Good to know, thanks!
Maybe it’s just those two books and everything else is fine?
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It was actually more graphic than what I was used to from 1Q84 (and unnecessarily dragged out if you ask me, but maybe he did this to really rub it in 
).
I thought about this for a bit but all I can remember is that a dog is exploded (which is a bit disgusting but not an actual torture scene). There is some mention of goats but I don’t remember any cruelty around them. Does anybody remember more than I do?
I listened to an interview with Ursula Gräfe, the German translator of Murakami and others, and she told a story about a fellow translator of hers (Italian? Rumanian? don’t recall) who had to get drunk and needed her husband to be around when she worked on a certain scene because it was so gruesome to her; in that scene a person gets skinned alive. Now granted that a translator works with a text in a much more intense way, but still 
7 Likes
I’ve read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World because I heard it was a possible inspiration for at least parts of Haibane Renmei, and… I basically have no memory of the story whatsoever.
Also bought his book シドニー！ in Japanese for reading practice many moons ago (because hey! I live there!) but have thus far never actually read it. Didn’t even realise until this moment that it’s not a novel. 
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I’m sensing a pattern here…
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On the non-fiction front, I have read 翻訳夜話 which is a discussion between Murakami and another translator about various aspects of translation. ISTR finding it interesting, but it was nearly a decade ago that I read it so my memory is rather faded.
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So, as promised, here is
Our Next Poll!
Have a look at the List of Proposed Books section in the first post for details on each book. Every book has a difficulty associated with it (based on the book club members’ votes, thus subjective) out of 5, where 1 means “no effort at all” and 5 means “so much effort my head might explode”. The difficulty is annotated in the poll in square brackets after the book’s name.
Do not rely solely on difficulty when making a choice. Please have a look at the nomination posts and text samples if you haven’t already.
Expected reading pace: The proposals fall into two categories, Fast and Hard. We aim to read fast books at 30-50 pages per week and hard books at ~15 pages per week (that number might vary a bit throughout, depending on the book’s breaks and chapters). For manga, depending on difficulty and chapter length, we will probably read one to several chapters per week. The pick’s exact reading schedule will be negotiated before the book club kicks off.
Start of Book Club: We will start the next book on April 8th (after a one-week break).
Poll duration: The poll will be closed within a week (and most likely before that), whenever it looks like voting has dried up. You can choose up to 5 options.
- Fast: クォンタムデビルサーガ アバタールチューナーⅠ [3.13]
- Fast: マスカレード・ホテル [1.9]
- Fast: 風の谷のナウシカ [3.13]
- Fast: 化物語(上) [2.57]
- Fast: 虐殺器官 - Genocidal Organ [3]
- Fast: 蛇にピアス [2.29]
- Fast: 感応グラン=ギニョル [3]
- Fast: 村上海賊の娘 [2.78]
- Fast: 砂漠 (さばく a campus life) [2.33]
- Fast: 四畳半神話大系 (The Tatami Galaxy) [3.4]
- Fast: さわらびの譜 [3]
- Hard: 檸檬 [3.67]
- Hard: 風立ちぬ [3]
- Hard: 午後の曳航 [3]
- Hard: 文字渦 [3.88]
0 voters
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Ya know, this club is the only one that’s never done a manga. I’m… pretty sure. And, well, 風の谷のナウシカ just so happens to be a manga. Or, so I’ve heard.
Hint, hint.
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I voted for something else with 風 in the title. That works, right?
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Yep! 
I think that’s the prequel to the manga or something
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Good point, I guess we’d better maintain the streak 
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It’s interesting how the voting is shaking out differently from last time even though the list of books is basically the same 
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I’ve been overloaded lately so only voted for two books I really think are interesting and don’t think would be too heavy on my schedule. I think I used all my votes last time. I’d guess that sort of voting isn’t unusual.
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If we pick 風の谷のナウシカ, how many volumes of it would we be reading? Even assuming we read the manga at the club’s book-page-rate (which would be slow for manga, I think), volume 1 would only take 3 weeks or so, which seems a bit short.
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Isn’t it? I’ve noticed this pattern a lot in all of the book clubs - makes the voting even more interesting in my opinion.
If a manga gets picked, we would only read the first volume with the club, and if people are interested in continuing, they usually do this as an off-shoot club, to avoid clogging up the regular club for those who are not interested in the manga series.
If the winner in the poll takes 6 weeks or less, we will read the one that comes in second place right after it, because otherwise we’d need to poll again even before we started the pick, which feels a bit silly.
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Right now we have four books tied for second place (I don’t expect that will last but it would be funny if it did.)
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If 風の谷のナウシカ does win I will try to join in, though the timing is unfortunate. If this poll was a week ago, I could have ordered the box set of the series (which is only 3130 yen), but alas my existing manga order is shipping soon and already closed for modification. So I can still read along, but I’ll have to read a digital version (
) which isn’t as nice.
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No more three-way tie ;3
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Just noticed 風立ちぬ is listed as Hard at a 3 but Tatami Galaxy is Fast at a 3.4? 
Maybe I am misunderstanding how hard/fast is assigned? Genocidal Organ is also Fast at 3.
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