Beginner Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: 気になってる人が男じゃなかった // Next 葬送のフリーレン, then ウスズミの果て

you can never have too many polls

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You writing up any of those nominations soon? I’m really curious how difficult people will find のんのんびより.

@seanblue @fl0rm @Radish8

Excuse my late response, I had to take it easy for some days because I hit my head - always be careful on wet floors, friends. :sob:

Thank you all for the advice, I appreciate your time. I will be sure to focus on grammar studies this month. And that is a good point about how exposition is going to be more wordy, that’s good to keep in mind. It sounds like its certainly worth a shot. I have a lot of free time before the fall semester begins again so this will be good to work on.

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Sorry to hear that - hope you are doing better now!

i so badly want to see the girl who leaped through time!:grin:

To continue on with nominations, here’s my nomination for のんのんびより. (@fl0rm, I didn’t feel like waiting for your nomination, and I figure you have a whole bunch of others you were planning to nominate anyway. If there’s anything else you want me to add to the post, let me know.)


のんのんびより (Non Non Biyori)

Summary

From AniList:

Elementary school student Ichijou Hotaru has moved with her parents from Tokyo to the middle of the country. Now she must adapt to her new school, where there are a total of 5 students in the same class who range through elementary and middle school ages. Join their everyday adventures in the countryside.

Availability

Amazon.jp: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/404066521X
eBookJapan: 無料まんが・試し読みが豊富!電子書籍をお得に買うならebookjapan

Personal Opinion

Non Non Biyori is a slice of life story in a country setting, so it’s a nice, relaxing read. While I didn’t love the first season of the anime, it really grew on me and I really enjoyed the second season. I expect reading the manga to be just as fun.

The manga has furigana for all kanji, for what it’s worth. From the pages I tried reading, it’s actually more difficult than I expected, but doable (In retrospect, the difficulty shouldn’t be surprising because it’s a seinen manga.) Maybe I was just tired, because when I read it again it wasn’t that bad.

Pictures

I had a hard time finding representative pages, so here’s nine pages total.

First Three Pages of Chapter One

Pages 19-21

01_019

01_020

Pages 30-32

Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Just right
  • Challenging
  • Impossible, even with everyone’s help
0 voters
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@Naphthalene Are there any manga that give you trouble?

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I haven’t tried reading it in a while, but Last order is pretty challenging. One does not simply read a wall of technobabble (without any furigana, of course).
I should probably try again now, though :thinking:

I can stop voting in the polls if you want, by the way.

I’ve been reading the English translation of that, and honestly, I can never keep track of who all the secondary characters are…

Though since she looks old for her age, and the others look young, she looks like the oldest of the main characters depsite being second-youngest.

Hey, as long as you vote it all of them it won’t skew the vote haha.

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And that should make for some fun jokes!

Looks good to me. I’m not back home until next week (so excited to finally be able to start doing lessons again after a month), but I’ll try to add one every few nights after that.

@MoonKitty668 I’m reading the novel right now because it’s what I took with me on my trip (coastal Mexico warps books badly, by the way). It’s not overly difficult (around fifteen pages per hour), but I’m only able to comprehend about 75% of it while reading at a comfortable pace (trying not to look anything up and powering through to see if context backfills gaps), so it’s probably not a great choice for the beginner club. I’m making a number of assumptions that might lead to massive confusion later.

I think one per chapter would be nice, see who is actually still reading along =)
Maybe have an option for those reading it later? (catching up is more for those reading late but while we are still active, there might be people joining in after we are done) And to avoid people voting without actually being part a “I just like to click things” option :wink:
I think there might be some reading along without commenting, I mostly do, so a once per chapter will make it feel a little less lonely =)

And yeah, polls is <3 =D

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A necro option!

I think your last point is good too - if there seems to be low activity nearer the end I’m sure it’s easy to feel like hardly anyone is still reading, but there may be more than you think.

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Joining in! I just ordered ARIA, should be with me in a couple of weeks!

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i think I should order the new book soon. But Amazon japan is delivering pretty fast. So did you only boughgt volume 1? or more?

I only bought volume 1 of Aria the Masterpiece, which is all you need for the book club. If I enjoy the manga I plan on buying the rest of the series.

I bought the first volume of the Masterpiece edition as well, since I’d already bought the whole of Aria earlier but didn’t have Aqua. I kind of wish I’d looked into it a bit more before hand, as I wasn’t quite prepared for how big this edition is!

It certainly beats squinting at some of the text in the original version, but yeah, I opened my package and it was a huge surprise!

plus it doesn’t line up nicely with my other ones T_T

But it’s so beautiful that clearly the solution here is to buy the entire Masterpiece edition and sell your old ones :wink:

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What level would you recommend me reading this or Kiki’s delivery service at? (Considering I have N4 grammar)