Week 4: マリアビートル 🐞 (Advanced Book Club)

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

Week 4

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Start Date Sections Page Numbers Page Count
August 19 王子, 木村 119 - 161 42

Discussion Guidelines

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current section(s) and any content in future sections.
  • Please also use spoiler tags when discussing content from the movie (Bullet Train).
  • When asking for help, please mention the 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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Proper Noun Readings

Proper nouns
Name Reading
木村雄一 きむらゆういち
渉 わたる
蜜柑 みかん
檸檬 れもん
峰岸良夫 みねぎしよしお
寺原 てらはら
七尾 ななお
王子慧 おうじさとし
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2

I hope for less 王子 for next week :crossed_fingers:

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3

I’m starting to feel like this is one of those situations where the author sets up a cool premise, but then it turns out that the book they wanted to write is not the book I was hoping to read. I want to read a funny action story about hired killers on a train who bump into each other, inadvertently mess up each others’ plans, try to nonchalantly leave dead bodies in seats and keep stealing the same suitcase from each other. The author seems to really want to write a much less light hearted story that focuses on Ouji, his psychological manipulation tricks, the bad things he’s done, the backstory of his interactions with Kimura leading up to Wataru’s “accident”, and Kimura’s alcoholism – and I just don’t really want to read about that. I got through this week’s reading section by treating it as an exercise in speed reading. Hopefully next week will be better, but then I hoped that about this week.

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4

Completely agree with this!

Might not need spoilers, but anyway:

What puzzles me is that it was funny and did not seem to take itself seriously at all in the first chapters. If the author wants to write a more serious story with in-depth psychological explanations of why things happen(ed) the way they do/did, a bit disappointing for me personally and possibly not my cup of tea but fair enough, but why did he choose to suddenly change the tone instead of being consistent? He risks losing his readers who are looking for the serious stuff because of the beginning (and others shortly afterwards). :thinking:

So, I keep going for at the very least another week and see where this leads me. :wink:

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5

Me too! :pray:
And I am (still) optimistic that it will happen sooner or later.

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6

This basically describes the movie - so either the screenwriter agreed with you, or the rest of the book will get back on track :crossed_fingers:

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7

I don’t think the very first chapter, which was 木村, was particularly funny. I actually wondered why the book didn’t start with one of the more funny/catchy characters (果物 or 天道虫). But reading your comment, I now think that it might be in order to set the tone of the book? Maybe the 木村 part is actually the story the author wants to tell? But I’m with everyone here, I prefer the funny chapters ^^’

(I’m commenting a bit late, I’ve actually been reading on schedule but just didn’t take the time to participate in the threads).

5 Likes