Beginner Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: 気になってる人が男じゃなかった // Next 葬送のフリーレン, then ウスズミの果て

Oh dear! Oh well, we’ll see what the poll decides. I’ll be reading along as best I can regardless of which one is chosen!

It’s also important to mention that the Beginner book club won’t be at the level of someone that recently started with Japanese. The “beginner” refers to one that is starting to read in Japanese, not to those who are effectively just starting with Japanese. They’re 2 different things.

To start reading books/manga requires some months of hard work beforehand :smiling_face:

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While I voted for よつばと vol 2, I do think reading an actual book now is a good idea for people to start getting some actual book reading experience. Plus, reading よつばと back to back may get quite stale for some people. That being said, if we do end up doing vol 2 at some point, I think sooner would be better as vol 1 will still be fresh on a lot of people’s minds.

A solution may be to do only a few chapters of vol 2 and then do a book, but I think this would be a logistical mess for people having to buy both books, and I don’t think people would want to half read a book (so basically ignore this lol)

Unless we want to be reading stuff like this.

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Ahaha good one! :joy:
However I think I would hate reading this kind of book because it certainly has little or no Kanji. Those really help in figuring out the structure of sentences.

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To add my two cents to the not-manga debate:

I tried to read 魔女の宅急便 quite some time ago, at a time when I could read よつばと! comfortably, and I couldn’t understand it well enough to follow the plot. I have not found any easier novel to read. I voted for it because I think I’m ready for it now, and I expect this book club would read it at a slower pace than the intermediate one, which I’d prefer.

As long as people are aware that it is much more difficult to read a relatively easy novel than an easy manga, I think it’s fine to let people vote on what they want. Worst case a lot of people drop out, and they all know to vote for a manga next time.

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Worst case we do both? Many wanted a beginner book club, but if enough people only want to do manga we can do a manga club as well. I would do both, as well as the intermediate, as long as we keep slow pace that shouldn’t be a problem. Those who can only do manga will only do manga, those who are ready for books should be able to read the manga fast enough to not spend too much time doing it, so they could easily do both.

The books many of us wish to try are too basic for the intermediate, they would never do it. And if it is too hard for the manga readers, then we are a separate group already. Many didn’t join on the manga cause they want book, so we really don’t take away from the existing group. I’m in the intermediate group, just barely hanging on with the help of the comments. I’d like something I can understand better, something more than Manga (though I love both, so will stay in both)

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The downside there is if people are interested in the manga and book but don’t have time to do both.

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I’m probably one of those people but I don’t see it as a big problem. I’ll pick whichever one is reading something I’m more interested in at any given time. It’s not like I’d get to read fewer things that way, I’d just have more choice.

It wouldn’t be without any issues; the start and end times probably won’t match up. But I can probably manage to do both just for a bit of overlap and/or catch up with the manga and/or sometimes drop out before the end (and finish at my own pace later if I care).

I think the biggest concern would be if there weren’t enough interest in one or the other once people are split to keep up a good discussion, but that isn’t looking like the case.

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Just to see what people think, see how many believe they would be part of what (if too few then splitting is useless)

If we had two groups, what would you do?
Note; the “only interested” was my way of saying " would join this one for now, but not the other", as the other options is to join both (all time or part time)

  • I would be active in both at the same time
  • I am only interested in Manga
  • I am only interested in books
  • I would only have time for one and decide based on what is currently read

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The “I am only interested in Manga/books” options seem like they might be better phrased as “I am interested in a manga-only/book-only group” if we want to get a count on a possible split.

For example, I would be interested in joining a manga-only group, but I’m not only interested in manga so it feels weird to choose that option…

I phrased it that way to see who only wants to join on one type, even within here. As people have stated in the past that they don’t want to join on mangas, and it seems there are people who don’t feel ready to do books, thus manga only.

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I tried to remake it phrasing it differently. But I wasn’t allowed to just change the current poll.
But basically the “only” is meant as people who prefer to do one, but not the other (for the time being) as the other two option is to join both.

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Well I just bought Kiki’s Delivery Service. Even if it doesn’t win, I wanted to buy it at some point anyway. Figured I might as well beat the rush of people trying to buy used copies if it does win. :stuck_out_tongue:

Based on the poll now, we might need a tie break poll where you can only pick one of the top three.

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Great idea!

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Yes! At the moment both Yotsuba and Kiki are in the lead with 45 percent each.
Surely it would make sense to have two groups - Beginner Books and Beginner Manga!

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Let me put a better version of what I tried to ask in my previous poll:
If we had two groups who would you join and be active in?

  • Join both and be active in both at the same time
  • Join both but mostly active in one at a time
  • Join the Manga Club
  • Join the Book Club
  • I’m strongly against a split

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Single vote only this time, and if someone hates the idea they have an option for that too.

That would be the join both, but be active in one at a time.
Though some might join both or none all depending on what is being read, that one is meant for variations of that.
I will join both regardless of what is being read =)

For this go around, I would want to join the book club because I really want to read Kiki’s Delivery Service. But in the future, I’m open to reading manga or books!

What if we switch back and forth? Read a manga, then a book, then a manga, etc. That way we don’t have issues with losing steam in one of the groups, because we’re all in the same group. We also get the same great organization that we got with Yotsuba (links to vocab, memrise, etc). For people who don’t want to read a book, they just wait for the next round, and vice versa.

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I’m against the idea of splitting, since the split would also split up people that could give assistance, giving less chance for a question to be solved.

This.

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I apologize for not having commented about this before. (<= this makes sense, right? Brain fart oO)

My opinion is that we shouldn’t divide ourselves into 2 groups. It doesn’t make sense at all. We can already see from the latest poll that at least 74% (every 3 out of 4) would only read/focus on one book/manga at a time. The first poll tells us that only 22% would participate in both groups (6 people out of 27).

Together, we can do so much more. Memrise decks, better explanations, more participation, you name it.

さすが、@eainge さん! I completely agree with this :slight_smile: We have to remind ourselves that the main goal of this book club is to improve our reading! It’s better to spend our precious time improving our learning together than trying to nitpick the books we choose to read next. Therefore, switching back and forth would allow both groups to have what they wanted :slight_smile:

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