Welcome to the (potential future) home of the (Reading and) Re-Reading Club!
Why a club? Re-reading is a powerful studying tool that I personally definitely under-utilize in all the excitement of new clubs and new books. But more than that, re-experiencing something you love can be fun! Especially if you can do it together with other likeminded readers.
The benefits of rereading (the three RE’s!):
Revisit stories that you already know you love!
Reinforce the vocabulary and grammar you worked so hard to learn during the first reading!
Reevaluate your progress! Is it easier? (Likely!) Did you notice things you didn’t understand on the first reading? (Also likely depending on your level and how long it’s been!)
The bonus benefit:
An opportunity for the best of the best Absolute Beginner books to have another round – thereby potentially helping new folks into the wonderful world of Japanese Reading!
Polls:
Would you be interested?
Yes
No
Maybe, leaning yes (please comment)
Maybe, leaning no (please comment)
0voters
What type of rereading experience would you prefer?
Formal Book Club style – we all read the same book on the same schedule
Informal Book Club style – we all read the same book on our own schedule
Read Every Day style – we all read whatever we want and share as much or as little as we like
Hybrid style – some combination of the above (please comment)
0voters
Very Important:
What should our acronym be?
RRC (Re-Reading Club)
REC (RE-reading Club)
RERC (RE-Reading Club)
RRRC (Reading and Re-Reading Club)
Something else (please comment)
Something better than those options (please comment)
Something funnier than those options (PLEASE comment!)
0voters
What is the current highest level of club you have participated in and/or would feel comfortable participating in?
My general opinion is that there’s no shortage of books to read so why not cover more ground rather than doing the same ones over and over again?
I’m actually currently participating in the shirokuma reboot thread so it’s a bit hypocritical of me to say this, but in my opinion it’s different if punctually a bunch of people happen to want to read a specific book that happens to have already had a book club and it’s an other to commit to a long-running book-club whose explicit purpose would be to just do that continually for the sake of it. And of course for me personally it will be the first read in this specific case.
If the objective is instead to cover books I already read, then the interest for me is negative. I very rarely read the same book twice for a start, but even if I wanted to do it for practice purposes I don’t see what I would get from doing it through the rigid framework of a book club instead of just doing it at my own pace. The point of the book club is to have a discussion but… we already had it!
So basically if you asked “hey would you be interested in reading [specific book that happens to have already been covered in a book club but I missed it]” then my answer could very well be yes, but just re-doing existing book clubs for the sake of re-doing existing book clubs is not really interesting for me.
These sound like it’s about rereading a story you already know. The amount of people who already read a certain story and want to reread it is probably small, and it might be better to specifically ask in the original club thread of a specific book you’re interesting in rereading instead of making it a general club.
And this sounds like repeating a club for new readers as opposed to people reading something for the second time. I don’t see how both can work together, since ABBC members reading for the first time and people rereading something probably want/require vastly different paces.
I can see a benefit of rerunning ABBC classics, but I’m not sure how it would best co-exist with the ABBC. How would one avoid clashing with the ABBC schedule? ABBC members probably cannot handle two clubs at the same time, meaning both clubs would have less members than they could have.
Hmm, yes, I can see that I was a bit unclear. I should have mentioned that my inspiration is the repeat Shirokuma Cafe club, and I like that it seems to have a mix of people reading for the first time and rereading.
For me, I don’t necessarily feel a need to reread quickly, since I already know what happens. But on the other hand, I am by no means trying to take readers away from the ABBC or to go as slowly as the ABBC would.
I thought I’d throw up a post with some polls and that would give a little more clarity on who (if anyone) is interested, and what they might want out of a rereading club.
Obviously not everyone likes to reread, and this club would definitely not be for those people. But I thought there might be a hidden pool of dedicated (potential) rereaders out there who would love to have a club. Hence the polls!
I should also add that I think this club would focus on books already read by other clubs, and would also serve as an invitation to folks who didn’t read with the original club to read for the first time.
I might join in if the club ends up reading something I’m interested in, but it’s not very likely. I’m not that into re-reading things I’ve read before, and like @simias pointed out there’s plenty of new stuff to read.
Also especially at the ABBC and maybe BBC levels, if something’s interesting I’m likely to just pick it up and binge it when I feel like it, book club or no.
As someone who tends to reread their favorite books, there are some (though not many ) book club picks I would reread in a book club. There are also a few books that have been read in the past, which I have purchased since then but have not read yet, so I would participate in a book club for those.
Still, I think that would be maybe 5 books or so? Not sure how actively I would participate in the club overall
(that said, I actually finished 夜カフェ recently, which I bought it for the book club back then but stopped reading after week 1. I guess that would be in the spirit of this club? Though I don’t think I would have wanted to finish that one with a schedule…)
I would love to read along some of the ABBC’s past picks. Whether I’d participate or not though would depend on several things, mainly when that would happen, and what the reading pace would be. And if I end up only being capable of following either the ABBC or this reboot, then I’d rather go with the ABBC.
I wasn’t sure how to vote, because I’m not really interesting in rereading stuff I’ve already read as long as there is so much interesting new stuff coming up all the time that I even lack the time to participate in all new clubs I’d be interested in. However, there are a whole lot of old club picks I’d love to read with a club for the first time.
Feel like there was a lot of information that I missed/misunderstood the first time, enough to make it worth rereading the book rather than starting something new
Feel like there were some clues in the beginning of the story that are meant to be missed the first time, and only be recognizable by reading a second time
Love this idea! I’m a big proponent of rereading things, especially the sorts of stuff that you might read in a book club and have really struggled with at some point.
Something may have been really hard when you read it with a club a year ago, and so in your brain it’s kinda lodged itself as a challenging read, but if you were to pick it up again now and try to read it you might breeze through it! (I’ve done this with よつばと！, ヤニ吸う, ホリミヤ, and even recently with しろくまカフェ, which wasn’t even a particularly hard read when I read it the first time but still felt significantly easier than the last time I read it). It serves as a really tangible way to feel like you’ve made progress!
Even if you think you got a very good reading of something the first time you read it, re-reading it can totally change the experience from one that was more study-focused to one that is more reading for fun focused, and that can drastically change how you feel about reading something
I’m not sure how to schedule a club like this, because everyone has participated in different clubs in the past and been around on the forums for different lengths of time, but I do like the idea of having some way to focus on re-reading things you already know as a viable piece of a toolkit for language learning
Ooh, yes, this is a much more articulate way of expressing what I was trying to get at! We’ve worked so hard to get here, and some books are just so good that it seems like a shame to leave them in the zone of “study material”, rather than rereading them later and getting to experience them more as “a really good book”.
Agreed. Everyone’s taste differs, so it might be quite hard to find a book that everyone is interested in.
Also, based on feedback up to this point it seems that most folks would be interested in a rereading club only or mainly if it covered books that they haven’t read yet.
Pertinent posts for reference
This makes me think that maybe a general-purpose rereading thread would be best (sort of like the tadoku extended reading thread or the Read Every Day threads), with the possibility for specific book clubs to run as special events if/when enough people want to read said book at the same time.
Last but not least, on our acronym.
@Kazzeon Thank you for voting. I request you provide a funnier acronym please and thank you.
So pretty similar to others, my views are basically:
I don’t know there’ll be continual demand for re-reads
I might join, but I’m trying to dial down book clubs a bit (I’m also skipping FMA in the IMC), so I might join if the subject matter interests me, but don’t think I’ll be a regular joiner here.
) book club picks I would reread in a book club. There are also a few books that have been read in the past, which I have purchased since then but have not read yet, so I would participate in a book club for those.
