🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Winter 2023 ❄ 🧤

I would normally think so for lists like “best 10 mysteries” or “top books I read in 2022” but this is a video of all the 本屋大賞 award nominees and I’ll be shocked if he has anything negative to say about any of them. Not done yet though. Shock me Masaki!

I wonder if it’s tied to the over the top anti-defamation laws of if that’s over stated.

Good to know the truth is always a defense, right? Well, in Japanese libel and slander cases, the truth won’t necessarily help you. Instead, it all comes down to reputation. (The Japanese word for defamation is meiyokison 名誉毀損めいよきそん, which, when broken down, literally means “damaged honor”.) Even if a published statement is 100% true, it can still be considered defamatory if it irrevocably hurts the subject’s reputation and oftentimes the question of truth doesn’t really enter the equation. For example, in 2012 a Japanese man discovered that when he put his name into the Google search bar, it autocompleted results that implied he had a criminal record, and this man argued these autocomplete search results were severely damaging his reputation.

so maybe I just need to listen closely for not-quite-as-ringing endorsements to pick out the bad ones :joy:

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Another thing to consider is “follow the money”. I’d expect all the book-recommending youtubers with high throughput to have some sort of affiliation with a publisher or somesuch…

Oh yes I learned about that recently as well :cold_sweat:

OMG hard pass :joy_cat:

Yes. Or rather “cringe me to tears” in my case.

Luckily at times there have been really good books among the winners (and the follow-up list) as you can see in The Honya Taishou 本屋大賞 Reading Challenge, but unfortunately it’s not a given and one has to be careful. It’s a prize for popular books, after all, which doesn’t necessarily mean good books.

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But I need to say again that this specific one was nominated for the Naoki prize too. Surely the criteria should be different there? And it’s been on several best of 2022 lists, that had almost nothing else in common. Very strange overall.

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That’s indeed quite interesting.

EDIT: It doesn’t seem to be too unusual to have love stories among the prize nominees; I found this on the wikipedia page of 千早 茜, the other Naoki winner in the last round: “Atokata won the Shimase Award for Love Stories and was nominated for the 150th Naoki Prize, but did not win.”
But then again, there are love stories and love stories… :thinking:

One would hope :sweat_smile:

But then again, we don’t know what else was on the long list. :thinking:

Which led me to the question “How many books are there to choose from?” :joy_cat:

And down the rabbithole you go :-)

In Japan, around 70,000 books are published per year, and I found one breakdown by category:

I think “Liberal arts” does not apply to our bracket, so I guess we are looking at “General” here? So around 35,000 per year, i.e. around 17,500 per 6 months (which is the timespan the Naoki and Akutagawa prizes look at). But it’s not clear to me at all how many of those are manga, for example. Or light novels. But in general, if we cut out all those, I feel there is not such an incredible number left… :thinking:

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Here’s an excerpt from the thesis I had linked several posts above when we were talking about the literary awards. It’s mainly about the Akutagawa selection process, but I assume the Naoki must be similar:

Hidden for size

The process has remained the same since the beginning of the Prize. Usually, around the beginning of March, twenty-four editors, all staff of Bungeishunju Ltd., are chosen to sit on the twelve-member selection committees for the Akutagawa Prize and the Naoki Prize. Twelve editors are chosen from the book publishing division, and twelve from the literary magazine division; they will serve for six months. They receive an official written appointment and a small allowance known as a yomidai or “reading fee.” For the 79th Akutagawa Prize, Okawara acted as head of these committees. First, he collected about 1300 qualified works from sixty general commercial literary magazines and 410 dojin magazines
(non-commercial literary coterie magazines) published during the previous six months.
Meanwhile, the general editorial affairs department of Bungeishunju Ltd., sent out a survey to approximately five hundred literary experts, including the ten judges, asking for recommendations of works written in the previous six months. Thus, each editor was assigned to read about sixty works in addition to their regular duties. However, they were allowed to recommend the works of their own clients as prospective winners. Once a month the members had a meeting in which they eliminated those works that did not fit the criteria.
Then, as now, the final nomination list was determined via discussion, coordination and debate among panel members. The 79th Akutagawa Prize survey had a response rate of sixty percent. If a judge recommended a particular work, it would remain on the final nomination list.

(Hope it’s okay to quote so much. Source: https://open.library.ubc.ca/media/stream/pdf/24/1.0072484/1)

I checked and it’s in third place in his top books of 2022. He actually seems pretty impressed by it in that video. There must be something more to it than meets the eye, but I’ll still avoid it, I think.

