Orange 🍊 Book Club // Finished

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.

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Thanks for the expanded answers! :smiley:

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.

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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

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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.

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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?!

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Chapter 10 is here:

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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.

EDIT: Cathm2 had an alternative way to read both volume 4 and 5. I’ve explained it in this post. Please vote in that post’s poll first/too. If that suggestion isn’t interesting to most people, then we will go with the polls below, so please still vote in them =)

First things first though:

Should we have a break between volume 3 and 4?
  • Yes, 1 week
  • No
  • Yes, but 2 weeks or more [specify if more than 2 weeks]
0 voters

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
How do you want us to read volume 4?
  • As the schedule above, 1ch/week
  • Faster, example: 4 weeks, splitting letter 16 between week 3 and 4 [specify if you want different]
  • Slower [please specify]
0 voters

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)

When & How would YOU prefer to read volume 5? (See details above)
  • (A) As usual
  • (B) As usual with holiday break
  • (C) Slowly and then normal speed
  • (D) Break for December and start in January
0 voters

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. :stuck_out_tongue:

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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!

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@Cathm2 What a great idea!


For everyone!

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):

Would you WANT to read volume 4 and 5 with no breaks (before or between) and start the last chapter of Volume 5 on Dec 17th? If you are unsure, please pick no.
  • Yes
  • No

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).

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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.

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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 … :confused:

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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! :slight_smile:

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!

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Thanks @Hantsuki! :slight_smile: 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!

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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.

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Whatever everyone decides to do, I’ll be happy reading along :slight_smile:
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 :smiley: But rest assured that I’ll be happy whatever we end up doing!

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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!)

:joy:

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Oftentimes, when it’s a decision between going faster or slower, I give a boost to those who want to go slower. In other words, rather than “majority rules” it’s more like “super majority needed for faster”.

Regardless of how I may have voted, I don’t mind either way on breaks or no breaks. I have plenty of other things I’m reading as well!

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Here is chapter 12, last chapter of volume 3!


So the speed things looks like this: people who are for either fast or slow are at least 3 people, then we have two yes and one no. My vote not included.

That considered, I think it would make sense to go with our usual break schedule around volume 4.

I’ve left two polls open above, the finish before the holidays yes/no poll, and the poll about how to read volume 5 around the holidays if we’re not going without breaks to finished before holidays. The second of these are important to vote in because the result from that is likely what we’ll be doing (since we don’t have a big majority for finishing before the holidays).

Mid-week, so Tuesday/Wednesday, I’ll make the final decision, but I don’t expect things to change, so currently it looks like normal break and schedule for volume 4, then break, and then we are evenly divided between three options. :sweat_smile:

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Okay, unless people feel strongly differently, we’ll go with our typical schedule. We seem to have several at “I’m fine with either” and at least one of those preferring the slower route if it means more people can follow along. So I feel like having breaks between volumes just makes that more possible.

And considering how evenly split people seem to be on the volume 5 schedule, the one I’m thinking of going with now, is just to keep reading that with the typical break between volumes, and then just read it normally through the holiday, but have a two week break after. So that people who might have fallen behind have a little more time to catch up (and those keeping up will have finished the main story so the longer break won’t be as important). This should also mean that we’re on break when I’m going on a work trip. :innocent:


So next week we’re having a break, and then we’ll pick up volume 4 on October 22nd.

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For those using the vocabulary sheet, I just changed chapter 9-12 to be volume 3 instead (our number of items are fairly small), and I created just one sheet for volume 4, but with chapter divides.

For threads, I think I’ll keep chapter threads though, this one being so story focused, accidentally reading story comments from a chapter or two ahead can really spoil the story (I feel). I’ll keep one thread per chapter until the end of volume 5. Then for volume 6 & 7, I’ll see how I feel then, depends on the format for the additional story bits I guess. :slight_smile:

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