Hi all!
An idea was recently floated in the Book collector rehab (actually reading what you own accountability thread) of a casual book club for 魔女の宅急便.
Would anyone be interesting in joining if this is something I set up? Tentatively thinking of starting Dec 28th/29th, as people tend to have some quiet time/holidays around this time of year.
I’ve definitely been wanting to read that one, trying to decide whether I’d be ready to attempt it though
I bought the first book but haven’t read it yet. I’m actually interested in this book club idea, I’m always late on the WaniKani ones 
I’m interested but I’ve never participated in a Japanese book club before so I was wondering how these things are usually done. Do people just read a book at the same time like a normal book club or is there more to it?
Also, how many pages would you want to read per week?
It has about 250 pages (at least my edition does). 5 pages a week would take about a year, but as work gets busy again I’m not sure I’d be able to read much faster than that.
I’m also kind of bad at adhering to reading schedules though if I think a book is interesting…
I’ll join if there’s a club going for it.
I think these clubs work best when there are both people happy to ask questions and people happy to answer questions.
My personal favorites have actually been manga clubs. I don’t usually read manga on my own, but in a club setting there are always questions about some unclear handwriting, or what some speech bubbles refer to.
Books clubs where nobody has any questions tend to kind of fizzle out mid way.
I think 12-20 weeks would be good.
I had initially wondered at doing one chapter a week. There’s 11 chapters, so 11 weeks in total.
However, if that seems like too much I’d be happy to do a slower pace to make it more accessible to people. My only concern is if we stretch it out over an entire year that people will have a hard time sustaining interest.
Maybe a rough goal of 10 pages a week? We would finish in about 25 weeks at that pace.
I think it’s fine if people want to read ahead or fall behind too, so long as we establish that people can still ask questions and chat about things regardless of where we “officially” are in the book.
Thoughts?
I haven’t had a proper look at the book yet, but on learn natively the level is a fair bit above what I’ve been reading (level 25 iirc while I have been reading level 17-20 stuff) so this would definitely be a bit fast for me I think, but I’m going to have a look at the book when I get back home and see how I feel about it. I think 25 weeks is a good amount of time though tbh, but also perhaps cutting it down to 20 like @casual said is also good.
Luckily this site has a poll option!
Please vote below for what you would prefer 
0 voters
I’m interested, so long as I can find an affordable copy of the book 
Hiya! Count me in 
I voted for the slower pace simply because it’s easier to weave that into daily life in case there’s no free time (or no energy or motivation - things happen 
), but i’d be up to trying to keep up with a faster pace too if that idea ends up being popular~
Im with the bunny, If I can find a pace to read it ill try for a page or two a day. Im gonna start farming vocab really hard so itll be a nice light novel to try to read with my manga
I just started reading かがみ孤城.
I looked it up on the book store website, they don’t have it, but they might be able to order it for me if I put in a request.
Mirror castle has lots of kanji with furigana, Kiki’s writes lots of stuff in hiragana without the kanji.
I’m interested in joining in as well I voted for 20-25, as although I could do more pages a week sometimes, I feel that 10-13 is more sustainable, and it sounds like that’s the way a lot of people here are leaning too.
Also interested ! It’s probably a bit above my current level but I’ve been meaning to switch my vocabulary learning method to a more “actual usage” approach, it’s a good way to start.
It seems like 10 pages a week is going to be the winner, but I’ll leave the poll open a little longer
I forgot to take a look at the book yesterday FML but I have been reading fushigi dagashiya (level 23 on LN) and that takes me a good minute to get through a page of, while kikis is level 25, so I think yeah 10 pages a week is good for me. I’m relatively free now but I know there will be busy times in the year where I will probably barely get through a page a week…
I’ve yet to read a proper book, I may join!
I don’t have the book to check, but are the chapters of relatively similar length?
In that case, I would suggest reading half a chapter per week (or a chapter every 2 weeks).
Mainly to avoid a situation where you get 1 page into a chapter or leave a few lines of text hanging before a chapter finishes.
Each chapter is around 20-30 pages, so I think a pace of 10 pages a week (which seems to be winning in the polls) should correspond nicely to half or one third of a chapter.
I also imagine people may have different editions of the book, so I think when I set up the proper book club thread that I’ll make it clear that the weekly goal is just a suggestion. If we end up in a situation where there are just a few lines of text, I think people are more than welcome to finish it, but also not if they prefer!
My goal with starting this book club is less to ensure that people finish their book (although that is my personal goal), but to create a space where people can discuss the book, ask questions, and hopefully learn a little bit of Japanese along the way, so I don’t plan on policing anyone’s pace too closely.
That’s good – so if I get hold of the book, I’ll try and read through the book on that basis, completing a chapter every 2 weeks, or every 3 weeks if it’s a long one.
Looks like I gotta go Book hunting at a Book-off. The EXACT opposite of the prior thread is about
But we will finish this one so it’s okay! : D