Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).
Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:
Example
This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.
The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.
This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.
Posting Advice
When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.
Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!
Live Readings
The next weekly live reading session will be 2023-04-30T12:30:00Z Join the Japanese Book Club Discord to either read or listen!
Proper Nouns
Name
Reading
Notes
高崎暦
たかさきこよみ
The main character
ユノ
ユノ
His grandfather’s dog
瀧川和音
たきがわかずね
A top student in 暦’s class
虚質科学研究所
きょしつかがくけんきゅうじょ
Institute of Imaginary Science
佐藤綾子
さとういとこ
The founder of imaginary science
Participation
Will you be reading along with us this week?
I’m reading along
I have finished this part
I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this part yet
I’m reading this book after the club has finished
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0voters
If you’ve already read this book but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have read this part.”
Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!
First time that I read the entire chapter on the first day of the book club week. Not because I was particularly hooked by the story, rather I had to travel for about 2.5 hours and even after that, I need to wait quite a bit without anything to do (I’m still waiting btw).
onto my weekly thoughts section
Doing a bunch of time jumps, and now a flashback. Certainly a weird order to things, but I didn’t mind it much.
Man, the situation they described. That must s***. Though I certainly want to ask, why didn’t they take the IP monitors off? I now question how big such a thing is in the author’s mind to not even think about taking it off when you are getting prepared for the act. I originally imagined something that was closer to cellphone sized than anything, but I guess it’s closer to a watch of sorts. Should be integrated into a smartwatch imo. “Now besides your heartrate, and blood pressure, you can even measure how far away you’ve drifted from your loved ones!”. Wonderful marketing opportunity.
I did correctly forecast that we will have some parallel shifting shenanigans. It was quite a small shift, but I don’t mind that. Talking about how your everyday changes because of new technology is one place where sci-fi shines in my mind.
I also liked the discussion at the end, now I’m wondering if the last 43% of the book will be focused on going over similar scenarios/questions.
On a side note, is this book considered to be a light novel? I remember once a Japanese book account on English Twitter saying how they tend not to like light novels because they’re also “light” on plot.
I just finished the novel. I largely enjoyed it, though I was a little disappointed that it felt like the writing/characters were too simple sometimes. Though a lot of the 暦’s actions made me roll my eyes, some events to come later actually made me pretty emotional.
I thought I’d follow along with this book club while also reading another more difficult novel, but what ended up happening is that I read this book whenever I was too tired to read my goal of 10 pages per day of my more difficult book.
This is the first novel I’ve read where I really felt like I didn’t need a dictionary and could read at full speed, so I’m looking forward to getting to the level where I can read more difficult novels with this level of fluency.
I totally thought it was a light novel until you mentioned it.
Yeah, the shenanigans with the IP felt a bit forced. Are you really marrying a different person if it’s a few minutes of someone who chose to eat a different breakfast that morning? You both have the same memories anyway. Not sure how Calendar is overthinking this so hard. I mean people have lived without these devices for forever. The sex thing also felt so dumb. I mean, it must’ve been awkward if they were more focused on the IP numbers than each other.
Can anyone give some spoiler-free indication if there’s something more interesting coming this way, or should I just stop reading?
It was good enough to be worth finishing, but I would read it at a faster pace than the club did. I think the book suffered a bit from the slower reading pace of the club. I can for sure tell you that the partner book, 君愛, has stronger writing, more relatable characters, and I’m enjoying it a lot more than I did 僕愛. There’s some interconnection, so finishing 僕愛 to be able to better understand the better partner book is worth it for that alone, imo.
But yeah, my overall feeling on 僕愛 is it was okay, worth reading, but doing so at a less leisurely pace would have been better, so if you do continue, don’t follow the weekly pacing here.
. Made it the most enjoyable week so far for me 
.