book, but in any case, I think “simple description” and “shallow personalities” will make the book an easier read indeed. Maybe not so fun for a native, but appropriate for an intermediate learner.

5 Likes
#1553

I do, and I did!
夜露死苦!

1 Like
#1554

涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱

Summary

Summary

「ただのにんげんには興味ありません。この中に宇宙人、未来人、異世界人、超能力者がいたら、私のところに来なさい。以上」。入学早々、ぶっ飛んだ挨拶をかましてくれた涼宮ハルヒ。そんなSF小説じゃあるまいし……と誰でも思うよな。俺も思ったよ。だけどハルヒは心の底から真剣だったんだ。それに気づいたときには俺の日常は、もうすでに超常になっていたー
Kyon, your typical high school student, has long given up his belief in the supernatural. However, upon meeting Haruhi Suzumiya, he quickly finds out that it is the supernatural that she is interested in—aliens, time travelers, and espers among other things. When Haruhi laments about the lack of intriguing clubs around school, Kyon inspires Haruhi to form her own club. As a result, the SOS Brigade is formed, a club which specializes in all that is the supernatural.

Availability

Availabilty

https://www.amazon.co.jp/涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱-角川スニーカー文庫-谷川-流/dp/4044292019/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?__mk_ja_JP=カタカナ&qid=1547961968&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=すずみやハルヒの憂鬱+小説&dpPl=1&dpID=51MEZAig6qL&ref=plSrch
https://www.ebookjapan.jp/ebj/158468/

Personal Opinion

Well, I like it. It’s fun, plays with the concept of light novels/manga/anime, and was a huge deal when the anime adaptation first came out. I think it may have faded away as the “anime commenting on anime” thing became common and done worse, but I feel like it has a special place. Also I have a love for Kyon.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Style. The narrator is first person, and tends to quip about things. I generally don’t like first person novels, but this one works.
  • Pretty good comedy.
  • 300 pages.
  • Apparently a lot of words to learn.
  • Grammar doesn’t seem bad?

Cons

  • More of an otaku bent.
  • Apparently a lot of words to learn.
  • Some obnoxious treatment of Asahina Mikuru.
  • Might be harder than I think it is.

Pictures

First Three Pages

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Extra Pages

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Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Just right
  • Challenging
  • Impossible, even with everyone’s help
  • I don’t know (please click this if you’re not voting seriously)

0 voters



I did it hohoho
In seriousness, hearing it was supposed to be so bad made me do a skim through, and I think we could handle it. So here it is.

2 Likes
涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 Home Thread (Intermediate Book Club)
#1555

I really like the writing style, actually!
The （以下略) made me crack a smile too.

I’ve heard of 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱, but never read/watched anything about it. Sounds pretty fun.

@everyone (especially @seanblue @AngelTenshi @LucasDesu @Radish8 @ditto20 on top of QuackingShoe I am replying to) Concrete question: until when should we keep the submissions open? I heard that the beginner book club vote closes on Monday, should we say one week after that?
If so, we can update the thread title to inform the world about the deadline.

OMG IT’S HAPPENING.
Also summoning @MissMisc and @TamanegiNoKame

7 Likes
#1556

Im looking at joining depending on what book ends up getting picked. But how many pages do yall usually read per week?

#1557

@seanblue is proposing 15 per week to make it a smoother transition from the beginner book club.

#1558

Oof, 2 pages a day? What was it previously?

#1559

I guess I should clarify: it’s one of the least weird things I own that isn’t a book I’ve already read, hasn’t already been read by a book club, isn’t likely to be nominated by someone else anyway, isn’t part of a series and not the first book, isn’t a spin-off of something else, isn’t too long and doesn’t seem extremely difficult… but now that I think about it, that only leaves me with ゼロの使い魔、 俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない、こんな素晴らしい世界に祝福を and 妹さえいればいい to choose from. All of those could probably be considered weird in some way. Anyone reading this, which one sounds the least weird out of these? I guess I’ll nominate that one.

Out of the ones I listed above, 妹さえいればいい is probably the weirdest. It starts out rather creepy(in a “what is this even” way, not in a scary way), and has similar segments appear throughout the book occasionally, but actually seems to have a fairly decent story otherwise. It kind of feels like the author wrote a book that’s actually good, then wrote some of the weirdest stuff he could think of, put it in at random, and then called it a day.

3 Likes
#1560

It’s not anywhere close what I usually read actually, but it actually sounds interesting. You may or may not have your first voter xD

#1561

We should have just swapped :joy: I literally sold my no-furigana copy a few weeks ago.

@Naphthalene I reckon one week after (to let Kino’s Journey be nominated :stuck_out_tongue: ) seems like a sensible timeframe, but I thought seanblue wasn’t able to kickstart things properly for a bit longer?

I mean, it looks like there are lots of nominations already, so you might want to have a short deadline anyway.

I stopped watching the anime because of that :pensive: I was enjoying it otherwise, but eventually that was too jarring and frequent for me to be able to get past it. I can imagine it wouldn’t be so obnoxious in book form though.

3 Likes
#1562

It may not be possible, but it would be super helpful to have a decision in time to order both books at the same time (for beginner and intermediate club) for those that read in both clubs (e.g. probably me, I don’t actually know if anyone is planning to do the same).
I think the beginners is starting the next book sort of mid February, so maybe that’s not actually feasible, but I thought I’d bring it up…

Again, I’m also happy to help out a bit if it helps kick things off earlier

4 Likes
#1563

Glad you said that! Actually I read the first page, and although I knew most of the words and most of the grammar, it did not feel like I really understood what the text was supposed to mean… So if it gets picked, brace yourself for lots of questions from my side :joy_cat:

2 Likes
#1564

I actually don’t think I’ve ever seen that written in Japanese before. Romaji, sure, but not proper Japanese.

2 Likes