And the last chapter (#8) of volume 2 is here:
The majority wanted a break between volume 2 and 3, so volume 3 starts on September 17. I will look at volume 3’s chapters and figure out a preliminary schedule in the next few days (or possibly later tonight depending on if I find time). And then I’ll make a poll. 
Gah! Completely forgot to work on the schedule for volume 3! 
Well, this is our break week, so I guess now is a good time?!?!
| Start Date | Chapter | Page Numbers | Page Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 17th | Letter 9 | 5 - 50 | 46 |
| Sep 24th | Letter 10 | 53 - 88 | 36 |
| Oct 1st | Letter 11 | 91 - 128 | 38 |
| Oct 8th | Letter 12 | 131 - 162 | 32 |
Since volume 3 still have 4 chapters, I think a good division would be by chapter although they are a bit shorter in this volume. I think the best option for higher speed (if we want it) would be to read 2 chapters per week, but that really adds up at 82 pages and 70 pages.
But this is a democracy, so here is the poll:
Then I got curious: if we keep reading each volume over 4 weeks with a break in between, can we finish the original story (the first 5 volumes) this year, and then break for the holidays and pick up the additional/continued story from volume 6 and 7 next year?
Assuming we finish volume 3 with the schedule we’ve been using so far (including taking a break between volumes), volume 4 would start October 22. Five weeks from that (4 weeks reading, one break), volume 5 would start on November 26 and finish December 23. Meaning, it is entirely possible to finish before the holidays (barely). Then we could either have one week off and start volume 6 right around New Years, or take two weeks off and start about a week into January.
Next step was to check number of chapters and lengths. Volume 4 and 5 both have 5 chapters. And volume 5 is 35-50 pages longer (the last chapter of vol 5 ends on page 210). So there isn’t as easy to figure out how to make each of those volumes take 4 weeks.
Quick note about the page counts: they do include chapter title pages, but does not include empty pages between chapters (I consider small side-note illustrations also as “empty” in this case). So if you only want to count pages that have text (or high likelihood of text) reduce each chapter’s page amount by 1-2 pages.
Volume 4
| Start Date | Chapter | Page Numbers | Page Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 22nd* | Letter 13 | 5 - 46 | 42 |
| n/a | Letter 14 | 49 - 86 | 38 |
| n/a | Letter 15 | 89 - 115 | 27 |
| n/a | Letter 16 | 117 - 149 | 33 |
| n/a | Letter 17 | 151 - 174 | 24 |
*probable start date for this volume (if we do volume 3 as usual), leaving rest blank for now
The best possibility to make this a four week read (in my opinion), would be to combine chapter 16 and 17 together; it would make for our longest week yet at 57 pages, but with a one week break after the volume, you’d have two weeks to read it (aka personally skipping the break). And it would only be about 10 pages longer than our longest chapter to date.
Volume 5
| Start Date | Chapter | Page Numbers | Page Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| n/a | Letter 18 | 5 - 40 | 36 |
| n/a | Letter 19 | 43 - 85 | 43 |
| n/a | Letter 20 | 87 - 119 | 33 |
| n/a | Letter 21 | 120 - 157 | 38 |
| n/a | Last Letter* | 159 - 210 | 52 |
*the title name could potentially be considered a very tiny spoiler
Eeeeh… With whole chapters, I’m not entirely sure this could be done nicely. The lowest combined page amount to be found would be chapter 20+21, making a 71 pages week. Although, considering it is also gearing up to the end, I suppose it would be hard to stop reading anyway?
I think my conclusion from this little look ahead is that volume 4 can fairly easily be contained to 4 weeks, with the longest week only being about 10 pages more than we’ve done before. While volume 5 don’t actually have a good option for combining chapters unless 71 pages in a week close to the end of the story feels okay.
