Thanks for the ping! I just don’t think I could handle the advanced pace on top of the other clubs 
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Since the other clubs decided to go on break though, if we start right away I might be able to trick myself into thinking I can do it then fall hopelessly behind later! Are you sure diving in at book 3 is ok?
Any chance that the people who voted for all three options could change their vote to just one or two? 
That would be super-amazing!
Ahem. I mean the joining part, not the falling behind part 
Maybe you could try to convince @Jfredel78 to also start right away?
(hah, they showed up before I could even post my ping Will change my vote asap)
I’m pretty convinced it should work out fine. This series has the same set of protagonists and environment, but I don’t expect the stories to be connected (at least vol. 1 and 2 were not connected). Of course there has been a little bit of world-building and a little bit of character development so far, but it’s suuuper slow, and I guess the main characters will be introduced again in each book. (Just like e.g. Miss Marple or stories like these, I guess.) And if there’s something that really confuses or surprises you, we’re here to fill you in of course.
Cool! I’ll give it a shot and try to get a week ahead beforehand if we start on the 25th. Again, no promises I’ll be able to stay on timeline. Would somebody be willing to write a quick summary of the characters/world-building while avoiding spoiling major plot points of the first two?
I’ve been watching this club for a while—a good mystery with math and tech elements seems right up my alley.
Yay, that’s great 
Yes, if you start straight away you should be able to get the first chapter under your belt (although it is the longest one, sorry for that).
OK let’s see how far I get. I thought about this for a second and I’m not sure whether I’ll get all the details right, but we’ll see.
Saikawa is an academic, his subject is architecture. I think he is something like a postdoc or an assistant professor, from the feels of the description. Not sure whether this got mentioned anywhere. He’s about 35 years old or a bit younger. He’s a chain smoker. Sometimes he puts on airs and comes across pretty arrogant.
Moe is an engineering (?) student, she is the daughter of Saikawa’s former mentor who died together with his wife in a plane crash during landing a few years ago. So Moe is an orphan. She is pretty close to Saikawa as she knows him since childhood. Also, the two went to the airport together to pick up her parents when the plane crashed right in front of their eyes, which added to their bonding.
Due to both her parents having been professors, she is super rich, lives in a ginormous penthouse together with the family butler, drives a fancy sports car and so on. She is also crazy intelligent, can do arithmetic in her head at breakneck speed and stuff. She is about 20 or a bit older.
Moe’s uncle is the chief of the regional police department, and with or without his help, the two somehow get dragged into strange mysteries which they then solve together. It seems to be a pattern that Saikawa somehow figures things out but doesn’t mention anything about his suspicions, which leaves the reader pretty much in the (almost) dark all the time. In the end comes the big revelation of course. Sometimes it’s quite handy that the uncle can help in ways an ordinary person could not, due to his position.
I think it’s safe to say that there are some romantic vibes going on between Saikawa and Moe, but with this being Japan, I don’t expect significant things to happen during, say, the next 5 books or so…
They also have a close friend who played a role in the second volume at least, but I basically forgot most things about him, including his name… He is also in architecture as an assistant professor, and he behaves as if he has a crush on Moe or something.
OK, I hope I did not mess up too many details 
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts about our new story!
Thanks for the ping. 
I was very tempted last week to get the series on kindle for half the price I’d pay for the individual volumes - but my backlog! I’m trying to resist bulk buys.
I’m half tempted to vote ‘later’ so I can maybe join in after tidying up a bit of my ‘currenly reading’ (that is, I’m planning to finish かがみの孤城 and 地球星人 and probably some other book(s) ahead of schedule sometime in January, which would free up a bit of time for another book club again…)
Knowing myself, I’d want to read in order and have a bit of catching up to do though. 
So I won’t vote. I’ll think of you over Christmas dinner though! 
OK, looks like the start date voting dried up, so I’m declaring Dec 25th to be the winner!
(I hope that’s ok for you @Jfredel78? If you cannot start before Jan 8th, I hope you can manage to catch up anyways…)
By the way I can encourage everybody to start reading on Friday (Dec 24th) already - I think it might feel magical to you at some point 
Very excited to see that the book starts off at Christmastime! That’s a fun coincidence.
Eeeeh, you spoilerer I thought it’d be cool if everybody discovered that by themselves
But yes, I agree, and I was very surprised!
Ahhhh sorry! Well it was indeed magical.
omg, that’s this week I lose all track of time during long vacations, you see. Thought the 25th was next week, for some reason.
But that’s not to say I’m not ready! >:3
Yeah, well I had a lot of other things planned to read over winter break, but where there’s a will there’s a way. I guess…
Well, I bought the books. 
I’m currently finishing up the books I’ve already started, and then I want to catch up to where 本陣殺人事件 is at.
I’ll be reading S&M in order so it’ll be a while before I’m caught up with you guys anyway.
You read the first one already, didn’t you? So it’s just one book… if you get drawn into this the way I did, I bet you’ll read it in a week or so
I’m expecting you’ll be done with the third before or by the time I’m done with the second. If you continue straight away, I might catch up halfway through volume 4.
I guess that happened. 6 days, the first of which I barely read 5 pages just to get the ball rolling. The last two days were intense! I read almost 4 hours yesterday, and almost 3 today.
I’d say most of that was really wanting to know what happened - but a bit was about proving you right, as well
Thanks for that.
I’ll take a break from S&M for a week or two to spend some time with my other books, and then see about maybe catching up with you in the last week after all, haha.
Hey all, I noticed that in some other thread @sycamore speculated about when we’d continue to read the 5th volume of this series, and so I figured it might be worthwhile to think about that together with you.
Personally I must say I’m quite happy with reading one volume every 6 months - it gives me enough time to read other books and to start to miss Saikawa and Moe, and to forget about the slight annoyances this series brings about for me
How do you think about this? When should we continue reading the next book?
0 voters
I agree with you @NicoleIsEnough, I like the once every six months schedule. It keeps me from getting burned out. Also, reading 詩的私的ジャック in July is bringing back memories of reading 冷たい密室と博士たち last summer. Then coming back to read 笑わない数学者 around Christmas was perfect.
Oh, I had almost forgotten about that, but now that you mention it, I remember sitting on my balcony in the summer breeze with a candle until it was really dark while reading the part where Moe was alone in the building at night 
that’s really all the horror I need 
I think it’s possible I mentioned this in the context of the audiobooks that are currently coming out for the series at a rate of one every couple of months. You folks are currently ahead of the audiobooks but the one for WHO INSIDE comes out this November 11 - so if you went for a long break (December or February) that would mean that the audiobooks would be pretty reliably out before you started reading for the rest of the series! (I mean, this probably isn’t much of a factor if you are not used to having the audiobooks but is still a nice bonus!)
…also gives me time to catch up