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

I was just gonna say that! I’d actually also be interested @Naphthalene.

When I saw it nominated my first reaction was that i wanted to get the book. The second reaction was that I would way too obsessive about it and actually want to remember all of them (Which will never happen, but one can have dreams.)

I really like your idea @Belerith, that would be a fun little project, if more people would be interested. And I agree, one poem a week a person is more than enough if you put the time into doing research and everything. In this case though, I don’t think it should be treated as a book club, simple because the format is quite different, it’s probably not everyone’s cup of tea and it would replace another book we’d otherwise read.

(do love that book though, not gonna lie :joy:)

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@Belerith @Kyayna Haha, it’s good to see I’m not the only one :joy: I also really like your idea @Belerith.
Well, let’s see how it does in the poll. Even if it doesn’t win, we can see how many people could potentially be interested. I don’t think I would have the time to tackle that before the poll anyway :sweat_smile:

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Haha, glad to see I’m not the only one with fond memories from school. :stuck_out_tongue: Not that it was quite this exciting very regularly

@Kyayna @Naphthalene Yeah, the format wouldn’t quite fit for a normal book club. More like @Belthazar’s poem research club for the betterment of everyone’s education. Or however that one went, I forget.

But yeah, let’s revisit this after the poll/ in the new year. :slight_smile:

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Is that like @Belthazar’s version of the SOS Brigade?

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… You’re right, there’s no good acronym you could make with that.

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Having browsed through my stack of 積読 books, I’d like to nominate one of them:

ifの悲劇 (if no higeki)

Summary

Japanese

北海道・網走に住む小説家の加納豪は、かわいい妹の彩を溺愛していたが、彩が商社に就職して夕張でひとり暮らしを始め、やがて同期の奥津と結婚することになり悲嘆に暮れる。しかし婚約者・奥津の浮気が発覚し、彩はショックで飛び降り自殺してしまう。奥津への復讐を誓った兄は、奥津を網走に誘い出し殺害する。奥津の遺体を車に隠しアリバイを構築するために夕張に向かう途中、加納は交通事故を起こしてしまう――。

ここから物語はふたつに分岐していく⇒

A:交通事故で人身事故を起こし、殺人が露呈した場合

B:交通事故を起こしたものの事なきを得て、殺人が露呈しない場合

……果たして加納の運命やいかに。

ふたつのパラレルワールドがひとつに結びつくとき、衝撃の事実が明らかになる。

English

The novelist Kano who lives in Abashiri, Hokkaido, loves his cute sister Aya, but when Aya got a job at a trading company, she started living alone in Yubari. However, when it was discovered that her fiance Okutsu had an affair, Aya committed suicide by jumping off of a building. The elder brother who vowed to revenge on Okutsu invites Okutsu to Abashiri and kills him. On the way to Yubari to hide the body of Okutsu in the car and build an alibi, Kano causes a traffic accident.
From here the story splits into two ⇒
A: The murder is revealed through the traffic accident
B: The murder is not revealed through the traffic accident
… and how about Kano’s fate?
When two parallel worlds are combined into one, the impact becomes clear.

Availability

Amazon
Bookwalker
ebook Japan

Personal Opinion

I think it would be nice to read a criminal story, especially in the dark part of the year (for those in the northern hemisphere at least). I especially like the idea of the split story, and I’m curious to see how this is done in the book and what it leads to.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • It’s a different genre for a change
  • Not too long (240 pages)
  • Vocabulary is available on FloFlo
  • FloFlo claims it has 4080 individual words, that’s a manageable size imho (slightly more than Kitchen, slightly less than Kino no Tabi)

Cons

  • Might be difficult to read for people who don’t like the genre.

Pictures

First Three Pages of Chapter One

(Note: I skipped the prologue.)



Insert images here (can be photos from you or the internet, or from ebook previews).

Additional Pages


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

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With all these nominations, I’m starting to feel obligated to nominate 人類は衰退しました.

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I’ve seen the anime of that. Dunno if the light novels can topple the supremacy of the animated fairies. :stuck_out_tongue:

1リットルの涙 難病と闘い続ける少女亜也の日記

Summary

Japanese

「神様、病気はどうして私を選んだの?」 恐ろしい病魔が15歳の少女亜也の青春を奪う。友達との別れ、車椅子の生活、数々の苦難が襲いかかる中、日記を書き続けることだけが亜也の生きる支えだった。「たとえどんな小さく弱い力でも私は誰かの役に立ちたい」 最期まで前向きに生き抜いた少女の言葉が綴られた感動のロングセラー、ついに文庫化。

English

Aya Kitō was diagnosed with a disease called spinocerebellar degeneration when she was 15 years old. The disease causes the person to lose control over their body, but because the person can retain all mental ability the disease acts as a prison. So in the end she cannot eat, walk or talk.

Through family, medical examinations and rehabilitations, and finally succumbing to the disease, Aya must cope with the disease and live on with life until her death at the age of 25. (from Wikipedia)

Availability

Amazon
Bookwalker

Personal Opinion

The ドラマ based on this book original diary was very high praised, so I thought that it would be nice to read the original in Japanese and bought the book. That was two years ago…
This is definitely a very sad story, but I think this kind of stories are motivating and help appreciate life more.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Not very long.
  • A new genre for the club: non-fiction.
  • Written from a perspective of a school-girl, so probably not very difficult (see cons though).
  • Positive reviews on amazon and on goodreads.

Cons

  • Sad story.
  • It’s written in a form of a diary, so the style is a bit different from usual.

Pictures

First Three Pages of Chapter One





Additional Pages



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

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I’ve got that book already, so aquiring it would be easy.

But on the other hand: noooooo.

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270 pages is still on the longer side for book club, in my opinion.

I think I’ll pass. :slight_smile:

The effort of all my tears. :sob:

I want to read this.

I’m not sure I want to suffer for the 4 months we’d read this at bookclub speed.

So many good books up for the vote.

:sob:

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Also:

You’ve given away the ending of the book anyway. :stuck_out_tongue:

Whenever people tout this show here on WaniKani, they tend to post the trailer or the poster of the movie version. It makes me wonder a bit how many people here have actually seen the drama.

Well, Haruhi is finally officially over. Since we are on break for the ARIA club, I have no thread to put up this week… weird.

In other news, would it be best to start polling for the next book next week (aiming for the end of Kitchen + 1 week break) or in 5 weeks (aiming for the end of the book + 1 week break)?

EDIT: CF the kitchen thread.

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Ha, I just posted a poll for the official decision whether to read the second story in the Kitchen book as well :laughing: because I don’t think we really officially decided…

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I removed mine, to avoid confusion.

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As the majority of the regular Kitchen readers has cast their vote, I’ve turned the poll result into the decision that we will read the second story in the book in 3 weeks. This means, the book’s last week ends on Jan 3rd. If we want to add a 1-week break (also for reading the あとがき for those who are interested - it’s only ~3 pages so I did not set aside extra time for it), this means the next book should start on Jan 11th I guess? Which is exactly two months from now :upside_down_face:

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Okay, then we have to vote in a week and a half, then!
I’m going to close nominations for this time next Sunday, then.

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Can you maybe add the most recent nominations to the nominations list in the OP?
So that I can get a better overview and can decide whether I should still nominate something else ^^

I’m planning to do it tonight JP time.
There are 4 extra nominations (total of 13):

I wish it was that easy to add them to the OP :sweat_smile:

2 Likes