💧 Home Thread for 水車館の殺人 🩸 | Starting Nov 11

Welcome to the home thread for 水車館の殺人, as part of the Mystery Novel Book Club.

水車館の殺人

:jp: 水車館の殺人 | L34

Club Schedule

Week Chapter(s) (MT) Page Range (MT) Total # Pages (cat) Total # Pages
Week 1 プロローグ & 第一章 7-37 27 24
Week 2 第二章 - 第四章 38-90 53 42
Week 3 第五章 - 第七章 91-148 58 45
Week 4 第八章 & 第九章 149-205 57 46
Week 5 第十章 206-253 48 39
Week 6 第十一章 & 第十二章 254-317 64 51
Week 7 第十三章 & インターローグ 318-354 37 29
Week 8 第十四章 355-420 66 50
Will you be reading along when the club starts on November 11?
  • Yes
  • No
  • I’ll be reading, but at my own pace
0 voters
What type of media will you be consuming the book as?
  • Physical
  • eBook
0 voters
3 Likes

Please let me know if you have better emoji suggestions for the title. I couldn’t find a waterwheel emoji. :cry:

Does anyone have the book already who can take a peek at the chapters? If not no worries, we’re still a bit far out.

1 Like

I have the physical copy already (believe it or not I only vote for books I already own and I’ve yet to not use up all 5 votes) so I can get this for you after work

Edit: maybe water drop and blood drop together?

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Ah, that’s pretty cute; I like it!

1 Like

These are the pages for my copy (paperback, 1992 printing)
プロローグ 5-16 (11pgs)
第一章 17-30 (13pgs)
第二章 31-47 (16pgs)
第三章 48-61 (13pgs)
第四章 62-75 (13pgs)
第五章 76-91 (15pgs)
第六章 92-110 (18pgs)
第七章 111-123(12pgs)
第八章 124-145 (21pgs)
第九章 146-171(25pgs)
第十章 172-211(39pgs)
第十一章 212-241(29pgs)
第十二章 242-264 (22pgs)
第十三章 265-283 (18pgs)
インターローグ 284-295 (11pgs)
第十四章 296-346 (50pgs)

Extra content:
あとがき 347-350
解説 351-357

Given we start slow and ramp up to (up to) 60 pages/week this book has excellent chapter pacing :joy: Also I’ll note that the prologue has 2 pages dedicated to diagrams.

3 Likes

Thank you, cat! So if we start slow and ramp up, a possible schedule could look like this:

Week Chapter Page Range Total # of pages
Week 1 プロローグ & 第一章 5-30 24
Week 2 第二章 & 第三章 31-61 29
Week 3 第四章 & 第五章 62-91 28
Week 4 第六章 - 第八章 92-145 41
Week 5 第九章 & 第十章 146-211 64
Week 6 第十一章 & 第十二章 212-264 51
Week 7 第十三章 & インターローグ 265-295 29
Week 8 第十四章 296-346 50

How does that look? The page counts look a little iffy to me, but I don’t know if there’s going to be a good way to shift them around without really going over 60 pages per week consistently. The beginning could be changed around as well potentially, add in chapter 2 to the first week to make it 40 pages. Just depends on our starting speed, I guess.

  • That looks fine
  • I have a different arrangement at a similar pace in mind
  • I think we should read slower
0 voters
1 Like

I think I’d prefer not to slow down so much close to the end, and rather bite the bullet on week 6 with ~70 pages, like so:
:a:

Week Chapters Page range Total # of pages
Week 1 プロローグ & 第一章 5-30 24
Week 2 第二章 & 第三章 31-61 29
Week 3 第四章 & 第五章 62-91 28
Week 4 第六章 - 第八章 92-145 41
Week 5 第九章 & 第十章 146-211 64
Week 6 第十一章 + 第十二章+第十三章 212-283 71
Week 7 インターローグ+第十四章 284-346 62

I also worked out this schedule but I don’t like it as much and it only reduces the largest week by 2 pages:
:b:

Week Chapters Page range Total # of pages
Week 1 プロローグ & 第一章 5-30 24
Week 2 第二章 & 第三章 31-61 29
Week 3 第四章 & 第五章 + 第六章 62-110 48
Week 4 第七章 +第八章+第九章 111-171 60
Week 5 第十章+第十一章 172-241 69
Week 6 第十二章+第十三章 242-283 41
Week 7 インターローグ+第十四章 284-346 62

EDIT: BONUS SCHEDULE
I looked at the problem chapter and saw it had a natural looking stopping point, so how about
Option C

Week Chapters Page range Total # of pages
Week 1 プロローグ & 第一章 5-30 24
Week 2 第二章 & 第三章 31-61 29
Week 3 第四章 & 第五章 62-91 28
Week 4 第六章 - 第八章 92-145 41
Week 5 第九章 & 第十章 146-211 64
Week 6 第十一章 + 第十二章+第十三章 (up to line 塔の部屋) 212-273 61
Week 7 第十三章+インターローグ+第十四章 273-346 73
2 Likes

Hmmm. I think I’m leaning towards option C right now?

