Personally, I want the book with the dino dragon thing on the front to win because I just remembered I bought a paperback of it already.
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I wouldn’t mind if that one won bc it has an audiobook and I could just listen to it instead of having to read 
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I’ve already bought that book, but I’m not sure If I’m already able to read it (Grammar). Are Genki 1 &2 enough to understand it?
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I would never say it’s impossible. I think the most important thing is picking books you’re excited about reading 
That being said, it will certainly be challenging. Most novels (this one included) have a considerable amount of N3 grammar. Genki I and II mostly covers N5-N4.
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Have you already decided how many pages per week you will read?
Usually this club reads between 15-20 pages per week. When we pick a book, we’ll vote on the schedule. Usually this club is happy to accomodate beginner readers, so feel free to vote on what pace might work for you when we pick a book.
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Have you read other books already? Or just finished Genki 2 and are freshly getting into reading native content?
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I’ve read 十分で読めるこわい話 with the absolute Beginner Book club. It took me 14 weeks for 180 Pages and it was exhausting. I was glad when it was over.
I don’t know how much Grammar of Genki 2 I already know because Ove learned with Japanese from Zero vol 1-3 before I read my First book. I’m now still going through Genki 1 Chapter 10. I didn’t already knew all Grammar of Genki 1 but more than half I think.
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Okay, then just to manage expectations: 鏡の孤城 is much, much harder. I think it’s even too hard for the Beginner Book Club (which is a rather small step up from the ABBC) and would be on the easier side in the Intermediate Book Club (which is a huge step up from the BBC).
I think it would be a very frustrating experience to read without reading a lot of other easier books beforehand.
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Then I will wait before I try to read it.
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I read 12 red and purple level non-manga books before I tried the first orange level book. At the time I already new N3 grammar, so that was not the problem. But such a book does not refrain from using more complicated grammar, that I had to look up on the fly to understand it.
The most frustrating thing was of course the number of look-ups. Over 12 per page at the start and over 7 per page at the end of the book! So it got considerably easier even while reading the book. But over 7 look-ups per page (on average) is still something that can feel exhausting after doing it for hundreds and hundreds of pages.
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What do you mean with These colors? The Level?
These are the colours LearnNatively uses for book levels, red books are L13-19, purple books are L20-26. Orange books are up to L33.
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How Long did it took you to read your first and Last Red/purple book? Was there a huge decrease in time between them?
My first red level non manga book took me two months, my last one at that starting time about three weeks. But start of this year I again read one of them which took me two days, though this was an eBook.
My first blue level non manga book took me five weeks. I cannot speak about my last one, as I am still reading them in between more difficult books to relax. Now these books take me from 4 days up to let‘s say 8 days, it varies by their number of pages and actual difficulty and by how engaged I am.
Btw: I am speaking almost exclusively of physical books. I read some manga and quite a lot of graded readers before that, though the latter not for learning, but for the good feeling of “wow, I can read this“.
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My First book was lvl 18 (Red) and it took me 3,5 months. 180 Pages.
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The next one will be faster, for sure. But it exhausting to read books at the edge of one’s abilities, therefore I currently read them in exchange with some easier stuff to not get burned out and on the other side also not stop completely. You could probably exchange more complicated books with easy manga, or graded readers.
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I want to read ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん. I read that it was the easiest book of the ABBC. Lvl 15 Red. I will do that after I’ve learned some more Grammar.
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seeing as we’ve dropped from a 7-way tie to a 4-way tie (gasp), I’ll make a plug for this book
which, although the lone reviewer says it’s boring, I saw on someone’s study log at WK (
) some great praise after they were 25% through
I ended up buying そして五人がいなくなる which I recognized from the Natively children’s book club nominations.
It turned out that this was the perfect solution! Sometimes you’ve just gotta find that read that’s exactly right for the moment
I’ve now breezed through about 25% of this book; I read some of it at work and then read a good chunk on my phone while I was on the plane. The book is extremely cute and I’m loving it. It’s a children’s mystery novel, but it’s more advanced than the 放課後ミステリクラブ book I read recently, so I don’t get as much of a ‘kiddie’ vibe from it. Ok, I maybe even liked it so much that I placed an order on mercari jp for a full set of the paperbacks.
My physical collection is growing, help.
bwahahah
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Ehm, ahh, um… it wasn’t me!! [runs away]
eagle eyed viewers might notice i’m missing book 5, going to have to find that one separately
The only reason I haven’t voted for it is because I’m like 75% done with book 1 now
I don’t think it’s boring, probably the lone reviewer just doesn’t enjoy children’s books and wouldn’t normally seek them out. This one is quite good and the writing style (although it was written in the 90s) reminds me of reading older books like Mary Poppins when I was a kid.
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