🥳 Children's Book Club 📚 Next: 人狼サバイバル

and the new intermediate manga club

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She is listed as author of two manga, though: 蜜蜂と遠雷 | L24??

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Informal book clubs are one-time-only single book/series book clubs not part of a bigger structured book club.

Structured book clubs: Long-running book clubs for reading different books around a common difficulty or theme, like this Children’s Book Club. We vote on the book, draw up a schedule, read the book, vote for the next book and so on. Usually there’s only a single book read at a time, and little time passes between books.

Informal book clubs: Only for reading a single book or book series, made at any time by any user who wants to. Usually less organized (i.e. no schedule as @eefara mentioned) and in a single thread because less people are expected to participate, but all of that is up to the people participating. It’s informal; there are no fixed rules how it works. At the end, there’s no “voting for the next book” - the book club was only for this single book/series after all.

So, what does this mean here?

Structured book clubs usually don’t work too well when there’s too little participation. It doesn’t feel like there’s much of a point to make a schedule and weekly threads if each thread is expected to get one or two posts at most. For that reason it seems to be a good idea to put this structured book club “Children’s Book Club” on hiatus until there are more interested people.

But if anybody really wants to read e.g. 霧のむこうのふしぎな町 right now (or in a month, or two) and wants some company they can just make an informal book club for it at any time! Maybe people will show up to read together. Maybe everyone will drop out. Either way, there isn’t much effort wasted.

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Ah, good catch! So you have an arguable case for manga in any club. Just depends on what the readers want to do.

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Cast you delay vote here!

Let’s see what the final vote looks like tomorrow; 霧のむこうのふしぎな町 has picked up a few people, looks like, so the potential for an informal offshoot might be high. I wish the audiobook was on something other than Audible JP; I’d be tempted to do an audio-only listen through…

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Okay, seeing as how we had about just as many votes in the delay poll as in the next book poll, and no one voted not to delay, the vote for the Children’s Club’s next book will be delayed. Delayed until when, you ask? I flip the question back to you, dear Reader:

When should the vote for the next book be held?
  • August 17
  • August 31
  • September 21
  • October 5
  • October 19
  • Some later date
0 voters

In the meantime:

Are you interested in participating in an informal club for 霧のむこうのふしぎな町?
  • Yes
  • No
  • Maybe (depending on some factor I will comment on)
0 voters
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I have a ton of books I’m reading and would want to finish one of those first, but I should be able to start in a few weeks.

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It will depend on my mood and how many other book clubs I am in. I won’t make any promises about joining のむこうのふしぎな町

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I have no idea what would be a good choice here. Ideally it should be held when there’s enough interest again, but I feel like it’s hard to say what exactly the reason is for the current low interest. After all, we can only get the opinion of people who are interested enough in the club to still be here… and those are probably also mostly the people who voted anyway.

Is everybody just busy currently? Are there just too many book clubs up for offer? Do other book clubs have the same problem? Did members initially interested in the club lose interest in the club or the forum, and we didn’t get any new members for some reason?

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I figure whatever option comes out on top, we’ll have a quick poll then to gauge everyone’s level of interest and decide from there.

Yeah, typically you’ll have a bunch of initially excited people, most of whom you generally list during your first pick. The goal is to get lucky and get a solid base of core readers; the mystery club is a good example there. It’s generally pretty chill in terms of excitement, but it can usually count on persistent participation.

As for no new members in general… Hard to tell Natively-wise. Seems like I haven’t seen as many new forum members recently, but could be they’re all just shy. :stuck_out_tongue:

One other big barrier to entry is reading level; we have a ton of readers here in general, but the level skews low on average, which makes sense. We just need to build up the current base of users for the next wave of intermediate/advanced readers.

Both, probably. I personally am behind on two clubs, F&B and 薬屋, due to a work trip that’s sucking all the life out of me. :upside_down_face: 11+ hours daily gets old fast…

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Yeah, that sounds better than just immediately voting for the next book on the date in question. I actually wanted to suggest that, but then I held back wondering if I’m making it too complicated, so I’m glad you also came up with that idea.

No surprise here, considering that mysteries are inheritely fun to discuss, ponder and speculate about. Maybe we got to find some mystery children’s books :laughing:

Yeah. And I wonder if the members that are here skew too much towards the upper levels and don’t have much interested in this book club for that reason. I don’t know if Natively generally doesn’t have as many low-level readers or if low-level readers don’t pick up the forums here. I feel like I keep seeing the same faces in the usual threads.

I’m not sure I understand this paragraph, especially the second sentence.

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From very unscientific observations of what people are logging in the feed, there seem to be a lot of beginners (graded readers + sub level 20 books), but the forums seem to skew a lot more advanced (with a ton of level 30+ readers).

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I have a feeling that a lot of the beginners who used to frequent the book clubs are now tied up in offshoot clubs? Frieren started over at Wanikani and here we have a ふしぎ駄菓子屋 銭天堂 offshoot.

Also, it’s summer (which for me means spending more time indoors because I’m super sensitive to heat, but I digress :stuck_out_tongue: ) and people are probably on holiday, doing things outside and having less time for Japanese.

Personally, I am not really planning on joining this club at the moment, because I like to read a bit on my own at the moment and I have been to a couple of low-participation book clubs recently and I did not really enjoy them, so I want to see if the participation is a bit higher before committing again.

