Not sure I should be voting, since I’m determined to finish it in the next few days anyway, so I don’t think I should be influencing people who want to keep to the club’s pace, whatever it turns out to be. I’ll remove my vote. 
2 Likes
So, 66 pages from tomorrow on? Won’t be possible for me. The week after that, maybe.
3 Likes
If we want a 5 week remaining schedule we could do
Week 9 as now, to p275 - 33 pgs
Week 10 to end of chapter 3, p327 - 53 pgs
Week 11 to p372 – 45 pgs
Week 12 to p420 (English sentence containing word scarf) - 52 pgs
Week 13 to end, p474 - 54 pgs
which has some better breakpoints and is more even than option 3.
The week 12 breakpoint word is a minor spoiler for chapter 3, I suspect.
We could as a variant move the week 9 endpoint forward to p286, giving 43/44/45/52/54 pages.
4 Likes
If we speed it up, we’ll need to do a new mystery club vote soon as well, right?
3 Likes
I’m about to step away from the computer for a bit but will put up a new poll with that option before (or with) the new weekly thread tonight. Because it seems a bit mixed in terms of what we want for now the coming week will remain as is.
Yep, same as always. If I remember correctly we take a week break between ending a club and voting, voting takes a week, then we give 2 weeks between the vote end and the new club starting.
5 Likes
As mentioned above, this poll relates to weeks after this one.
I would like to change to the following schedule…
- Double remaining chapters
- Double except for the last 2 weeks
- pm215’s proposal, see here
- Hold up, I want no change to the schedule
0
voters
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So are we going to shift to the new schedule starting with this next week? The poll seems fairly clearly in favour of that.
4 Likes
Yep, I’d say that trend is clear. I’ll have time later this evening to update the calendar.
4 Likes
I updated the calendar in the OP, but wasn’t sure where this was as I don’t have a papercopy. I approximated it by taking this listed page divided by the total you gave for your copy and found what I think was the intended stopping point a couple pages over. If you could verify though I’d appreciate it!
I unfortunately don’t think there’s a way to not spoil those words a bit as you need to know them to stop and there can be more than one English phrase per section 
3 Likes
I didn’t give the stopping phrase for p372 because it was the same as a pre-existing endpoint under the old schedule
You could put the words in a spoiler marker – by the time you get to that part of the book they won’t be spoilery, it’s only when you’re still reading the earlier parts of the book that you might prefer not to see them yet.
4 Likes
Added.
Also, a quick reminder that anyone can modify the home post to their liking - it is a wiki. If there is something about formatting/etc you aren’t liking, this club is a group effort, not something I own, so help yourself.
Also I’m going to continue posting the weekly threads but I’ve decided to join a few other club members in speed reading the rest of the book. I usually avoid breaking the schedule, but with this particular book I think it’s the better choice for me.
7 Likes
Alrighty, I have finished the book.
MAJOR SPOILERS THROUGH THE END; DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED
I think I need a bit more time to process everything; I’m pretty mixed on my feelings on the book. On one hand, the twists were fun. I like the idea of the main character being some psychotic murderer, and I like Sherlock Holmes figures, so I appreciated having one who operated under the cover of a spiritual medium. I was reeaaally hoping the ending would somehow work out that he would join her and they would solve crime through committing crime (?) (hey, I’ve seen the idea successfully played with, it can work) or something, but alas.
I can appreciate the author’s attempt at setup throughout the book; issues with the main character especially (his fixation on girls, his complete and total lack of personality, etc.) I’m glad were intentional and not just poor writing. I do wish Hisui had slipped up a bit more or something, though, just to get the reader thinking.
I think ultimately what’s stopping me from recommending this as a good book is that, somehow, It was just plain boring for 90%. My god, even during the ending I couldn’t believe we were going to have to read through each case in excruciating detail as Hisui walked through each and every step as Kougetsu stood there and said “omg no way, how could you know that???” (like a true Watson, I suppose). The individual cases were not nearly interesting enough to take as much time as they did, and how they were solved, with Hisui leaving one hint and Kougetsu haing to logic his way through that were not particularly engaging, even if I can respect the idea behind it. Ultimately, this book did not need to be 500 pages long; the foreshadowing did not, in my opinion, justify it.
Perhaps I would feel different if I weren’t listening to the audiobook; the spoken word is always slower than the read. Perhaps I would feel different if I were reading this in English and could zoom through over a day or two; it’s hard to say. I can definitely see why for some people it was an awesome book, and I’m glad they had a good time; I hope the sequels/next books are just as good for them.
And even after saying all that, it’s still not my least favorite mystery club book we’ve read so far, haha. Like I said, my feelings on this were mixed. Honestly, it might be a fun read to go back to when I have time, the memories have faded a bit, and I’ve increased my JP reading speed.
Edit: Oh, I also appreciated how the cover is a reference to Hisui at the end. I already thought it was a pretty cover, and it’s nice to have some extra context around it.
Anyway, those were my immediate thoughts; I’m looking forward to hearing everyone else’s! One thing I’ve been thinking about that I hope doesn’t discourage anyone is how negative the group can end up being; especially near the end, when the number of people who’ve managed to keep up gets real small, I feel like there’s a tendency to echo chamber negative thoughts. Everyone’s welcome to their own opinion, of course, but I hope seeing all the dissatisfied club members doesn’t dissuade anyone from reading/enjoying the book.
6 Likes
Yes, I hated that. I wanted to just rush ahead, while Hisui was nearly breaking the fourth wall by saying “this is the challenge to the reader; if you just go ahead without thinking about it you are just lazy”. Insult to injury.
My thought, exactly. In fact, I would have liked it better for her to be truly a medium (and the narrator just poorly written) rather than whatever that was. It’s fun to add extra rules to the concept of mystery books. But just as a distraction for a regular mystery book… come on, that way too much to go through for that level of reward. It felt too little, too late. I think it might have worked with one case less? Hard to say.
I zoomed through it in a few days (can’t remember exactly) and I still felt that way. Would not recommend.
I think I heard from someone (maybe cat?) that booktubers were unanimously praising it, which is weird to me. I can see someone liking it, but it doesn’t feel like everyone would…
6 Likes
It definitely feels like a “mass appeal” book to me. Nothing too offensive, maybe a little bit of danger with the interludes, cute girl, big plot twist you have to read RIGHT NOW, etc. people who don’t read as a main hobby or most content creators are not nearly as picky as people who do, haha.
4 Likes
off topic
Were you there/in the convo when I mentioned my friend’s theory on why content creators seem to love All The Books? She said that basically like, because booktubers are generally showing their faces, they don’t want to risk getting hate from either a) fans of the book or b) people who work at the place that published the book. Identity being tied into things you like (idols, authors, etc) is stronger in Japan than in the West (where it is also definitely present) – but also because it’s still pretty normal for people to work for the same company for years and years it’s common for your company to become part of your identity. So she was like, if you trash talk a book their company published, the employees could get mad at you / cause you problems.
This honestly tracks with the more intense negative opinions I’ve seen about books online being totally anonymous.
I guess if I want to rely on Booktubers I need to focus on finding ones who have the same taste as me based on books they specifically highlight as being favorites rather than a list of like ‘here’s all the 本屋大賞 winners and why they’re great!’
7 Likes
More off-topic
Very interesting, I was not present for that conversation. Makes a lot of sense to me; if the product you’re selling is yourself, you may not necessarily want to isolate yourself from potential corners of your market at least too easily.
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Time to establish a Vbooktuber. Then no one knows your face or who you actually are!
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There already are vbooktubers but I can’t stand the voices 
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