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

Maybe this was different, but last year it was proposed to petition for our own subcategory, but that was rejected. I don’t remember an issue with the category being specified by the mods, though. And even after digging through the previous posts related to this book club, I couldn’t find anything. So if there was a declaration about book clubs needing to be Campfire, it had to have been prior to the creation of this book club…

Yeah, I couldn’t find it either. And it was just their way of saying no to sub category, so might not have been meant strictly to stay in this place anyway.

I think I remember where it was! The beginner book club, after someone brought it up again * goes of to look * … or not… We have so many different threads of similar topics =P

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Here’s the post I remember seeing. It happened when someone in the beginner book club asked why the request for a separate subcategory had been denied:

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Yay, you found it! <3
So I didn’t dream it :wink:
This is the one I was looking for =^_^=

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That also explains why I don’t remember seeing it…

eh, well now that you’ve linked it she should be notified. I guess we’ll just wait and see what she says.

I will summarize for her

  • @Raionus is developing a vocab tool that creates a list of vocabulary to srs from a designated book.
  • He also wants to link the book club discussions on his site but doesn’t feel comfortable doing that because the book club discussion threads were in campfire which is private. So he didn’t want to invade our privacy and force people from his site to make a wanikani account just to view the threads.
  • So I moved them to Japanese >grammar, I personally don’t see it as problematic because we discuss and answer grammar points in the thread and I needed it in a public section.
  • But since you once said it belonged in the campfire section, some people got worried about moving the threads. May we keep them in Japanese> grammar?
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Just popping in as an active beginner book club person to say it would be SO good if all the bookclub threads were in their own subsection rather than needing to be searched for, especially for anyone trying to catch up on a book started earlier on. I have been trying to respond to queries on early chapters of Kiki made long after the main group passed through, but they are often lost given the larger amount of posts on more social threads.

Personally I think putting it in Japanese makes more sense than Campfire as people are genuinely trying to learn Japanese from it, but whatever… I would be happy just to see the subsection!

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I asked a second time after the original request was rejected, and it was rejected again. So I don’t think this is going to happen any time soon.

I wonder if we should request a Japanese > Reading section and put the book club topics there. I find it strange that there’s not a Reading section already, so maybe they’d go for that.

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On a separate topic.

We are getting to the end of the current book who would be willing to try something new? I tried proposing this on the current book thread, but I want to see what every one else thinks. I feel that discussion is important for the book club, but I’ve noticed that as the end of the books come near, momentum on previous threads (the current one as well) wane almost exponentially. For the past two books we tried doing discussion leaders to try to maintain some form of activity, but this seems to be difficult to pull off the same intensity of activity for the entirety of the books.

For this reason, I suggest that we try something different. Like usual, we should put a timeline so people can pace themselves through the book, but instead of weekly discussions save the “official” discussion of the book at the time when we’ve officially finished the book. Another option is have discussion at the end of the chapters (the new book only has three). In the meantime, if people have questions or things one their mind about the story during the interim, they’re welcomed to post on the thread. This moves closer to what a true book club is like, but also satisfies anybody’s need to have any side discussions along the way.

What do you think about this proposal?

  • Perhaps we should implement this
  • I don’t think this will work well for us…(please explain why)
  • I have a better/different proposal…(please present below)
  • It doesn’t matter either way for me
  • Other response which I’ll explain below

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I put together a proposed schedule for the next book. When I get a moment, I’ll create a table to propose another reading schedule

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By the way, this is completely unrelated to the topic at hand, but I just want to say thank you for all the efforts you are putting in getting this book club going :grinning:

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Here’s a schedule that would take about 15 weeks to get to the end of the book. I’m not sure about the difficulty of this book, but I wouldn’t be surprised if were more difficult than the last two.