In conclusion, if we want, we could finish the main story by the end of the year. This would include either no breaks between volumes and/or 1-2 longer weeks. (For example, pushing together the last two chapters of volume 4, starting volume 5 with no break and let volume 5 have 1ch/week.) So, how do people feel about it? This is just an interest poll. I want to know how people feel.
Maybe this was worth the accidental wait. 
I voted no because as a retail worker my December is usually way busier than my actual holidays. And I think whatever pace is working for us as we approach each new volume will be just fine. I personally am in no hurry at the moment. 
Oh good, I’m not the only one spending forever working out scheduling.
It’s extra fun when working on breaking chapters in two. “This one is 27 pages, so do I include the extra page with the first half or the second? Wait, the first half has a lot of pages with little text, and there are some very text-heavy pages in the middle. But if more pages are added to the first half’s week, that means the stop point between weeks will be right in the middle of a scene…”
Consider my “maybe/undecided” vote as either way works for me!
Going with the current schedule of one chapter a week plus a week break between volumes is just easier for me to remember. But if there’s anyone that wants to slow down or speed up, either way I don’t mind.
Thanks for the expanded answers! 
Not that many votes yet, but seems likely we’ll just continue with picking schedule volume by volume, and honestly, looking at the chapter lengths, there isn’t really a compelling reason to combine chapters unless we actually wanted to speed up a lot. Maybe that will change with volume 6/7, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. ^^
In this case, I didn’t want to spoil myself, so I didn’t try to find places where chapters could be split. There probably are considering how the chapters looked in volume 1 (still barely started volume 2, but I’m on the path to catch up, so yay!), but I’d probably spoil a lot of stuff for myself if I tried to break things up.
Your color coding is quite cool, but also a loooooot of work I bet. O_O
All the work I did for mine was work I would have needed to do anyway. But not all at once. The good thing is that now I have that done, I can more quickly put together a schedule for volume 4 and 5.
For ABBC and BBC nominations, I only pick things I’ve read (so I know it’s club-level appropriate), so that wasn’t an issue for me. If I were a series I hadn’t read yet, I wouldn’t want to be trying to split up chapters for the chance of spoilers!
I moved pages into folders based on how much text they had (based on eyeing it, but with improved OCR technology I could automate that part if I were doing it today), then I wrote a quick script to rename and colorize the images based on which folder they were in. Then I could move them back into the main folder, and work out at a glance where it would be best to split the chapter (also considering content of the scene in the middle) =D
The first chapter of volume 3 is here, aka letter 9:
Also, considering the poll about finishing this year fell on the maybe/undecided option. I will just keep proposing schedules with the current weekly amount of one chapter a week (at least as long as they keep being about 35-45 pages). Of course, we’ll poll the speed each time.
I’ve finally caught up to the club! Started volume 1 about a month ago and volume 2 a week ago. I still haven’t read the extra story at the end of volume 2, but can catch up with that later. Who needs a cliffhanger when you can go straight on to the next letter?!
Chapter 10 is here:
Chapter 11 is here:
And since that means we’ve hit the halfway mark of volume 3, time to think about the schedule for volume 4.
First things first though:
So our typical schedule of one chapter a week still produces roughly the same page count (two chapters will be shorter than usual). I’ve put the dates as if we did as usual (that means 1 week break between volumes and 1ch/week).
| Start Date | Chapter | Page Numbers | Page Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 22nd | Letter 13 | 5 - 46 | 42 |
| Oct 29th | Letter 14 | 49 - 86 | 38 |
| Nov 5th | Letter 15 | 89 - 115 | 27 |
| Nov 12th | Letter 16 | 117 - 149 | 33 |
| Nov 19th | Letter 17 | 151 - 174 | 24 |
Lastly, following our current scheduling, we would then start volume 5 on December 3, and read it through all of December plus first week of January. Because volume 5’s chapter are the same length as most chapters we’ve read, except the last one is unusually long.
