Hey all, I guess I’ll put in a lurker’s perspective.
I voted in the very first poll for よつばと! but had to drop out after 3 chapters due to life circumstances.
I voted for よつばと! volume 2 for the second tally, but Kiki wound up winning. I read a sample and it was too much for me and my free time was still at a premium and so I sat it out.
I voted this time again for Shirokuma Cafe (I’m immensely enjoying the anime atm and the manga is often recommended to beginners) and Chi’s Sweet Home (which I also bought and would say is easier than よつばと!), but sadly these aren’t in lead.
If Girl wins I’ll likely sit out again. I’m concerned that if i tackle something too hard I’ll get frustrated and drop out again. Of the two leaders, I’m rooting for Aria, but I didn’t update my votes to include it because I’m not sure if I’ll join again. I have a nasty habit of buying things and putting them to the side, and I fear Aria would be yet another book on the pile. I’ll definitely give it a look, tho. If it doesn’t work out for me, perhaps I’ll rejoin the よつばと! group in a short while.
Anyway, not sure why I felt compelled to jump in. I will say that I see vote trolling occurring in other forums as well, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it is happening here too. In that case, just make it all public voting. If harassing occurs due to people’s choices, the mods can probably take care of it. At least it puts a face to the voting. (And let people rationalize their participation as well, eg: I’ll participate if XYZ wins but otherwise maybe next time).
Posted from my big stack of unread Japanese books, manga and video games.
I do think public voting would be fine as well. I voted for Shirokuma Cafe because I liked the anime and already own the manga. Its vocab level is a bit higher than my current level, but with furigana, most things can be looked up just fine. I highly recommend watching the anime first, since it seems to give a lot of context for the events in the manga.
To further complicate the discussion, I’d like to point out that the club doesn’t necessarily have to read one book at a time. With public voting, it should be possible to tell if there’s enough interest to take on two books at the same time and split up the readers into multiple groups.
People definitely overestimate their ability, their free time, or both.
Getting 10 people to stick with the next book would be a huge step up considering we have somewhere around 3-5 people still reading Kiki.
I think it’s good for people to create long-term groups to continue reading series that they like. But we definitely shouldn’t plan to split ahead of time.
waaaahhhh. only 3-5 people are still reading kiki! i feel sorrier now about quitting. I will finish it at some point and quietly refer to the discussion threads and vocab lists for my doubts so to the gambarimasu-ers who are plodding on, おつかれさまです and ありがとうございます！
I’ve read more than half of both, and in my experience Autumn Prison I couldn’t even understand what was happening most of the time. Kiki I could understand more or less, at least got the gist. So to me Kiki was much easier than Autumn Prison.
I see the new comments has affected the voting, Girl Who Leapt Through Time is no longer in the lead.
And I think it would be fair to decline it from the voting with the reasoning that the intermediate group has it in THEIR voting, thus they can vote for it there if they want it. I want to try that book, but I didn’t vote for it in this group cause this group should focus on somewhat easier material. Go Aria
I think Scary Stories could be doable though, if we are doing books =)
At least it seems so to me. I can share more pages if others want to help evaluate the difficulty =)
Let’s hold off on sharing more pages for Scary Stories until we’re done setting up for the next book. Once that’s done, we can start fresh and renominate books with better guidelines.
I would love to hop on this train I was going to join in on よつばと! but I wasn’t able to make the time for it. I should have the free time for the next one. I voted for Aria since I remember reading Aqua and a few of Aria when I was younger and loving it. I’ve also been more into reading mangas at the moment since I’ve finding them more approachable and easier for me.
I will say that I see vote trolling occurring in other forums as well, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it is happening here too. In that case, just make it all public voting. If harassing occurs due to people’s choices, the mods can probably take care of it. At least it puts a face to the voting. (And let people rationalize their participation as well, eg: I’ll participate if XYZ wins but otherwise maybe next time).
I was going to join in on よつばと! but I wasn’t able to make the time for it. I should have the free time for the next one. I voted for Aria since I remember reading Aqua and a few of Aria when I was younger and loving it.