Yes, I actually think that they try to have something from several different genres (unlike the Akutagawa which is “pure literature”), that’s why there’s always a mystery nominee for example. I’ll see if I can find a source.

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Jan 28, Sat of Week 5 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

ガラスのうさぎ [7/18].

吾輩は猫である Ch.2 (Track 3). Maybe I am thinking of dropping this series already. A track (half chapter) is just too long to listen more intensively. For another series, listening while waiting for the physical text (probably re-listen then).

So-matome N3 Listening Ch.5 [1/5]. Doing the whole 5 parts of the exam feels too much for me, so I might not pass in reality; but let me slowly do practice test for now.

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Off-topic book award discussion

Oh, thanks for quoting! I wanted to go back to your post and read up on it, but I couldn’t get around it yet :cry:

Wow! I bet every time a book like 地図と拳 with its 600+ pages is published, everybody goes like :rage: :weary: inside :laughing:
Given that the prize covers the periods December to May and June to November, and the shortlists come out some time in December, that’s pretty amazing. But probably they will already start selecting books during the year, not only when the time period is over. Which would mean about 10 books per month - still a lot, but much more doable, I guess.

Oh yes, that sounds plausible, given it’s a popular literature prize. (It should represent the popular genres, then, indeed.)

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Interesting that you can win the Akutagawa for something published in a doujinshi…

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The specific description of the selection process is from 1978, so maybe things have changed? The doujinshi have a long history dating back to 1874 according to Wikipedia, and they were mainly self-published literature collections back then it seems.

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For comparison, apparently the Booker Prize judge workload is “almost 170 books across seven months. It works out as roughly a novel a day” …

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I wonder how they can properly appreciate books when they speedread them like that, and jump to the next book immediately after…I normally read fast (when it’s not in Japanese), but even so, when a book leaves an impression, I’m never ready to jump right into the next one. And while I have finished books in one day, I don’t think it’s possible for some longer or denser books without skimming, which sounds unfair to the books themselves…

(sorry everyone for the long off-topic detour. I hope you’re finding it mildly intersting at least :sweat_smile:)

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I had the same sentiment… was actually wondering whether we should set up a thread where we can discuss book review videos, and the contained books, and the awards, and everything around that? :thinking:

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Sounds like a good idea! :+1:
(Campfire or Reading?)

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I’d lean towards Reading, as it is very much connected with Japanese and stuff.

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January 28 :film_strip: :arrow_forward:

Today I watched the Masaki video posted by @pocketcat about the Honya Taishou nominees, and three episodes of Don’t Call it a Mystery (currently on the final one, which means I’ll need to find something else to watch from tomorrow).

@NicoleIsEnough , @pocketcat , @pm215 and everyone else who may be interested, I started a new thread specifically for book videos and discussions here:

It’s still pretty bare, but I hope we can fill it with content soon.
(Anyone knows if it might be possible to move posts to a different thread?)

And again, sorry for being off-topic for so long, everyone.

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New episode of マタタビムービーラボ dropped today, so I watched that!

I had a harder time understanding this one than last time, the fast back and forth between the two characters got me very lost. I understood the fortune telling thing at the end, and I clicked on every single fortune so I could get maximum listening practice.

I’ll update tomorrow about the movie (that I should hopefully watch tonight)

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:snowflake: Day 28, 28th of January :snowflake:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

Looking for some other gaming material, I’ve watched this episode of Dark and Darker by 兄者弟者. The people talk in a really clear way and there is a nice flow of conversation. Unfortunately not gaming material I would want to watch, so until I actually understand what is being said, this one’s out.

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January 28th!

Today I listened to JapanesePod101’s Upper Beginner Season 1, Lesson 19.
It was another lesson focusing on announcements you might hear on trains, and taught how to use ~~お控えください to say “Please refrain from ~~”

(Home Post)

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Started “My Neighbor Totoro” and its quite easy to understand as it is meant for kids. Not really enjoying it per say but its at my level I would say (of course they speak quite fast so I miss a lot and have to go back and listen again).

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I am a quarter of the way through ハウルの動く城 Howl’s Moving Castle. I gotta say the English voices are way better than the Japanese (I dont normally say this). Howl sounds so young and young Sophie sounds so old in the Japanese voices. But it is my favorite Ghibli film so watching in Japanese with Language Reactor is a good input method.

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