Bunpro Book Club (Various levels)

Bunpro
#1

Hi all!

Today I am just gauging the interest in a Bunpro book club. This would be something that could run at various levels, with a forum section dedicated to discussion on the specific book every 3 days or so.

Each group (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) could vote on a book that the group would read, and then all participants could choose a specific number of pages that they want to read per day/number of days.

I was thinking that if there were 3 main groups, it would allow me to keep up with everyone (and any other staff that may also be interested), and once every 3 days respond to more in depth questions about the vocab or grammar that is being used in each book. For example:

Monday - Discussion on beginner book.
Tuesday - Discussion on intermediate book.
Wednesday - Discussion on advanced book.
Thursday - Discussion on beginner book.
Friday - Discussion on intermediate book.
Saturday - Discussion on advanced book.
Sunday - Day off perhaps?

Naturally, all participants could chat amongst each other every day within their respective threads, but either myself or another staff member coming in every few days would also allow for extra discussion, and possibly lead to some fun chats and any unanswered questions getting handled.

There wouldn’t really be a strong lock on the genre chosen, so long as it is something that is level appropriate and a majority of people vote for, heck it can even be a scientific paper for the higher levels if that’s what everyone votes for! After finishing one book, the group could choose to vote for another, or vote to continue with the same series.

I am hoping that if there is interest in this, it will act as kind of a communal ‘practice’ of using the skills you’ve aquired on Bunpro in an encouraging way. It may even lead to improvements on Bunpro itself as we can tackle difficult sentences/passages together and discuss whether we should add new information to grammar descriptions etc. depending on what we come across.

I have added a simple poll purely for seeing how much interest there is, but please feel free to comment with your own ideas of how it should be run if we go ahead with it!

  • Yes, I am interested in participating in a book club.
  • No, I am not interested in participating in a book club.
  • I need more information before I know whether I am interested.

0 voters

12 Likes
#2

are we including manga as books?

6 Likes
#3

You are welcome to suggest manga, and if that’s what people vote for, then there’s no problem with that at all! :blush:

3 Likes
#4

I’d be quite interested. I just picked up a new book 恐怖コレクター and wouldn’t mind talking about it.

1 Like
#5

Yes please :sparkles::sparkles::sparkles::sparkles::sparkles: I absolutely love this idea

3 Likes
#6

Out of interest what level of ability would those three levels roughly track with? Could you give an example of books or JLPT levels or something as guidance? For example, is the beginner level for N4ish people who have never glanced at a Japanese book in their life or is it for N2 people who have read one or two full novels but are not confident readers by any stretch etc? I don’t really have an opinion on how things should be, just asking out of interest. I guess leaning towards the more forgiving side is better as it allows more people to join in/encourages people to start reading?

Looking forward to joining!

3 Likes
#7

Beginner would possibly be something like よつばと for manga, childrens stories that are quite short and don’t use technical words, or slice of life books that have lots of furigana and don’t use words that one wouldn’t see on a day to day basis. Late N5 to mid N4.

Intermediate would be a pretty broad category where the books have a mix of furigana/no furigana and discuss several different topics. However, we would try to choose something that is limited on philosophical language or heavy use of colloquial terms that would be hard to derive the meaning of on first exposure. N3 to N2.

Advanced would be a nothing barred category that assumes the reader is at N1 or above. Choosing this category would be challenging to someone studying N1, but with the assumption that they are serious about getting better. Self study/lookup of new words would be expected.

Pretty much everything suggested would be checked before being allowed into the option pool though, so that things that are outside of the target level don’t get chosen by mistake. Perhaps the person that suggests something could include a quick sentence or two about why they think it is level appropriate, and the group can use that in their decision making process.

For example someone may suggest one of the manga of a Studio Ghibli movie at the beginner level and have the reasoning that the story is already well known by many people, so there would be less lookups required even if there are some ticky words. Alternatively a scientific paper may be suggested for advanced that actually has pretty easy grammar, but uses alot of discipline specific vocabulary, thus making disambiguating sentences more difficult.

8 Likes
#8

Would suggesting eroge/visual novels count also? There’s tons of level variation there too + easy text extraction and yomichan

1 Like
#9

That’s a tricky one. I would assume most people would want to keep costs down, and games are usually a lot more expensive than books. It also would exclude a lot of people that don’t have whatever console etc the game was on.

As for eroge, I would say probably that the advanced category would be the only one that the genre might be considered, as there would be a bit less onus on us (Bunpro) as a platform to choose suitable topics. I really don’t mind what people want to read at the more difficult end of the spectrum when they are completely self sufficient, but in the lower levels when people are still getting used to the language I think it would possibly be something that presents too many challenges. I don’t wanna tell people what to and what not too read though, and am also of the opinion that all vocabulary is good vocabulary, so it would be something left to the voters.

3 Likes
#10

Speaking of costs, would it be possible to include a stipulation that once every x books, something freely available online is chosen? That way nobody is unable to participate due to book cost.

8 Likes
#11

I’m all for free or as cheap as possible resources being used whenever possible so the highest amount of people can participate. As for 100% using something free every x number of books, it would depend on the way people voted. Participants would be allowed to suggest whatever they want, free or paid, and the winning vote would be chosen.

5 Likes
#12

I think its ok to read them for free and then if you enjoyed it pay for them later though I guess that depends on people’s thoughts on the matter

mod edit: removed link to illegal content

3 Likes
#13

Oh, that’s awesome! Thanks for sharing that link. What others do you have? This would make the book reading MUCH more accessible to everyone.

1 Like
#14

Library Genesis is always useful. Not sure about the extend of their JP archives but all I have read so far I have taken from there.

1 Like
#15

Just so it is clear that is a pirating website. I believe the majority of the books listed there are LNs so if you want to pirate regular books then you need to do it elsewhere. I don’t pirate myself really so can’t help with that more but I think due to how strict Japan is on piracy finding pirated versions of most Japanese books is not as easy as it is for English where seemingly everything ever published is a Google search away. If you’re interested in pirating then the moe way discord server is pretty hot on that kind of thing, I am told.

My personal preference is to buy the digital version from amazon Japan, which is usually fairly cheap(500-1000 yen), and then convert it to an epub file type using Calibre and read with whatever reader you like. I’ve seen pirated copies of some novels full of scan errors and if you’re a beginner you wouldn’t even know they’re errors.

As far as the book club goes, I believe once these things are underway people normally can be pointed in the direction of how to legally acquire the book from various places or the epub file is shared with them by other users or they can go and pirate it if that’s their preference (which naturally I’d point out is illegal and so probably shouldn’t be promoted through an official Bunpro book club…).

5 Likes
#16

You are correct, of course.

I was merely thinking of making things easier for the sake of the Book Club and not about the legal and ethical ramifications of it. That’s my bad. I’d rather support the artists, especially if the books end up being as cheap as you mentioned. My apologies :pray:.

2 Likes
#17

Yeaaaaaaaaaah no direct links to pirated works please & thank you :joy:

4 Likes
#18

You got it; from now on, indirect links only!

5 Likes
#19

In WK there are four levels of book clubs and I haven’t seen one instance where the book selection/reading came from a free source! On the other hand, I have seen comments about LOTS of free reading material out there on the web, if you want to practice reading.

Hmmmm, isn’t that what the book clubs do…practice reading? As long as I have to buy a book, I don’t see myself joining a book club. I haven’t started ‘reading’ yet, but when I do, if I can find suitable material to read for free, then that’s what I’ll do.

1 Like
#20

even Duolingo uses Bunpro huh?

5 Likes