Bunpro Book club (Intermediate)

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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can use an older version of kindle for windows as well

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You can actually purchase a program called Epuber Ultimate to get around that quite easily. At least that’s what I’ve been doing as I don’t own a Kindle.

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When will the next book club start after voting ends? I’m unsure if I’ll participate in the next club, since I’m already reading 2 novels. Depending on when the club starts I may be almost finished with one of them though.

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if it’s still important for anybody here: I buy digital books on Amazon JP and connected my account with my iPad, where I installed the kindle app (no need for an actual kindle). I am usually not using a VPN, though there has been one purchase where I had to use a VPN. After a while, Amazon found out that my credit card wasn’t issued in Japan and therefore I cannot use it as a payment method anymore. At the moment, I’m using a gift card that a japanese friend of mine (digitally) bought for me. It was a bit of a hassle and there might be easier ways, but for me, it’s working at the moment. However, I only use the integrated dictionary (which is a japanese-japanese dictionary).

And if the next poll is over and the book interests me, I’d like to participate. :slight_smile:

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When I checked yesterday the winner for the next book was また、同じ夢を見ていた.
Now we have a tie with 君の名は and the poll is still open …

君の名は is sadly one of the books with the seemingly scanned pages with tiny (for my eyes at least) fonts on Bookwalker.

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Seems like 君の名は is a little bit ahead now. Apologies for the slightly late closing. Smashed with a few other tasks in the last few days :sweat_smile:. Have you seen whether it is the same 角川文庫 version on Bookwalker?

The trial version of this seems to be very readable. Does your device not allow click to zoom?

There are two versions of the book on Bookwalker with different layouts. One is the same as the Amazon Kindle version that you linked. Neither was looking great …
But I’ve just noticed that the preview reader is actually different from the one that opens when you’re logged in and have bought the book. (This seems to depend on the book.)

The preview reader for this book just shows the pages as “scanned images”, as if it were a manga. You can only zoom the whole page, but that makes the font become blurry, and you can’t select text.

After buying the book, I am able to change the font size and also highlight text, which is necessary to use the Yomitan popup dictionary in this reader on Mac/PC.

So now I am looking forward to reading along with all of you :slight_smile:

(Just one chapter of スーパーカブ left …)

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