But this holiday season is typically a lot busier for folks, so I want to do a bit of a feeler poll. If the poll is very conclusive, I will work up that as the tentative schedule to vote on as we’re finishing volume 4. Otherwise I’ll work up a couple of different schedules (from the most popular options) and we can vote on that when the times comes.
The way I see it, we have 4 options (of varying quality):
(A) keep the current schedule and ignore the holidays
(B) keep the current schedule but have 1-2 week break over the holidays. 3 chapters, 1-2 week break, 2 chapters
(C) read the first 2 chapters over two weeks each and then 1ch/week again. Meaning the first two chapters would be slowly read in December (thereby giving people an easier time to fit it into a busy schedule), and then starting on December 31st we’d read 1ch/week again
(D) wait to start volume 5 until January (well probably December 31st since it is a Saturday)
I think I’m rivaling the poll thread in the number of polls I make you guys take. xD Hopefully you guys like clicking polls as much as I do. 
I voted no break and schedule as usual, because I figured if no break for the next 2 then that kind of gets volume 5 read before Christmas? Ish?
But I don’t feel strongly about it and would be happy with a slower schedule. I only recently caught up to the club!
@Cathm2 What a great idea!
Here is an entirely different option (from our own Cathm2!): What if we have no break between volume 3 and 4, nor between 4 and 5. Instead we just read on, one chapter per week. That would mean we would start the last chapter of volume 5 on Dec 17th, and therefore officially finish that volume on Dec 23rd. After that we could easily take a 2 week break and start volume 6 on Jan 7.
So I’m making an entirely alternate poll (because I can’t edit polls already voted on):
0 voters
Remember that volume 5 finishes the original story. So that is why we might want to rush that before the holidays rather than be left hanging (if you read at club pace).
I’m fine with anything, but always prefer without chapter splitting. If we do split a chapter, I’d probably treat it more as “read this chapter within the two week period” rather than “read half this week and half the next week”.
Going into Volume five, Kakeru discovers Naho’s letter from the future. As Naho and the others unexpectedly show up, Kakeru determines he has only one option: take a break for the holidays.
I’m very behind right now due to …circumstances… (I got really sick a couple weeks ago), and concerned about whether or not I can catch up again. I’m afraid if you all go on to the next volumes with no break that I might not be able to catch up again at all … 
Well I’d like you to catch up and be able to read along with us again if that means the possibility of reading your discussion posts!
If I absolutely want to increase my reading speed, I can and just take note of things I want to say in discussion posts for when they come up.
Anyway, I’d rather have a pace set so as many people can read along as possible, especially since we’re such a small group!
Thanks @Hantsuki! You definitely helped me get motivated to start tackling my Orange backlog yesterday and it’s a big relief to realize that I’ve actually gotten pretty comfortable with Takano-sensei’s writing. 耳をすませば (current BBC pick) seems objectively easier, but subjectively, when I started Orange again yesterday I felt like I could finally relax a little!
Ugh, this is why one should not lead book clubs, lol. I basically have to decide very soon whether to go with the no-breaks plan to finish the original story by Christmas eve or to continue as we have been. (The majority might be at the fast pace, but without my vote it is 3 vs 2, so not much of a majority xD)
Merp, well, maybe I’ll leave the polls open for this next week too, and see how it looks then.
So this is a reminder to vote in the polls in this post and this post, if you haven’t already.
Whatever everyone decides to do, I’ll be happy reading along
Christmas isn’t an especially busy time for me, but I’m happy to have a break if that helps other people.
Similarly, I quite like a break between volumes because it gives me a chance to read the Haruiro Astronaut chapter - but if other people want to have no gap week then I’m fine with that too.
I’m not particularly helpful with decisions needing to be made But rest assured that I’ll be happy whatever we end up doing!
I think I am now also in the camp of being okay with either option. My catching up reading is going so much faster than expected. I really don’t understand how this is happening. (Could it be that my reading skills are improving with practice? But that seems preposterous!)