As for getting new members, the forums link is quite hidden compared to before (replaced by the lists link). Maybe people don’t know about the forum? The book clubs themselves are linked on the book pages, but the voting has already finished by then.

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Oh, just that in order to encourage participation in higher-level clubs, we’d need to wait for our current low-level members to improve enough to be comfortable joining the higher-level clubs. Which doesn’t necessarily apply here, granted…

That’s kind of where I’m at. I feel like I’d need a strong recommendation to read one of the picks. Although, I’ve been wanting to improve my listening, so if the pick has an audiobook available on a platform I can access, I would be very tempted to join in audio-only.

Shitsurei’s observations sound right to me. Feels like the Natively population as a whole follows that general bell curve of being substantially more beginner-heavy, but regular forumites feel more 50/50 in terms of beginner/low-intermediate and upper-intermediate/advanced.

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Posting a link to the current active polls since they’re up a few posts.

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I’m going to go ahead and call the results of our delay vote: the next vote for the Children’s Club will be held October 19 and we will re-vote on the books!

(Could someone post on the 癒し系 thread for me? I need to post the delay vote there too, but I’m at the post limit.)

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Would it be okay if I made, like, 3 more nominations?

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We’ve got about a month to go until we have everyone check in. We’re at 14 nominations now, so I’d say nominate 2, and give it a week or so before nominating the last one.

That’s a good note for everyone reading this post: while the club may not be actively reading anything right now, feel free to nominate things! We’ve got a limit of 20 nominations, so there are six slots left.

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Title: 帰命寺横丁の夏 / 帰命寺横丁の夏 | L26
Available formats: physical / ebook / full furigana

Summary - Japanese

全米図書館協会バチェルダー賞、大賞受賞!!
アメリカで翻訳された児童書の中で、傑出した作品に贈られるバチェルダー賞の大賞を、2022年1月に受賞。

死んだ人が生き返る!?
帰命寺横丁からあらわれた幽霊の女の子。気がつけばクラスの一員だった!!
祈れば生き返ることができる「帰命寺様」からくりひろげられる、柏葉幸子の大ファンタジー!

帰命寺横町には不思議なご本尊「帰命寺様」が、代々まつられていた。「帰命寺様」に祈ると、死者がよみがえるという。
ある夜、トイレに起きたカズは、庭を横切る白い影を見る。それは、よみがえった少女・あかりの影だった。
二人の不思議な夏休みがはじまる!

From a review:
帰命寺はお参りすると死んだ人が帰ってこられるふしぎなお寺。小学5年生のカズは、帰命寺のなぞや昔の町や自分の家のことをいろいろ調べていきます。主人公の少年とよみがえった同級生の女の子がどうなっていくのか気になり、本の中で別の物語が展開されていたりするので、読み応えのある本だと思いました。

Summary - English

National Library Association Bachelder Award, Grand Prize Winner!
The Bachelder Award Grand Prize for Outstanding Children’s Book Translated in the U.S. was awarded in January 2022.

A dead person comes back to life!
A ghost girl appears from Kimeiji Yokocho. She finds herself a member of the class!
Sachiko Kashiwaba’s great fantasy unfolds from “Kimeiji-sama” who can come back to life if she prays!

In the town of Kumeiji Yokomachi, the mysterious “Kumeiji-sama,” the main deity of the temple, has been worshipped for generations. It is said that if you pray to “Kimeiji-sama,” the dead will come back to life.
One night, Kazu wakes up to go to the bathroom and sees a white shadow crossing the garden. It was the shadow of a revived girl, Akari.
Their mysterious summer vacation begins!

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

From a review:
Kimei-ji Temple is a mysterious temple where dead people can come back to life when they visit. Kazu, a fifth grader, investigates the mysteries of the temple, the old town, and his own home. I was curious about what would happen to the main character, a boy, and his revived classmate, a girl, and thought the book was worth reading because there are other stories unfolding in the book.

Content Warnings

Death?

Reason(s) for nominating: This has been in my tsundoku pile for a long time now! Other things:

  • written by the author of 霧の向こうのふしぎな町
  • English translation won an award for “Outstanding Children’s Book”
  • spooky-season appropriate!
  • gorgeous cover art
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Title: 5分後に意外な結末 ex エメラルドに輝く風景 | L25
Available formats: physical / ebook / partial furigana

Summary - Japanese

累計140万部を突破の超人気シリーズの続編。恐怖、笑い、感動、奇妙な味、ミステリーなど、全30編を収める短編集。読書好き、読書嫌いもページをめくる手が止まらない。全編、意外な結末を保証! 朝読にも最適。

Summary - English

Sequel to the extremely popular series that has sold over 1.4 million copies. This collection of 30 short stories includes horror, laughter, excitement, strange tastes, mystery, and more. Whether you love to read or hate to read, you won’t be able to stop turning the pages. All stories are guaranteed to have a surprising ending! Perfect for morning reading.

Reason(s) for nominating: This is another long-term resident of my tsundoku pile! Also:

  • short stories, so easy to jump in and out as necessary
  • aimed at middle schoolers, so furigana on more difficult/higher level kanji
  • fun pen and ink illustrations scattered throughout
  • if we really like the stories, there’s a whole series with equally enticing covers
  • apparently ranked Number One in the middle grade category of 朝の読書推進協議会調べ of 平成29年 (2017). (I’m not really certain how meaningful that is, but that’s what it says on the obi.)
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