1 Like

@cat What does the text density look like in your edition?
I’ve got the 新装改訂版 (paperback, 2022) and the page numbers are quite different. No clue how much of that is due to text changes, or if it’s entirely caused by formatting differences.
For me it looks like this:

Chapter Page range # of pages
プロローグ 7 - 16 10
第一章 21 - 37 17
第二章 38 - 57 20
第三章 58 - 73 16
第四章 74 - 90 17
第五章 91 - 109 19
第六章 110 - 132 23
第七章 133 - 148 16
第八章 149 - 174 26
第九章 175 - 205 31
第十章 206 - 253 48
第十一章 254 - 290 37
第十二章 291 - 317 27
第十三章 318 - 340 23
インターローグ 341 - 354 14
第十四章 355 - 420 66

So that would mean over 100 pages in the last week with schedule C.

3 Likes

So far as I can tell the font is normal :thinking: I compared it to 3 other same-size paperbacks I have at hand and the font looks about the same between all of them. I took a pic but wasn’t sure what to use for scale, so added lip balm :sweat_smile:

Might be formatting? 16 extra pages in the last chapter is wild though :skull:

3 Likes

It’s 43 characters to a column. The random bunko size light novel I have to hand is 38 per column and 16 columns a page. That page in your book has 13 columns even with the big chunk used for the chapter heading, so it’s definitely more than 16 on a normal page. 38 * 16 is 608, 43 * 18 is 774. If you look at the ratio that’s about the right number to turn a 50 page chapter into a 66 page chapter.

TLDR I suspect your book has physically larger pages with correspondingly more characters per page.

3 Likes

I’m not sure how this all works given it’s a standard looking bunko in line up with the other books at hand on my table, but it sounds like I have an outlier edition :sweat_smile:

@eefara do you want to take a stab at making a schedule from the page count @MintTea gave? I likely won’t have time to this weekend

3 Likes

I may not this weekend either, but I’ll take a look Monday if I can’t. :+1:

2 Likes

Okay, a little more schedule fiddling before I abandon all of you and go play FFXIV.

…In theory. I worked through possible two or three possible schedules, but they all end up with weird super-heavy and super-light weeks; it feels like we might need some inter-chapter breakpoints if we want a smooth pages/week breakdown.

Possible schedule with @MintTea’s page numbers:

Week Chapter(s) (MT) Page Range (MT) Total # Pages (cat) Total # Pages
Week 1 プロローグ & 第一章 7-37 27 24
Week 2 第二章 - 第四章 38-90 53 42
Week 3 第五章 - 第七章 91-148 58 45
Week 4 第八章 & 第九章 149-205 57 46
Week 5 第十章 206-253 48 39
Week 6 第十一章 & 第十二章 254-317 64 51
Week 7 第十三章 & インターローグ 318-354 37 29
Week 8 第十四章 355-420 66 50

There’s no real ramp-up, and try as I might I’m having trouble pairing week 7 with another chapter that doesn’t mess up some other week’s page count. I think 第十章 is the culprit; it’s slightly too big. If there’s a good break-point in there it’s possible we could re-jigger a better schedule… I tried fiddling with one, but early weeks weren’t happy with me.

We could just do lower page counts per week overall as well; I haven’t sat down to figure out what that would look like, but it might be easier to plan than dancing the line between 60 and 70+ pages.

3 Likes

I think we may just leave it at this. I don’t like slowing down right before the end, but the page cuts here are difficult :confused:

3 Likes

Just leaving a vote of “I like this”, actually, despite the shorter section near the end. If I see this right week 7 is Christmas week, yes? Personally I usually have barely any time to read around that time anyway, so a bit of a break of sorts is actually nice :laughing:
I mean, who knows if I’ll even manage to keep up until then, but I’m at least not complaining about the better chance :melting_face:

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Oh, that’s a good point! That’s nice the timing works out like that, then.

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For comparison, here’s the first page of the 新装改訂版 edition; it is indeed 38x16.

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I’ve posted our week 1 thread!

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Week 2 has been posted! We’re reading three chapters this week!

3 Likes