Welcome to the Saikawa & Moe (S&M) Series Book Club! It is a series of “science mystery” books written by MORI Hiroshi.
We started reading the first volume in the Advanced Book Club and are now continuing the series as a Spin-Off.
Do the volumes in this series stand on their own? Or do they really need to be read in order? I’m definitely interested in the series and would consider joining for future volumes once I up my reading speed a bit. I assume The Perfect Insider was pretty well received since this spinoff club exists. What were your impressions?
I asked somebody who read Vol. 2 already, and they said that it’s quite ok to read Vol. 2 without knowing Vol. 1. The main characters Saikawa and Moe (hence S&M… I’m sorry!!) are the same in each book (they are like our hobby detectives who get to solve the cases in the books). We might encounter some other characters from Vol. 1 as well. So you might be missing the backstory of those characters, but you can always ask if you feel you’re missing out on something relevant in the story.
OK so it’s not about that S&M Please blame the author - it’s just that he assigned an abbreviated name to each of his book series, and so I thought the abbreviation might have some recognition value… (If people keep bumping into this I should better remove it, I reckon…)
Having said that, it is a criminal story series for adults with murder and blood and stuff. (But judging from Vol. 1 I wouldn’t say it’s worse than 殺人出産 tbh.) Oh, and Saikawa is a chain smoker which felt quite annoying to the majority of the Vol. 1 club members
Ah, you know, how can I ever be sure
If you had told me you’re a dog, I would have believed you too, I guess
(殺人出産 response) I guess if you dive into the horror genre, they will laugh about something like that And the impressions from horror are much more long-lasting, at least for me…
Today I realized that we’re already in week 4 of the second volume, in other words, if we stick to our current schedule we will finish the book in under 4 weeks!
Which of course raises the question of “What next?”
I already own the third volume of the series, and I would like to read it at some point (but probably not further than that for the time being). So, the question is, is anybody interested in joining in?
Here is some information about the book:
It’s called 笑わない数学者 and the paperback has 456 pages according to Amazon.
Here is a rough estimate of the chapter sizes (I’ve calculated this from my ebook so please take it with a grain of salt as always):
Chapter
Page Count
1
~54
2
~42
3
~43
4
~42
5
~46
6
~35
7
~45
8
~32
9
~47
10
~40
11
~23
With this my proposal would be to read 1 chapter per week (as I don’t think I can manage 2 of those per week ).
Are you interested in reading Volume 3 with us?
Yes, and pretty much straight away (with a more or less short break)
Some of the later volumes are in the 800+ page range, so I’m not sure either whether I want to read them ever…
Plus, despite the series being so old, the higher volumes are really expensive (1000 - 1200 yen on bookwalker) which is also a bit of a showstopper for me - there is just too much good reading material in the cheaper or even free range that I’d like to explore at some point…
Take my vote with a grain of salt- by large gap I would probably need at least until October and even then I probably couldn’t guarantee my participation, but I’m definitely very interested in reading along if it somehow all works out for me logistically.
So everybody seems to be fine with a large gap, which is nice because we don’t lose anybody, it seems
The next question is: How large is a large gap? We will finish Vol. 2 around mid-August. My idea of a large gap is at least 2 months, so I’ll start with that. Let’s see what y’all think:
Start around mid-October
Start around mid-November
Start around mid-December
Start around mid-January
Start even later (please explain)
I changed my mind and I want to start earlier (please explain)
Ah ok no worries, I didn’t have any idea what people meant with “large gap” so I just started somewhere I’m sure we will figure out something for everybody.
I think I will run another poll closer to the end of the year so that we can determine the exact starting date. Will try to keep everybody in the loop this time around!
For those of you who are interested in continuing our journey, the books from this series are currently discounted on Bookwalker (through price reduction and increased coin cashback) until 2021-10-14T14:59:00Z.
Should we start deciding when we’ll read the next book?
Also I bought book 4 (詩的私的ジャック Jack the Poetical Private) because it was at 1€ at book-off, in case anyone’s interested in continuing the book club after that.
Yeah, I was thinking along these lines as well, while critically eyeing the pile of new bookclubs that’s upcoming (and personal reading plans)
Thanks for the push!
Haha same here So we have to continue reading, right?
OK, to get an overview these are the book clubs that are ongoing or starting soon:
地球星人 (Intermediate Book Club) runs until March 25th (takes a 1-week break around the holidays)
かがみの孤城 (Standalone, Intermediate level) runs until March 11th (takes a 2-week break around the holidays)
本陣殺人事件 (Advanced Book Club) starts on Jan 1st, runs until uh I think I haven’t set up a schedule yet Feb/March
薬屋のひとりごと (Advanced Book Club) starts right after 本陣殺人事件 (after a 1-week break)
For the next book in this series, 笑わない数学者, there are 11 chapters of pretty equal length (except the first and the last one) with an average length of ~42 pages or so. My schedule suggestion would be to read 1 chapter per week. (This is just fyi, I have put up a home thread for the book where we can discuss things.)
For the start time, we could start during the holidays (i.e. next Friday!) and make use of the other book clubs’ breaks (if anybody is involved in them) to get us into the mood again and to read the first chapter which is a bit longer than the others. Or we could start a bit later.
Let’s have a look at concrete dates. I’ve added the end dates based on an 11-week schedule to give you an idea.
Just pinging those who showed interest in continuing to read at some point: @Ditto20@jhol@valkow
Also pinging @Belerith just in case
Seems like we are going to continue with Vol. 3 soon! If you are still interested, you can voice your opinion on the start date in the poll above this post. If not - I can understand.
… I’m a child
And the impressions from horror are much more long-lasting, at least for me… 
I’m sure we will figure out something for everybody.
And I missed that you missed it 