Proposed Reading Schedule

Week Chapter/Position Pages*
1 魔王、生活のために労働に励む
week 2 starts after the picture or with the line "二人は最低限の職へ"
28
2 魔王、生活のために労働に励む
week 3 starts after the break or with the line "翌朝にはバレだ"
24
3 魔王、生活のために労働に励む
week 4 starts after the break/picture or with the line "今にも背景に薔薇を飛ばさん"
22
4 魔王、生活のために労働に励む
week 5 starts in the next chapter
29
5 魔王、新宿で後輩とデートする
week 6 starts after the asterisk or with the line "くっそ、警察のせいで貴重な休日"
24
6 魔王、新宿で後輩とデートする
week 7 starts after the after break/picture or with the line "ですよねー。なんか、わかってました"
21
7 魔王、新宿で後輩とデートする
week 8 starts after the asterisk or with the line "エミリア・ユスチーナが"
30
8 魔王、新宿で後輩とデートする
week 9 starts after the break or with the line "お邪魔しまーす"
25
9 魔王、新宿で後輩とデートする
week 10 starts in the next chapter
16
10 魔王と勇者、笹塚に立つ
week 11 starts after the asterisk or with the line "気持悪いい!"
21
11 魔王と勇者、笹塚に立つ
week 12 starts after the break or with the line "ちょっと!さっきのは"
22
12 魔王と勇者、笹塚に立つ
week 13 starts after the break or with the line "映画...じゃないよね"
33
13 魔王と勇者、笹塚に立つ
week 14 starts after the break or with the line "おぇっぷ...いったい、"
23
14 魔王と勇者、笹塚に立つ
week 15 starts after the break or with the line "恵美とエメラダとアルバート"
22
15 魔王と勇者、笹塚に立つ
read until the end
24

*Page counts are from my kindle fire which have higher counts than printed page counts so this projected plan is quite conservative. Additionally, I’ve omitted pages that only had one line on them, illustrations, or were blank. I welcome additional proposals so that we can vote on suitable alternatives.

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I don’t understand that poll. You suggest two options, but you don’t give a choice to say which option we are ok with. In my case, I prefer to keep discussions for each chapter, not the whole book. I don’t quite understand.

So this is the pace you are following? around 20 pages a week? … intermediate level?. Then I’m out! :-/ not that fast…

Really? That’s like 3 pages a day… It seems pretty managable to me.

I am a stalker of the intermediate club rather than a member, but I’m pretty sure that post says:

And I assume the proposed schedule was at least to some extent based on previous schedules.

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With the poll the answers go as follows (in order from top to bottom)
Yes, I’d like to implement this
No, I don’t think we should implement this, I’ll post below why.
I have a different idea/proposal; I’ll post below what it is
I don’t care what we do
I have some other comment which I’ll post below.

This poll you’re free to choose many choices you feel are relevant. I’m sorry if my wording was unclear.

As @Radish8 says, the proposed schedule I posted is a suggestion. Nothing is decided at this point. I just took the initiative to divide the book before we have to start reading the new story. The basis for the pace is from the previous books we’ve read in the past. In the end, members of intermediate book club will voice their opinions about what to do, and we’ll do that.

As mentioned in subject of this thread, it’s the intermediate level book club, so if this pacing is too fast I’d recommend checking out the beginner book club.

Separate topic
It took me until now to realize that @Naphthalene is really @Nath. :rofl:

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I’m not sure if you mean the pace isn’t that fast, or if you aren’t that fast. (I have no idea of what your expectations are at intermediate level).
In my case, the pace feels slow, but then I just read ahead. I’m already down with week 4 in the proposed schedule, for instance, and I’m currently reading something else while waiting to be in sync again.

Now, if you meant it’s too fast, as @LucasDesu said, the beginner book club should be a bit easier. In that context, “beginner” means “beginner to reading native material”, not “beginner to Japanese” :slight_smile: Also, they are going to read a really cool manga this time around, so in any case you should check it out!

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So, I found the list of chapters for the new book, but I am having trouble finding the title…
Could someone please take pity on me and tell me what it is?
よろしくね。

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はたらく魔王さま!
The vocab should be available at floflo.moe as well.
Direct link: https://floflo.moe/hataraku-maou-sama/

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Thanks for trying to propose a new system for the Book Club. I also had an idea, though I don’t know if it would be better: Perhaps we could move the brunt of the discussion to the Discord channel. I noticed that several people have joined in recent weeks, so the interest seems to be there. Since it’s an instant messenger it might help generate more discussion, particularly between people who happen to be online at the same time.

Considering the general slowness of the discussion thread in general, though, it’s hard to say if Discord would be any better. There isn’t much discussion happening between discussion question postings - but then this makes me fear that, if we switch to a “discussion questions at the end only” approach, discussion would drop down to zero. We could potentially implement a “general discussion on the Discord, end-of-book discussion questions on the forums” model but, then I don’t know if the result would be much different from the way things are now.