Bunpro Book club (Intermediate)

Book Clubs
#1

Hi everyone!

This is the welcome thread for users that want to join in Intermediate level book clubs. Information about levels, past, present and future titles can be found here, along with links to various resources.

If you’re thinking about joining this reading community. Please have a look through this post, and then say hi to everyone! We’d love to have you join!

Focus of Club

To reiterate, this post is for the INTERMEDITE group. To participate in this group it is assumed that you would have a strong foundation of the N3 grammar, a strong base of vocabulary, and potentially be a decent way into, or have completed N2. If you’re not sure what level you’re at, have a go at reading one of the free samples available online for any of the books that we have read in this level in the past.

It is the goal of this club to act as an inclusive community where we all help each other make strides in being able to understand native content. It feels good when all of your hard study has paid off! Let’s share that joy together and support each other’s successes.

Please note - As this is a book club, there may be a need for you to purchase the books. I will do my best to provide several links to several different websites where they can be legally purchased, but it will be your individual responsibility to procure them. If you would like free material to be used, feel free to suggest something! :blush:

Making Suggestions

Before making suggestions, please refer to our official rules for book clubs. Answers to many general questions can be found there. After reading the rules, please feel free to make suggestions by posting here! (Nothing NSFW :face_with_monocle:)

Reading Log

Past books.

スーパーカブ, Volume 1, (Novel)

CURRENT BOOK -
Book club thread - 君の名は。 discussion (Intermediate)
(Starting Monday, 12th of August, 2024)
Purchase link - 君の名は。 (Novel)

Future books.

Nobody here yet. We may occasionally choose to have a reservation system for books where we book something in for reading at a set date in the future. In those cases, the titles and dates set for reading will be recorded here.

Suggestions

This is a list of books that we have not read yet, but that have been suggested. They will likely all appear in future polls.

Polls

All active polls will be displayed here. Please vote for the books you would like to read!

To keep the voting process manageable, no further suggestions will be accepted after a poll has been started. If you would like to suggest something else while a poll is currently running, please be aware that it will need to wait for the next round of voting.

Previous polls.

March, 2024. Winner - スーパーカブ, Volume 1, (Novel)

!!! CURRENT POLL !!! (See voting instructions below)

  • 恐怖コレクター 巻ノ一 顔のない子供, Volume 1 (Novel)
  • 女のいない男たち (Novel)
  • 小説 秒速5センチメートル (Novel)
  • 君の名は。 (Novel)
  • はてしない物語 上 (Novel)
  • 宇宙の声 星新一ジュブナイル・セレクション (Novel)
  • 西の魔女が死んだ (Novel)
  • 新装版 魔女の宅急便, Volume 1 (Novel)
  • キッチン (Novel)
  • 時をかける少女 (Novel)
  • また、同じ夢を見ていた (Novel)
  • やがて君になる, Volume 1 (Manga)
  • 日本へようこそエルフさん。 Volume 1 (Novel)
  • かがみの孤城 (Novel)

0 voters

You are able to vote for more than one book if you have more than one preference, or if there are other titles that you would not mind reading! Any options that receive less than 20% of votes will be removed from future polls. Poll will run until EoD, Sunday the 4th of August.

We hope that you all enjoy participating in the book club with us! Feel free to ask any questions here that you cannot find the answers to anywhere else. Whenever you find yourself reading this, I hope that you are having a great day :partying_face:.

18 Likes
Book Club Rules + News
#2

Feel free to participate in more than one level if any of you would like to! I will be participating in all levels.

5 Likes
#3

In for this one as well!

2 Likes
#4

I’m in

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#5

My suggestion, Super Cub part 1. (Light novel)

This is a relatively approachable light novel series about a high-school girl that buys a super cub style motorbike in order to increase her personal freedom. It has furigana on some difficult words, but for the most part the grammar itself and the style of speech that the characters use never gets too tricky.

Link to Super Cub 1 where you can read a sample in your browser.

Due to the lack of furigana on a lot of the vocabulary, I would say that this is a higher level of intermediate that may require some lookups if you’re not confident in your kanji.

9 Likes
#6

If I may, not a manga but a light novel. 恐怖コレクター is a book I amcurrently reading.
It has full furigana and has a relatively low level of grammar requirement. It also has a lot of onomatopoeia, if you need practice with those.

2 Likes
#7

I’m in!

That said, I prefer a book that doesn’t have full furigana (at least not for this level. For Beginner reading level that’s fine, of course), so Asher’s book recommendation would be my first choice thus far.

2 Likes
#8

I will participate too so that I can respond to some questions! :raising_hand_woman: :books: :sparkles:

8 Likes
#9

I’ll give this a shot, too.

3 Likes
#10

I’m in!

I’ve just begun Murakami’s ‘女のいない男たち’, I’ve started with ‘ドライブ・マイ・カー’. I go along reasonably well (no problems with the grammar), though I have to look up words quite often.

My question is, to what level would you assign this book?

3 Likes
#11

Just took a look. It’s on the quite high end of intermediate. Very little use of furigana on vocab and has an interesting writing style. The vocab itself and grammar doesn’t seem all too difficult though. For some reason the foreword at the beginning of the book is written in much more difficult Japanese than the stories themselves haha.

女のいない男たち

4 Likes
#12

I’m in here too!

3 Likes
#13

I’m in! For suggestions, it’s hard picking just one… but I think Shinkai’s 5 Centimeters Per Second (novel not the manga) would be a good option because its short and only a 5/10 on jp.db

5 Likes
#14

I presume you mean this one?

秒速５センチメートル

The difficulty looks good for intermediate! It appears to have furigana on the trickier words, and doesn’t use too much difficult grammar.

2 Likes
#15

I was made aware of the fact the other day the the novel versions of 君の名は、天気の子、and すずめの戸締り all have editions with full furigana under 角川’s 角川つばさ文庫 imprint for children. Since these are all popular movies and, I would suspect, even the non-full furigana versions are relatively simple they might make a good pick. People could then choose between the furigana version or the non-furigana version. I believe the editions are otherwise identical - apparently more “adult” scenes etc are edited to be appropriate for children but I should imagine that would have very little or no impact on the stories I mentioned. I think 鹿の王 (is that the title? I forget) also has an edition under this imprint but I believe it is a harder book, or at leas the fantasy elements make it harder, so I am reticent to suggest it for this level. Anyway, something to ponder.

The obvious popular choices for “real literature” at this level are コンビニ人間、星の子、and キッチン. I’ve read them all and due to their length and limited vocabulary they are all good choices for around N2, in my opinion.

4 Likes
#16

Thank you very much, this really helps me assess in which level I might be. :bowing_man:t2:

Indeed, the foreword! :sweat_smile:

2 Likes
#17

Definitely in (⁠｢⁠`⁠･⁠ω⁠･⁠)⁠｢

3 Likes
#18

I’m in!!

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#19

That’s the one!

2 Likes
#20

I’m interested too!

A few books on my reading list that might be appropriate

西の魔女が死んだ、
星の子、
三人屋、
おいしいごはんが食べられますように

2 Likes