Book club suggestions

I started a read of Dracula in English a year ago… Reckon it’s time I get back to that then. Are there page numbers or something like that to tell people which part of the book to read, if they’re not in the same order?

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No, not to my knowledge, and page numbers probably wouldn’t be all that useful anyway, given the number of editions. The guy who runs DD will email out the day’s entry, and you can generally search in the book itself by date. The entries aren’t too out of order, so it doesn’t normally take too much effort to find a day’s entry.

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If you don’t want to be in charge of it, I’d be happy to run it as well :slight_smile: This year I plan to be successful and I think it’ll help me prepare for N2 lol

I think Natively’s a better forum too since it can be a multilingual read instead of just Japanese

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This is something I started tracking when I tried last year. I think this year I’ll be able to better commit to it. If you buy this version

that is.

While I am willing to track which chapter is in which version of JoJo, I’m not doing other versions for Dracula lol. Gotta draw a line somewhere

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If someone is gonna join @eefara for Kusuriya 2 whenever that happens. Vol 2 is 30% off and 25% back in points in Amazon, so it’s a nice discount.

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Home thread is up for those interested!

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Thanks for the offer - I’ll actually be reading the English version haha. I’ll just have to do as @eefara suggested and search by date within the book.

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Ah, in that case, if you subscribe with your email to Dracula Daily, then you don’t even need to buy the book. The day’s portion will be automatically sent to you.

I used it to help double check my understanding of the Japanese

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They all sound very interesting (my wishlist has taken a hit), but the only one I already own is:

Which doesn’t surprise me. It sounds like a very me book. :eyes:

Soseki would be an option but I low-key want to read the trilogy in order, even though you don’t have to as the are not connected by story. :sweat_smile:

(moved this here, since a buddy read is just a book club of 2 people. :rofl:)

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We could read this together! :slightly_smiling_face: I’m already reading another very long book currently (銀河鉄道の父 | L30??) and it’s pretty slow going. Maybe when I’m done with that we could do 自転しながら公転する?? Just so I’m not reading two 500 page books at once. :sob:

Same really, but I only own それから… I guess I could just buy the other two, but that defeats the purpose of trying to reduce my TBR. :sweat_smile:

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I am fairly certain that they are possibly, likely on aozora. :eyes: so unless you insist on physically owning them, ebook should be freely available.

Gladly. :slight_smile: I am in no hurry, so whenever works well for you. I have 2 bookclubs starting on April 1st, so it’s not like I am going to be bored anytime soon. :rofl:

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Soon ™

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I may be delayed but at least I found it 2 weeks prior to start
this looks awesomeeee
not sure I’ll read in Japanese (too big a list over there, but I might do the English reading or maybe I’ll try looking it up in other languages)
I was meaning to read Dracula for years now, this is a good opportunity

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Excellent! Honestly it doesn’t matter to me if people read some/all of it in English; it’s going to be super informal, and Dracula’s the perfect book to jump around and read different sections in different languages anyway.

I’ll likely set up the home thread next week; there’s not going to be much setup on my end, and there’s no need for an explicit schedule, so it’ll be a pretty quick home thread.

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Since you’ve been discussing Dracula here, I thought it might be of interest that the Japanese translation is 50% off on Bookwalker till May 9:

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Hey,

I have a seed of an idea for a book club (or maybe just a couple of informal readings), partly inspired by this post:

Rough idea - Korean books in Japanese crossover

Thinking behind this
I’ve really enjoyed the few modern Korean books I’ve read in English.

It feels like there’s a tonne more Korean books available in Japanese translations (Korean → Japanese is probably a lot smoother than Korean → English).

I also feel like some of the themes and space that people like 村田 沙耶香 or 今村 夏子 write in is also a big trend in Korea.

E.g. The Vegetarian by Han Kang, or Familiar Things by Hwang Sok-Yong, totally fit in the same vibe as a lot of the books in the profoundly weird book club.

I’ve seen some Japanese/Korean shared books posts, but they seem to mostly have been either classic English novels (e.g. Harry Potter), or Japanese books. I would be nice to have some books where Korean readers could read in the original, and Japanese readers could read the translation.

Caveats
Korean books is quite a broad category, maybe some people who would love to read Korean sci-fi, won’t be fussed about Korean mystery, and vice versa.

Selfish caveat, atm my max reading level is probably somewhere around L31-32 in Natively, so possibly keeping it to the slightly easier side might be nice.

Let me know what you think! (Open to thoughts/suggestions too!)

  • Yes, interested
  • Maybe
  • No
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As a multilingual bookclub, then I would love to participate by reading the Korean version. The L30 is definitely too hard for me right now though, so it’ll all depend on the book pick. Either way, if this is a recurring bookclub, I may join for a later edition instead, once my level is higher.

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I’d be interested, just depending on what books end up being read. It would be an interesting experience to be the odd one out language-wise in a club for once, I think.

It’s a shame inter-language book linking isn’t a thing yet on natively. I.e. you can’t go to (say) Harry Potter and be linked to all the other foreign language editions currently on the site. Finding some relatively easy way to figure out if there’s a JP translation of a book would be the first step in the meantime, I feel like.

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If there is a Japanese translation of a Korean book that fits the Profoundly Weird BC themes I’d be 100% in regardless of level :eyes:

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소리를 삼킨 소년 | L25 might be a good fit, but I can’t tell whether it’s been translated or not. Probably 殺人者の記憶法 (新しい韓国の文学 17) | L30?? (살인자의 기억법 | L29??) as well, although that’s veering into some pretty dark themes again.

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