Week 4 - この本を盗む者は 📚 🪄 (Advanced Book Club)

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Welcome to week 4 of この本を盗む者は :books: :magic_wand:

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Discussion Threads and Reading Schedule

Page counts are estimates from a digital edition. Please reference the stopping points as there are few chapters.

Week Start Date Chapter Start Page Page Count
Week 4 Feb 25 through end of chapter 2 113 34

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.

  • When asking for help, please mention the chapter and page number. Also mention what version of the book you are reading.

  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.

  • To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun!

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Are you planning to read week 4 of この本を盗む者は :books: :magic_wand: with the book club?

  • Yes
  • Not sure
  • No

0 voters

Special Readings

This book has been noted as having irregular kanji and made up names. There is a wiki of these in the bottom of the first post in the home thread.

I finished the section and what if the thief doesn’t care about the books themselves but just wants to trigger the curses to enjoy the book from the inside? :thinking:

Also, regarding the difficulty discussion, I agree that the overall average is dropping fast. Maybe more ~35 ish?

3 Likes

Well, finished chapter 2, and what the author seems to want to write about and what I want to read about really don’t line up.

The author mostly seems to want to put her characters into a series of genre cliche scenes. I don’t particularly care about those parts of the book, because I know that nothing they do there matters or advances the overall plot, and nobody they meet there will be relevant, because it will all just reset at the end of the chapter and nobody will remember anything. The scenes don’t even form a within-the-book-world coherent plot. This was particularly bad in chapter 1 because magical realism tends that way anyway, but even in chapter 2 they run from the police, get shot at by a neighbour, get into a car chase and so on, and it’s all just “stuff happens because the author wanted a car chase in there somewhere”, and once the car chase scene is over they just … move onto the next thing. Even when there are interesting ideas (like a secret organization printing books in a country where they’re outlawed) I have no investment in the idea because I know that in 20 pages it’s going to evaporate and be totally irrelevant thereafter. If I want hard-boiled detective stories I’ll read actual hard-boiled detective stories, because they do a much better job of the atmosphere and telling stories I care about in that world.

What I am interested in is the stuff that doesn’t just vanish at the end of every chapter, like what exactly is this book curse for, who the fox-thief is, where Mashiro came from, why everybody turns into a fox after too long in the book world, and some of the mundane-world questions like whether Mafuyu is going stop hating the book collection. But the author makes me read through an awful lot of what I don’t care about to get a few bits and pieces of this. I was hoping maybe chapter 2 would have a bit more of this, but it didn’t.

1 Like

I don’t know how much it will matter later, but anyone we meet is not the thief. Plus, there are at least three people who remember everything.

2 Likes

Having not even started chapter 2 yet, is there a no-spoiler or minimal-spoiler explanation you can give? I need to decide whether and when to continue reading this book, and your thoughts on chapter 2 might influence that.

1 Like

Here’s the minimal-spoiler edited version:

The author mostly seems to want to put her characters into a series of genre cliche scenes. I don’t particularly care about those parts of the book, because I know that nothing they do there matters or advances the overall plot, and nobody they meet there will be relevant, because it will all just reset at the end of the chapter and nobody will remember anything.

What I am interested in is the stuff that doesn’t just vanish at the end of every chapter, like what exactly is this book curse for, who the fox-thief is, where Mashiro came from, why Mafuyu turns into a fox after too long in the book world, and some of the mundane-world questions like whether Mafuyu is going to stop hating the book collection. But the author makes me read through an awful lot of what I don’t care about to get a few bits and pieces of this. I was hoping maybe chapter 2 would have a bit more of this, but it didn’t.

I guess if you read the first half of chapter 2 that would be enough to tell how much of what you didn’t like in chapter 1 was down to it being magical-realism (which I think was a really bad choice of starting genre) and how much was inherent to the structure of the book and what the author wants to write about.

4 Likes

I yet again loved it. :joy: I thought this chapter was a joy and great fun to read. I’m kind of just along for the ride, and honestly it was parodying (in a loving way) one of my favorite genres so how could I dislike it?

I’m intrigued by the phone number left for 深冬. How did the fox leave before her to pen that note? I’m assuming (maybe wrongly) the woman she saw her aunt talking to is the thief? Also I think we’ve ruled out every person we’ve been introduced to explicitly so far except that one girl who wanted her to join the literature club? Unless I’m forgetting some shopkeepers but I feel like they’ve all been covered.

5 Likes

That’s a fairly short note… assuming they woke up at the same time and the thief had paper directly accessible (or even prepared the note before hand), that sounds doable. It’s not like 真冬 rushed for the door.

That’s also what I think (plus the other woman you mentioned). I thought I’d maybe try to go back and check if everyone is actually accounted for… but I’m lazy and I figure we’ll get the answer soon enough.

I’m kinda considering just rushing for the end and ignore the club schedule… but at the same time I still have to finish 不機嫌な果実 (I read absolutely nothing over the week-end) and I have two more books available from the library, so maybe I can wait a bit :eyes:

5 Likes

I thought this week was fun. But I feel like part of the appeal is supposed to be about having all these familiar characters playing completely different roles. Except… we’ve barely met them? So seeing サンショ as リッキー doesn’t have as much impact on us as it has on Mifuyu

4 Likes