シャドーハウス (Beginner Book Club)

Join the Beginner Book Club here!

This is the original book club, if you are looking for the offshoot club (volume 2+) click here!

Welcome to シャドーハウス

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If you want to take part, just buy the book and join in the discussion! We also recommend setting this thread to ‘watching’ so that you get notified when the discussion threads are posted.

Not sure if this is for you? Check out the Nomination Post and read the first chapter for free on bookwalker - remember that your fellow book club members and the vocab sheet will be here to help you out though!

Where to buy

Physical: Amazon | CD Japan
Digital Mono: Kindle | Bookwalker
Digital Color: Kindle | Bookwalker

Reading Schedule

Week Start Date Chapter Page Count
Wk 1 Jul 16th Ch 1 ケイトとエミリコ 12
Wk 2 Jul 23th Ch 2 壊れた人形は 13
Wk 3 Jul 30th Ch 3 説明書
Ch 4 すすだるま
25
Wk 4 Aug 6th Ch 5 空腹
Ch 6 鏡
26
Wk 5 Aug 13th Ch 7 別の顔
Ch 8 部屋の外には
25
Wk 6 Aug 20th Ch 9 すす取りの間
Ch 10 落ちない汚れ
25
Wk 7 Aug 27th Ch 11 お披露目前の二人
Ch 12 汚しながら
23

Vocabulary List

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!

Member List

Are you planning to read シャドーハウス with the book club?

  • Yes
  • Yes, but I might start late
  • Not sure
  • No
0 voters

If so, which version will you be reading?

  • eBook color
  • eBook mono
  • Paperback
0 voters
13 Likes

We start of slow by only reading one chapter for the first two weeks, but after that we pick up the speed and read about 25 pages for the rest of the book club. But the manga does not seem very dense so it should be a reasonable pace!

If someone would create the vocabulary spreadsheet that would be greatly appreciated!

6 Likes

If no one is already in the middle of doing so, I can get a vocabulary spreadsheet together.

Here we go, @Shadowlauch:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Gh734arT0IjMzXFTKtccAK_D8cd2jaDs9MpLaklZAd8/edit?usp=sharing

5 Likes

Read the first few pages, sofar it’s quite cute. Looking forward to it, no furigana seems like an interesting challenge!

6 Likes

Anything to listen / watch along? In my experience, what might help best with no Furigana, is listening, so as not to pick up a wrong reading.

In any case, thanks シャドーランチ-san.

2 Likes

I smell some bias in the creator of this thread. :eyes:

4 Likes
Bonus for anyone on a desktop computer or laptop, buying digitally from Kobo, and removing DRM.

If you buy volume one digitally from Kobo and remove its DRM, and would like to be able to use a browser add-in such as Yomichan or Migaku for the manga, you can do the following:

1) Download and extract the following zip file. This contains files produced by running the volume’s pages through Mokuro.

Shadows_House_Volume_1_Kobo_Mokuro.zip - Google Drive

2) There is an empty folder named “Images”. Copy the images from your purchase into this folder.

3) Open the file 「シャドーハウス カラー版 1.html」 in a web browser.

Note: I used the color version for this. The black and white version probably has different file names. If someone is in this situation, let me know the file name for one image, and I should be able to create an updated HTML file easily. It’ll just be a simple find-and-replace in a text editor.

4) Mokuro’s generated HTML file allows you to navigate through the manga, viewing two pages at a time. (You can disable this. Be sure to select “First page is cover” in the options.)

Warning: Due to file naming, you need to skip to page 157 for “page one” of the volume. After this, the story continues on page 2.

5) Hover your mouse over text and you can use Yomichan, Migaku, etc. on it. This is useful for looking up words that contain unknown kanji when there is no furigana.

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(This might work for other digital store sources if the file names are the same as from Kobo. If you bought from another source and extracted the images, feel free to let me know the file names for a couple of images, and I might be able to create an updated HTML file. Or you can try using Mokuro yourself, which requires installing Python and some libraries to run.)

4 Likes

This seems really interesting and I love the full color! Been staying only in the ABBC so far - I might take this as my first Beginner Book Club reading, or I might focus instead on the Yotsuba manga I’ve bought and join the Beginner Book Club next time.

3 Likes

Wikipedia tells me there was an anime adaptation (one season) by animation studio CloverWorks that aired last year (with a second season coming out soon).

I don’t which services it can be streamed on, but that could be an option.

(Disclaimer: Wikipedia article may contain story spoilers. I only looked at the portion above the fold.)

3 Likes

Regarding the first season of the anime, I believe it covers roughly to the end of volume 4. If that was evenly distributed it would work out to three episodes per volume or four chapters per episode. I haven’t watched the anime yet though, so I can’t say if it was rushed or if anything was cut/reordered.

6 Likes

thanks to someone a long time ago @seanblue recommending this finally ordered it before it was a pick…still hasn’t’ shipped yet though… probably will arrive within a couple of weeks… the new vol was preorder and it doesn’t release until the 17th or something…then the whole set will ship

sending seanblue the bill :wink:

2 Likes

Thank you for sending me down a rabbit hole. It seems like the ocr is even better than the google cloudvision ocr I have been using for a while. I guess because it is specifically trained on manga it does no trip up that much when it comes to furigana & vertical text.

2 Likes

With how the underlying software extracts the text as if the furigana wasn’t even there, it’s the best rabbit hole to be going down =D

It’s crazy how good it is at getting all kinds of text, vertical and horizontal, furigana or not, and all sorts of unusual fonts.

2 Likes

See if it can parse the handwritten text in Blend-S. :laughing:

3 Likes
Handwritten's definitely out.

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(It missed the first two lines completely.)

Well, that was a really low-resolution copy (which I just happened to zoom in on for a screenshot).

Here’s another test:

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4 Likes

this is amazing, thank you

1 Like

yeah!!! ready now for shadow house (and keeping current on some other ones

12 Likes

I can’t decide if I should buy volumes 1 and 2 in the digital color edition to complete my collection. :confounded: I already have black and white copies (though they are only accessible on my computer), but my copies of volumes 3+ are the color edition and can be accessed from any device.

3 Likes

Why is there no poll choice for “I bought both eBook color and eBook mono because I thought mono might look better on an e-ink display”? (if anyone is wondering, they look identical. So I guess the mono was derived from the color, as opposed to the color being added after mono came out?)

Super excited to start! Posting here as a bit of a public commitment. Hopefully I haven’t over-committed myself.

3 Likes

I assumed it was colored afterwards, but I don’t actually know if that’s the case.

By the way, you may want to check a preview for that kind of thing next time instead of buying both versions. :sweat_smile: (assuming your ereader allows that)

2 Likes