I looked at the proposal guidlines for the intermediate club and that includes a clause that after 3 polls with less than 20% of the votes a work gets removed. Now I could not find any such rule for the beginner’s book club but looked at the last 3 poll results anyways and a couple nominations did consistently poll under 20%:
It seems that Radish applied such a rule at certain points in time, but I don’t know which exact rule that was. But I was also wondering whether we should move some of the nominations to the “retired due to unpopularity” state. If you’d like to establish a clear rule here as well, I think nobody would object to it 
Well, if we’re not sure when it should be applied, maybe we’ll skip it this time around. 
(The fact that one of my nominations is in the at-risk list is pure coincidence, I’m sure…)
I have added the rule the intermediate club uses to the guidelines
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?
and removed the 4 manga I mentioned in my previous post. This shrinks the list down quite a bit but I’m confident that we will get plenty of new ones until the next poll rolls around.
Hey @Toyger I’m not sure whether you noticed that your nomination - Death Note - was (finally) picked 
and will be read soon-ish (i.e. from January 22nd if I did not miscalculate)? Are you still up for running the book club?
Here’s a reminder that the Intermediate Book Club’s next pick, 地球星人, starts next week! If there were ever a book worth challenging yourself for, this is the one. I’ve read it in English and consider it one of the best books I’ve ever read. Also, Sayaka Murata’s writing style typically makes for a smooth transition to intermediate reading.
I noticed! Looking very much forward to it! =D
Not sure I want to be the one to run it though. If anyone else who are joining wish to take the lead, that’d be great =)
That’s totally fine! I’m sure we can find a volunteer to run the club.
Any takers?
(It’s no problem if you haven’t run a club before, we’re all here to help each other out not only on the Japanese stuff but also on the club-running stuff 
)
I’m happy to report that we finished the current pick! Here is the Satisfaction Poll in case you want to participate (or are just curious what the participants thought about the book).
I’m looking forward to reading our next pick, which is due to start in a week’s time
Also, we’re still looking for a volunteer who wants to run the Death Note book club If you’re interested, just shout in this thread.
Oh man time flies it feels like we did the poll yesterday…
I would be fine with running the Death Note club.
Moved to the intermediate book club
新人少女漫画家の双見奈々先生は、年上の女性担当編集者の佐藤 楓さんやアシスタントの間 瑞希さんに支えられながら、時々本人曰く職業病の激しい妄想を拗らせながら、今日もお仕事中！ エンタメ業界を舞台にしたワーキングガールズコメディ、第1巻！ (Bookwalker)
Nana Futami, a rookie manga artist, is at work today with the support of her editor Kaede Sato and assistant Mizuki Hazama, sometimes suffering from what she calls her “occupational disease”! A working girls comedy set in the entertainment industry!
Physical: Amazon | CDJapan
Digital: Kindle | Bookwalker
I had so much fun reading this. It is a great comedy that got a lot of laughs out of me without being overly silly. I would say it is a bit on the more difficult side of things esepcially because of all the manga/industry terminology that needs to be build up, but I felt like the density did not overwhelm!
Pros
Cons
How much effort would you need to read this book?
[poll type=regular public=true]
What is going on on page 5…
I have not read this manga, but I’ve read こみっくがーるず, which is also about mangaka. I already recognized the term ネーム on the first few pages. I do wonder where the term comes from though. 
That was my reaction aswell when I first saw it but it is just the main characters imagination going wild and nothing close to that is ever mentioned/shown again.
Understood. Is this mostly female cast or mixed cast?
Almost 100% female. In general it centers around the 3 women mentioned in the synopsis which takes up 95% of the first volume
I think I remember reading something about this a while ago: the most prominent theory relates to the fact that ネーム is old printing industry jargon for any type of printed text: i.e., captions, or speech bubbles in manga. Back before digital production, with physical letterpresses, typesetters needed to be able to know how to set up the printing press for the ネーム to be printed onto the artwork in the correct location. Since finished artwork takes a lot of time, typesetters had to be given a rough draft so they could properly prepare the ネーム locations for when the finished artwork was ready.
So the name (ha, sorry) for those rough drafts eventually just became ネーム, since it’s main purpose was preparing the printing press for that. Obviously no longer an issue with digital production being the norm nowadays, but the term stuck, regardless. (Not unlike us still calling glitches in computers “bugs”… The term came from an actual moth being stuck inside a relay in an electromechanical computer. )
Here is the page that I read that talks about the theory, for posterity: Why is a NAME called a NAME? / 5 criteria to watch out for – Japanese Manga 101 #028 – SILENT MANGA AUDITION®
I’d suggest adding the lack of furigana as a Cons, just so that people are aware…
Sorry for the stupid question. Is this the right thread to read if I want to help you choose next book? Was there a poll already asking if manga style is preferred to simple story? I was too busy full November to keep up with the chat.
This is the right topic, yes. But if you look at the first post you’ll see that the next two books have already been selected, so the books have been decided into mid-March. That means there will probably be another poll at the end of January or beginning of February.
This is decided per poll by simply voting for the books or manga you want to read at the time. You don’t vote for a style. You vote for a specific book/manga. The first post also includes the current list of nominations. In the Beginner Book Club (here), most of the options/winners are manga, but regular books do get picked as well. In the Intermediate Book Club, it’s mostly books.
Also, it looks like there are only six nominations right now, so feel free to nominate some more options if you have something specific in mind.
