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

I realise you guys might want to keep the historical member lists for posterity (or you may not!), but do you think for future picks you’ll move towards the poll-based model of the Beginner Club?

Edit: two further questions after doing some initial tidying.

Do you want to keep the specific purchasing instructions for each book in the OP of this thread, or provide that kind of information in the OP of the particular book’s discussion thread?

Similarly, there are some instructions of how the discussions work - do you want to keep those in this OP, or provide that information in the discussion threads?

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Is 350 still a bit long though? I was originally thinking 300, so the expected pace could be 15 pages a week instead of 10 pages a week to take the same amount of time. (Not much difference in the end though.)

Thumbing through a couple of the light novels I own, a fairly large percentage are in the 300-350 page range. I feel like limiting down to 300 would cut down on options a fair bit. (e.g. 君の膵臓を食べたい @ 324 pages, or 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 @ 307 pages)

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Usually around 3-4 days.

Considering I was the one that nixed the member list in beginner book club (and I haven’t seen any ill-effect) I think we should do the same here.

Yeah, I realized this as well after posting. Two books that I’m considering suggesting are also in that range, so 350 might be better after all.

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I removed it at first, then put it behind a detail section as a kind of template, then I put it back.
I.e. I don’t know, but I feel it’s crowding the post for no good reason. So I’m in favor of removing it, but didn’t feel like making that decision unilaterally. (Like you I guess :p)

I think keeping old lists isn’t a bad idea, same with the old proposals, just putting it in a separate “historical” section or something.

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Also chiming in to your questions regarding the OP.

Thank you so much for helping to clean things up on our thread. Not just you Radish8, but everyone! I think it’s encouraging to see people improve to the point where they are confident to move into this group!

Like @Naphthalene said, I can’t speak for everyone, but since you’re going through the trouble to do it, I say use your personal judgement to remove/hide parts that take away from flow. I’m sure if there’s something that’s removed or hidden that one of the legacy members takes issue with, we can always go through the edit history to restore those part later.

I can’t wait until I can be more than just a wallflower on this thread.

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Thanks for your input, both!

What I’ll do for now is create an archive section for both the member lists and old nominations, and I’ll pop the purchasing information in there too. Then when the next books starts up you can use that information to populate the OP of the discussion thread and we can delete the specific purchasing information from this thread.

I do agree with @LucasDesu that it’s not as if anything is ever lost forever, what with the edit history, so we can always revert any changes that people object to. Though the book club threads tend to get edited so often that it becomes hard to find…

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It doesn’t look particularly likely any of the harder books will win in the beginner book club and I’ll be away from home for a while after tomorrow, so anyone mind if I nominate something now(or well, in a few hours, more likely) instead of waiting until the poll in the beginner book club is done?

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I’m totally okay with it :man_shrugging: どうぞ

Go for it! Better early than not at all.

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It’s seeming unlikely that I’m participate in the next beginner’s, so I’m anxious to see what pops up here!

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I’m kind of on the fence. It still depends on what wins for me. I quite like the look of the candy shop book thing, so should that win, I’ll probably read along. But it’s always also a question of ordering it. Costs me a fortune every time to be honest, so should any of the other options that are likely to win now come out on top I’ll skip this round probably too and start bombarding this thread instead :wink:

Regardless, fingers crossed this book club works out and I’ll definitely read along, a bit of a challenge.

Also I forgot to chime in earlier, but if anything still needs doing to help out here, I’m more than happy to put a bit of work in myself. Whatever is fine, if anything needs doing, let me know (that’s addressed to anyone that actually knows what’s in need of doing xD)

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That’s actually the only thing on there I won’t read :rofl:
Especially not with the cost of importing what appears to be an exclusively hardcover book.

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I won’t read that one either. Didn’t seem interesting or challenging enough to warrant the time and money necessary to read it.

Yeah. It looks like it is a good book by all indications, but my personal interest in it is less than zero.

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Hah. I voted for that because it seemed kinda interesting, but of the four books I voted for it’s the one I’m least interested in. Almost tempted to sneakily withdraw my vote. Give Yuru Camp more of a fighting chance. :stuck_out_tongue:

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That’s hilarious xD I think difficult wise I completely agree, too easy, but also every once in a while those kinda stories do really intrigue me. I’m a sucker for nostalgia and it gives me Mr Magorium vibes :joy:
(Is it really only hard cover? That’s kinda annoying me now)

Funnily enough, I usually read mostly fantasy stuff, the darker the better and if the main character dies it’s a plus in my book. But yeah, every once in a while :wink:

Also I really want to read a book again, it’s been super rewarding for me, much more so than the manga.

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I might nominate a magical girl battle royal light novel, so you might like that. :slight_smile:

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I’m officially listening.

I’ll probably nominate it sometime over the next week. But in the meantime, feel free to take a look. The prologue is deceptively easy, so take a look after that to actually gauge the difficulty. Honestly, I’d need to take a closer look to figure out if I can handle it myself.

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Here are my nominees. That includes:

  • ドアD (Door D) [physiological thriller]
  • ナナブンノイチ (One in Seven) [idk]
  • バトル・ロワイアル (Battle Royale) [Death game]
  • ペンギン・ハイウェイ(Penguin Highway)[coming of age]

Title: ドアD (Door D)

Japanese Level: ☆☆

Synopsis: 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?

First Page

Why it might be a good choice:

  • It sounds interesting, it’s a psychological Thriller. What more you can ask for, am I right?

  • It has a Kindle version

  • And apparently easy Japanese

  • 絶望

Why it might not be a good choice:

“A lot of 山田悠介 (Yamada Yuusuke)’s works get highly criticized online because his ideas can seem a bit outrageous and his writing is way too simple. The fact that his works sell so much despite this negative criticism just fuels even stronger criticism” - the guy who wrote the article describing the book

Source


Title: ナナブンノイチ (One in Seven)

Japanese Level: Similar to Autumn Prison

image

Synopsis: 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.

Why it would be a good choice:

-I’ve read a couple of this guy’s books already and they’re both easy and fun to read

-Standalone book with paperback and kindle editions available

-Best reviewed work in a popular looking franchise (main criticism of his books by natives appears to be that the writing is too simplistic - which should be music to our ears!)

-Departure from previous books

-…has a cool cover?

Why it might not be a good choice:

-Difficulty - dependent on how people find Autumn Prison

-His other books - while nowhere close to gritty - do feature a fair amount of sex and violence, and this looks like being no exception


Title: バトル・ロワイアル (Battle Royale)

Japanese Level: ??( apparently the movie is rated ☆☆ on Japanese levelup)

Genre: Death game

image

Synopsis: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill one another until only one survivor is left standing.

Why it might be a good choice:

  • It’s a classic in the killing game genre, so it should be pretty interesting and engaging.

Why it might not be a good choice:

  • It’s pretty long

  • Unsure of it’s difficulty.

  • No kindle version


ペンギン・ハイウェイ

Japanese Level: Comfortable (imo)

image

Synopsis: ぼくはまだ小学校の四年生だが、もう大人に負けないほどいろいろなことを知っている。毎日きちんとノートを取るし、たくさん本を読むからだ。ある日、ぼくが住む郊外の街に、突然ペンギンたちが現れた。このおかしな事件に歯科医院のお姉さんの不思議な力が関わっていることを知ったぼくは、その謎を研究することにした──。少年が目にする世界は、毎日無限に広がっていく。第31回日本SF大賞受賞作。

The novel centers around a fourth-grader, Aoyama-kun, investigating the mysterious reason behind the suddenly appearance of penguins in his village, which is somehow related to a power from a lady working at a dental clinic.

First page:

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