Although difficulty is a factor, a book taking 20 weeks to get through is a huge time commitment for people to set aside time for. Lots of things can change to cause reader attrition. I say this because the amount of time reading this book (or any books) is something that has been brought up on book club threads many times over.
An advanced club may satisfy the needs of those who’d like to go through books more quickly, but it still wouldn’t address a recurrence of this in the future. In any event, I’m very thankful for your and others’ active participation in the threads and efforts to include everyone in the process.
I answered that I’m caught up but I’m actually a few pages behind. I’ll catch up tonight and should have plenty of time to stay caught up after the weekend. Whatever pace we decide to go with for the rest of the book is fine with me.
I think the number of weeks we’re spending reading one book is more the factor for me than the length of the book. Maybe if we decide to read another long book in the future we can have a limit on the number of weeks we read it in? It would require more reading per week but I think it would be easier to maintain discussion/interest over a shorter period of time. Maybe it’s also a better idea to create separate threads/clubs for these instead of the intermediate club.
Yeah, I think increased speed would have to get into advanced/custom book club territory. 15 pages per week really does seem like a sweet spot for intermediate book club.
So I wanted to say that if it was less difficult, people could read faster and thus we would finish earlier. Basically what @brrricane said: at 20 pages a week (so just 5 more) we would be almost done already.
So, I don’t think the length is a problem per se, just length/speed.
My suggestion for an advanced club was to give a space for people who still want to read books like ハルヒ. In particular, I know nothing about those pop culture books, so it’s nice to get recommendations from others.
In the meantime, we can restrict books from taking more than 15 weeks for instance.
Now that we are getting closer to the end I can’t help but wonder what kind of ending we can expect from the first volume of a light novel series. Maybe a massive cliff hanger? Or perhaps something more satisfactory if you aren’t going to read further?
The only other light novel I’ve read before is キノの旅 but in that one the chapters weren’t really connected anyway so… probably not a good example.
Totally not trying to make conversation so Naphthalene can keep posting
I’ve been thinking about how the book might end and how the series might be structured. I’m not sure this is the best place for it but . I’m also not sure if anyone else has said anything similar since I’ve been trying to avoid any major spoilers so far.
Theory about ending/following books based on reading through Week 15
I’m wondering if Haruhi will recreate the world at the end of the book. And then more generally if each book is sort of a retelling with the same characters in a different version of the world. Part of this is based on knowing the structure of the book titles in the series (ハルヒの__). Maybe that last word is a clue about the world she created for each book.
Of course I still don’t even really understand what’s going on with the characters so I could be way off.
New week is up!
Small announcement: next week will probably be the last week. The epilogue is only 7 pages long, making it a total of 21 pages, which isn’t so bad.
Sorry everyone for not being really present throughout this book. My life has been hectic. I’m almost finished reading the book, but lost momentum as that I’ve kind of grown to dislike ハルヒ and her behavior. This is no surprise because I often end up disliking the characters of the books I’ve reading lately. Perhaps I need a vacation?