Short for Miniature Component Stereo, it’s basically what we would call a Bookshelf stereo.
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神家 (じんけ) a house for rituals or holy ceremonies, or a special, shamanistic family that can communicate with the gods.
没落(ぼつらく) ruin, fall, or collapse
Note that the third kanji is 没 and not 役.
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can you tell me where you found the definition of 神家? I looked in a bunch of places (dictionaries google etc) and only really came up with it as a last name
I texted my Japanese girlfriend. 
She gave me the meanings of the two words (神家 and 没落). But to confirm, I also checked several J->E dictionaries and had no luck with 神家.
Then I checked 日本国語大辞典, a J-J dictionary on my iphone, and found it:
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Cool!
I had found 没落 pretty easily but I couldn’t find 神家 anywhere. Even when I googled it most of the results seemed to be about the last name or about people with that last name. But I might have overlooked some pages. I’ll have to check out that dictionary!
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I’m finally getting around to reading it!
Let’s see how much progress I can make in 30 minutes today…! : )
頑張りましょう!
私は胸のうちで舌打ちして、ぼんやりと経済学の授業を聞いた。
Im kinda confused on usage of smacking lips in her chest.
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I actually created a Memrise course on the book. But due to my lowly grammar, and my focus on Kanji, I don’t know if it would be useful to someone else?
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LOL, I seem to be reading pretty slow, everytime I have a question I come here and somebody already asked it and got several answers for it 
Same, glad I wasn’t the only one. 
I was kinda scared to ask another obvious questions so I thought about it more, and I believe chest can also have the meaning of heart, mind, feelings. I do believe they associate the heart with thoughts and feelings a lot more than we do, ( I know we say things like follow your heart, I made the decision in me heart but I think they actually would say things like I smacked my lips in my heart for example. )so I think shes more like saying that she was smacking her lips in her mind/ internally/ not out loud.
This was just my reasoning though, so i apologize if I got something wrong.
Yeah, this is right. She’s doing the action in her mind.
I wouldn’t translate 舌打ち as “smacking lips” though, it’s a tongue click like “Tch!”
This part confused me for non-language reasons. I didn’t really understand why she just sat through a lecture of a different class instead of getting up and leaving.
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That’s just Japanese people being Japanese. Too embarrased to let others know she was wrong and let them all see her leave the class.
It has happended a couple of times at my uni, that’s their explanation… I suppose it applies here.
This article explains the phrase probably came from the fact that the sky in Japan is much clearer than in the other seasons.
春や夏よりも秋は空の透明度が高く、「秋の空は高い」ということになるのです。
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Hey… so in the 30 minutes yesterday… I only read a few more sentences past the easy ones… largely because I was stuck finding one kanji that is an alternate version. XD
So I feel like for me it’s probably going to be 1 hour per page, at least in the beginning. I’m used to the font for one specific radical being rewritten, but that one kanji looked like “rei” “order” somewhat with the squished person (on WK: “leader” I think?) radical… but in the dictionaries it looks more like “ima” “now” (at work computer, no IME, sorry for romaji everybody!). The final sentence for me last night was the one with the FUTON and the sound of rain in it. XD So I really have a long way to go. I had a headache after even only that much.
*sighs* I’m hoping to make better progress tonight.
Maybe it’s the English major in me, but my reaction to 「空は秋の高さだ」was, “Hmm, makes sense.” Something about the crispness and the emptiness of the sky without leaves, and how the autumn sky is often a single pale shade of featureless blue or the gray of high-up clouds.
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You can do it! I think I’m managing better than an hour per page, but I’m still looking up what feels like every single word. Which I am very much used to after my attempt at NO.6. I can say that this book is at least a little easier. There is a fair bit of repetition, of course, which is some help.
“Stop if it’s giving you a headache” is probably a good book club guideline – this isn’t meant to be torture. (Not that I haven’t had my doubts at times.)
This was me, too. I kept wondering why she didn’t think it odd that none of the other students said anything, either.
IMO, Google Translate on iPhone (if you have one) works well for this. Once you install Google Translate, you can use the camera to read the kanji, without taking a picture even, and then look it up.
I’m guessing the same thing is probably available on Android.
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If nothing else, we’ll all be experts in reading 繰り返し, amirite?
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Wow, it worked better than expected too! I’ll give them a chance, though we all know how good Google is 
It helps giving a pointer on single words I guess =)
I just love how they do it with the cam, replacing the text irl! Now that is fun enough to be worth it =D