Would anyone be interested in reading 薬屋のひとりごと 3 | L38 along with me sometime in the next few months? I’d love to start sooner, but work’s going to have me tied up for a while…
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You mean you’re gonna make me start another novel?! (I keep starting new ones lately 
)
That is to say yes, and I can start whenever you’re ready
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Notes to self: potential informal/spin-off clubs for 2026. (All of these are ones I know I or one or two other people have mentioned being interested in. Feel free to mark if you too are interested, no worries about commitments or timelines right now, I’m mostly typing this out to keep it all in mind.)
I might be interested in reading with a group:- 伯爵と妖精 2
- 穏やか貴族の休暇のすすめ。1
- No. 6 #1
- 妖魔と下僕の契約条件 2
- 薬屋のひとりごと 1
- Something else I’ve forgotten about
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I’ll probably be done with 薬屋のひとりごと 1 before the end of the year, but I’d join the discussion
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How about book clubs or a home thread for the other Kyoto no Holmes volumes? I finished 真贋事件簿-京都寺町三条のホームズ 2 | L31 couple of weeks ago, but noticed there was a book club for the first volume. (and @暁のルナ sometimes seems interested in this as well from a Kansai-ben perspective; though most probably is standard Japanese)
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No reason why we couldn’t, assuming there’s interest!
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My next month or two is booked up with reading, but I’d be interested if we did it in a few months or did a read at your own pace club.
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Hey, quick question: would anyone be interested in starting a small GOAT mook-club?
GOAT is a Japanese “mook” (half magazine, half book). It releases once per season (4 times a year) and each issue centers on a single theme, and features contemporary Japanese writers, both up-and-coming authors and more established names (often people who are Akutagawa Prize candidates / nominees)
Content-wise, it’s usually a mix of original short stories, essays, literary criticism, interviews, and sometimes excerpts or early pieces tied to soon-to-be-released novels. It’s very much “what’s going on in Japanese literature right now” rather than classics.
The idea would be low-pressure: pick one issue, read it over a few weeks, and then talk about what stood out, what worked or didn’t, themes, writing styles, etc.
Also, practical note:
GOAT is available on Kindle for 500円, so it’s pretty accessible and no physical copy is required. If you live in Japan and want a physical copy, it should be also 500円.
If this sounds interesting, reply here (and if enough people are in), we can decide which issue to start with and how to organize it.
Would you join?
- Sounds cool, I’m in
- I’ll pass
- I’d join if it was a different mook (suggestions are welcomed)
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I might potentially be interested; depends on the length of each article, how much free time I end up having this year, etc. I don’t want to commit now, but if a club does form I will definitely keep my eyes on it.
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I answered “I’m in” but I should clarify that I’m not at a level where this is practical for me. But it sounds so cool and someday I would love to read it!
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No pressure! Even if this does become a thing, it would be quite slow paced. Last one came out at the beginning of December and the next issue won’t be out until spring.
As for the length of the content, to give an example, the first short story is by Junko Takase (free to read with the sample version) and it is about 30 kindle pages, while an essay is about 4 pages. The interviews are also very short 3-4 pages and skippable if you aren’t interested (in this issue there is one with Kamishiraishi Mone, voice actress of the female protagonist of Your Name)
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No worries, I appreciate the enthusiasm! Also, by the looks of it, if you can handle something around a level 30-ish, I think most of the short stories should be right at that level. Best wishes for your journey learning Japanese, fighting! 
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I read the first volume of the Akira manga and subsequently purchased the rest of the volumes. They are physically huge. A book club will help to kick my ass into gear and actually read them.
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You had me at Junko Takase!
Thanks for sharing this mook, this looks really cool! I am soon between books after finishing a few light novels, so the free sample will be perfect as a palate cleanser. (So if you are reading that one too, we can certainly talk about that in some thread. I found おいしいごはんが食べられますように very doable, so I hope the short story will be in the same ballpark?) I will maybe buy the whole december issue to see if this is doable for me to follow more closely, because like I said, that sounds so cool! Essays and literary criticism might be too difficult for me to enjoy, but I can’t tell until I checked the mook out.
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At this point I’m maybe interested from a mystery standpoint. I have enough Kansai-ben media though
I’ve got a lot of my plate rn tho, so I wouldn’t get to it anytime soon
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That looks like a lot of fun, thanks for posting! I’d probably start with a pretty light touch and just sample a few sections and stories. A club is a great idea to help each other draw attention to authors and stories that are worth exploring.
I had no idea a mook was even a thing.
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I’ve just finished my previous book and I’ll probably go through 「ふたえ」、 the short story by Junko Takase today! From what I can tell it seems to be pretty much on pair difficulty wise, but that can be subjective.
Also, apologies, I checked again on Amazon jp and I’ might have misspoken yesterday. 
Seems like their free sample doesn’t include the whole 30 pages of the short story, but it should be a good chunk for a quick read in-between other books.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about it as someone familiar with the author though! That was exactly why I thought a Mook club would be interesting, exchanging perspective from first time readers and long time readers, perhaps finding a new author to follow 
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It’s basically a literature magazine, I learned about them because Murakami often mentions the classic prestigious ones in his novels, I pictured them as super academic and hard to read (fun fact: Norwegian Wood was originally a short story published in a Mook).
Lately I kept seeing this Goat in various Japanese Book-tubers backgrounds and when I looked into it, it turned out to be a new approach to it to revitalize the genre (less academic authority vibes, more made by and for younger people)
Also, since you seem pretty active in the Book Club section, do you think I can already go ahead and create it? I don’t have much experience, but I was thinking we could maybe have a dedicated club and people who are interested can come in and share their thoughts about any of the content without necessarily having to follow a schedule
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Yeah, I’d say go ahead! And then alert people here when you have it up.
Just an idea (but please do as you see fit!) If you want to pattern it on a bit of a similar club, on Wanikani there is a club for the manga magazine Harta. I can imagine this Mook club might get a similar vibe where some people make guides, some people just read sections, some people read the whole thing. And what happens is even though people read at different speeds (or even years) it’s pretty fun and there is more activity than you’d expect. Anyway, I don’t mean the posts need to be as high effort as on the Harta thread, but the super useful feature is the wiki post (#2) where club members can reference their notes and everyone can find them easily.
You can be as creative as you like! It’s always fun to see what people do
In the first post of this thread there is a link to an index thread where you can add the club for parole to find
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