Bunpro Book club (Intermediate)

Your suggestion is now in the Advanced book club group. If it somehow gets voted at some point, join in and have a go! :smiley:

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Yay thank you! I’m doing solidly with スーパーカブ (with lots of vocab lookup) so maybe will do Advanced next round to challenge self!!

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I’ve been grinding through it as well and it’s so cool I understand the gist of things even if I am looking up at least one word every sentence. I can tell reading more types of things is going to be something I need to spend a lot of time doing moving forward.

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Same! It’s both forcing me to look up so many words and also slow down in a way I really need when studying, and wanting to know what’s going to happen next is great motivation?

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Very interesting to see book clubs pop up!

I might join in the future if the book catches my interest.

There’s nothing worse than trying to read something in a difficult language you are learning if you are not interested/invested in the text :sweat_smile:

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Super Cub thread discussion now live. From now, please move all Super Cub related discussion here -

スーパーカブ discussion (Intermediate) April 2024

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Hi!

I just wanted to put in a new suggestion before I forget: 「時をかける少女」 by 筒井 康隆. I guess this might be in the upper intermediate level.

In fact, I would recommend any book by Tsutsui.

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I’d like to suggest また、同じ夢を見ていた as a novel, although I’m not sure whether it should be beginner or intermediate? I’d be inclined to say the latter because it’s a novel + isn’t full furigana, but Iunno.

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Hello, hello! I think I’d like to try out moving up to the intermediate club for the second iteration, so I’m gonna throw in a recommendation hehe.

やがて君になる

Wasn’t totally sure how to gauge difficulty level, so I just tried to pick something that looked similarly ranked on learnnatively to スーパカーブ (and also that I would enjoy reading lol).

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Oh if we are going to bring up nominations again(even though intermediate is still quite a ways off ending ), I discovered a manga I really enjoy has a light novel:

日本へようこそエルフさん or in English, Welcome to Japan Elf-san

Here is the natively link: https://learnnatively.com/book/22a440393c/

Considering it switches from a fantasy world to modern Japan, it might be a good starting point for more fantasy focused reading. <3

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I think you may have been looking at the manga, instead of the novel.
The novel is a lot more difficult than the manga. While you’re pick is still intermediate, it may be more suited to the beginner club? My perception of difficulty may be skewing now that I’m getting better at reading though. :woman_shrugging:

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Ah yes, I 100% got the two mixed up haha. I think you bring up a point that is interesting and difficult to calibrate, because while I think you’re right - this as a recommendation is probably on the easier side for those who are already participating in the intermediate club, I’d worry if an option like this got picked for the beginner club it might be prohibitively difficult?

Admittedly, it seems like the preference for recommendations in this thread has tended towards light novels.

I’m curious to hear Asher (and whoever else)'s opinions on how the difficulty of each level has been.

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The book clerk said these green books are a good level for first light novel. 角川つばさ文庫(文芸・小説、実用)の作品一覧|電子書籍無料試し読みならBOOK☆WALKER
has anyone read one?

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Next week is the last week of スーパーカブ. Is it time to start talking about our next book club pick?

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Should definitely start the vote for the next book! I’ll get it set up either today or tomorrow with all of the current candidates. :bowing_man:

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Another candidate:

かがみの孤城

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New poll started at the top of this thread! Get your votes in before next Sunday! :bowing_man: :bowing_man:

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Physical Japanese books mostly have tiny print, making them difficult to read (for me) and you can’t look up words easily.

Therefore, I prefer to read digital copies. However, it seems like Amazon does not allow the purchase of Kindle books with non-Japanese payment methods and requires the use of a VPN if you are not in Japan (is this still correct?).

So far, I have been reading books using the Bookwalker app on my iPad and in a browser. This also allows the use of Yomitan dictionaries, although you need to select the word to open it in a popup window first, which takes some time.

While browsing the candidate books, I noticed that not all books have the same options in the Bookwalker web app. Only six of the candidate books allow font size selection. The others appear to be scanned images of books with rather small font sizes and do not support the use of Yomitan without some kind of OCR tool.

So, I voted for the six books that allow font size and text selection in the Bookwalker web reader.

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Do you have an Amazon account in another store? You can’t use the same email address in two different stores. I live in Norway and I have one account in the US store using one email address, and one account in the JP store with another email address. I also have two physical Kindles since there’s no convenient way to switch between two accounts. You have to unregister one account, register the other and re-download all the books.

For me, having two accounts and two physical Kindles is the best of both worlds. One thing I like about my Japanese Kindle is that I have installed the JMDICT dictionary so that I have Japanese-English available any time.

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I own some physical copies of Japanese books. It can be harder to read, especially if you are unfamiliar with the characters and can’t make them out. The bigger problem is the cost of shipping in my opinion.

For digital copies of books, I buy them on the Amazon Kindle store and then export them to Ttsu Reader which allows me to use Yomitan. However, this requires owning a physical Kindle to get around Amazon DRM.

I’m happy to start another book with the club! Hopefully, the chosen book will be something other than また、同じ夢を見ていた, so I can read something new. If また、同じ夢を見ていた is selected I can make a reading schedule like I did with スーパーカブ, but I wouldn’t follow along with the club. I’d personally put my number one choice as かがみの孤城. The story’s premise seems interesting and I think reading it as a club would help push me through its intimidating length.

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