Home thread for 7️⃣ 七回死んだ男 💀

That also seems to be supported by the chapter titles :joy:

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Not sure about whether I’ll be joining this one yet. I think it was part of kindle unlimited just a short while ago (same as ハサミ男), but sadly it isn’t anymore. I’m trying not to buy too many books at the moment… But borrowed doesn’t count, obviously! :joy:

Since I’d be reading the ebook anyway, I’ll decide a bit spontaneously when it’s time to start reading.

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Week 1 is open!

I realized just now I should have tried to make the schedule work for 7 weeks instead of 8. What a miss.

Also, I’m going to traveling for work soon and will not have my personal laptop with me during the next two thread opens. No personal stuff allowed on the work machine and book club threads would be terrible to post on mobile. So, the following threads are here:

We’re still keeping the schedule, no worries!

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Week 4 is open!

Here is a picture of a man in a stylish ちゃんちゃんこ
image

edit: man my schedule is so messed up. I wasn’t supposed to open this thread til tomorrow :person_facepalming:

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Can you really call it stylish if you aren’t pairing it with a sweatshirt, though?

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Week 5 is open! Just one chapter this week, a little breather after our longest read in week 4!

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Week 3 was the longest, wasn’t it? Though week 4 was no slouch either…

Sorry for the delay! Week 6 is open!

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I actually finished the book. I had to. It was either powering through or DNFing…

I think some people will probably really enjoy this book. I can see the appeal, but for me it was just not particularly interesting or satisfying. And it didn’t help that I found it quite difficult at times (my gradings pushed the rating up to 42 :rofl:.) There was definitely some white-noising going on. :see_no_evil:
I think I would have enjoyed it much more, if it had been shorter… like… half as long as it is. Or even a novella. :thinking:

I am starting to think that maybe Japanese mysteries are just not for me. :face_holding_back_tears:

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There is quite a variety of mysteries. I wouldn’t write off the whole genre yet, but perhaps don’t feel obligated to read the club picks :sweat_smile:

I suspect mine will drag it down. The highest I’ve read is 41 and this is definitely easier than Meiji era essays :joy:

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That’s good. It made me grade it against 夜は短し歩けよ乙女 (L42) and I felt the struggle reading that was very similar for me, so that’s what I graded it, but 42 seems a tad high. :see_no_evil:

I know myself. I will continue to pick them up, hoping to find something I like. :face_holding_back_tears: tbf, I think 告白 could work for me. It seems more like the mysteries I enjoy in English. And maybe I should read OUT at some point. Really liked that in English. :thinking: both have female authors :thinking:

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I too would love to reread Out in Japanese, but there’s no ebook available :slightly_frowning_face:
However, we do have another book by Natsuo Kirino nominated in the mystery club that might be worth a look.

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Yeah, no audiobooks of her works either. :smiling_face_with_tear:

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Week 7 is open!

Sorry for the delay on this one - I usually post in the evening before (ie, Sunday night) because my time zone is pretty far behind the majority of club members but I fell asleep :sweat_smile:

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I also broke the cycle and finished early. Maybe I’ll write more in the Week 8 thread, but to distill my thoughts down as succinctly as I can, I think the biggest weakness is the fact that the main problem/mystery is already resolved by the denouement and the denouement doesn’t actually resolve/change anything. Also so many of the characters are awful and the way their relationships are treated is so weird.

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I won’t read your spoiler til after I finish (I feel obligated to keep the schedule but I think I’m the last one standing on that :joy: ) but it does appear you pulled the difficulty down to 36. I suspect mine might further pull it down. Curious to see where it settles.

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I did. It’s definitely ‘real’ Japanese but I didn’t find it overly complex and it didn’t seem to use a bunch of specialized terminology. In fact, I found it a bit verbose/redundant–you don’t need to spend pages upon pages upon pages explaining how you’re the only one who experiences time loops, and then every single time something you learned in a previous loop comes up explain how you remember it but the other person doesn’t because only you can remember prior loops, and how if there’s a question you want to ask about something in a prior loop you can’t ask because the other person doesn’t have any memories of that loop because you’re the only person who remembers that prior loop, etc etc etc. I GET IT.

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:rofl:
I basically said this about this week’s reading over on the WK forums. It’s painfully repetitive. I’m dragging myself through it. And yeah, it doesn’t really have much for fancy terminology. Aside from a few random words (like ちゃんちゃんこ) I really didn’t look up much and the grammar didn’t have anything unusual…except for the dialogue which was painful. Not so much in a ‘difficult’ way as it was ‘very very ineloquent’ way :sweat_smile:

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I’m with you! Kind of; I’m about a week behind.

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Final week is here. If you’ve been dying withholding spoiler-y thoughts, here is your thread.

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