Cool. Have you seen the series? The book is different in a few parts, but I think my memory of watching it a few years ago really helped me out.
Bit of a weird one to judge in terms of difficulty. There’d often be several pages where I felt I understood almost everything, immediately followed by a chapter where I was completely lost. Honestly, I’d say overall it was a bit above my level. Fantasy bits, plus long introspective passages often left me scratching my head. I don’t think it helps that Sato isn’t the most logical and sound thinking person so it’s difficult to rely on your own reasoning to interpret what’s going on.
I watched some of it back when I first started learning Japanese but never finished it. I agree that he’s a difficult narrator to follow at times so having some additional context helps. It’s pretty interesting to get inside his head though. Hopefully the Japanese doesn’t get too bad. Slowly muddling my way through Steins;Gate too so I’m hoping it’s not worse than that.
Oh yeah, and I also picked up a copy of Battle Royale like I mentioned earlier in the thread but haven’t even started on it since it’s quite intimidating with all those pages of densely packed font.
My book got lost in the mail =(
The seller kindly asked to wait another week, and if it still doesn’t arrive I’ll get my money back at least.
I’ll see if I try again or not. I see many say it is much easier than the first one, so maybe I’m ready for it, but probably not =P
Was the shipping more expensive than say, a normal used book?
A marketing trick that has been popular lately in online retail is to make the product free and get the profit from the shipping. Wasn’t expecting to see it on Amazon, but I guess that’s it.
If you’re concerned with falling behind, it’s okay to just start. The only precondition is that those starting ahead of time refrain from asking questions or discussing the book until the new thread is created.
I don’t think we officially voted on the rate of reading yet. I believe that 1 chapter a month was thrown out there because the chapters were longer than the NO. 6. However that was before the other book club group was formed, so I’m not sure what rate the official rate is.
You won’t see it from Amazon.com as in Amazon the seller, but Amazon is also a resale place for other merchants. Look at USA Amazon for used books, CD’s, whatever and their are tons for < .99 all the way down to .01 with $4.99+ shipping. People grab the books free/cheap from libraries, schools, etc. then put them for sale online with shipping as the profit. (Assume that only works because Amazon cut is 30%ish from the purchase price…not whatever you set as shipping, still not making much per book).
Assume it’s harder to find a 1円, book willing to ship outside of JP, because it sounds like the exact same secondhand market.
I believe it´s because there are a lot of books on sale.