Thought I’d go ahead and make a placeholder thread for this as I have some time.
Why this book?
痴人の愛 | L43 is a thirst trap romance novel by famed author 谷崎 潤一郎, published in 大正１３ (1925).
Is it hard?
Probably, it’s currently graded at 43 and Japanese has gone through a lot of language reforms/changes since it was written. That said, there is a Youtube reading available HERE
Note that the recording doesn’t match the section breaks in terms of numbers, so you will need to refer to the text (free online HERE) in order to keep pace with the club.
Can anyone join?
More the merrier!
When does it start?
Planning to kick off October 30th, 2023
What’s the format like?
Since I expect this will be small (we had 5 potential joiners in my earlier poll) I think I’ll keep it to a single thread unless there is interest in having weekly threads
What’s the schedule?
By vote, this is the schedule we’re following. However, feel free to join at any time and read at the pace you’re able. Just please be mindful to put any potential spoilers behind spoiler tags
With another bazillion book clubs at the same time, and taking the difficulty into account, I can’t promise I’ll be able to keep up with the schedule, but I’ll do my best.
These covers are all hilariously campy. I can’t believe that so far the manga version is the most elegant one…
I thought I’d look up more covers. There’s some "serious"ones:
darn, those covers are tempting. It looks like it might be hilarious to read. Will follow this thread for some fun.
Also: Aozora books are usually available for free on amazon and other ebook stores in their respective format, if you are not aware.
(and it’s part of Japanese audible, apparently… darn… I might just have to bite the bullet and join you all on the smutty side of natively. )
Edit:
It actually fits well into my book club schedule, so I will give it a try. Not sure I'll be able to keep up with the pace, but I'll try.
I’m happy to adjust the speed down. My initial thought was trying to keep it within the year (for a neat wrap up) but we can add some weeks. I’ll make a new proposed schedule later today and put it to a vote.
Ok, here is the schedule I’d initially proposed. We’ll call it the Fast Schedule:
Week
Up to
Approximate pages
Week 1
up to section 4
38 pages
Week 2
up to section 7
39 pages
Week 3
up to section 9
32 pages
Week 4
up to section 11
53 pages
Week 5
up to section 14
47 pages
Week 6
up to section 17
53 pages
Week 7
up to section 21
43 pages
Week 8
up to section 25
45 pages
Week 9
through end
51 pages
Here is the new one I wrote, trying to keep each week under 40 pages, we’ll call it the Relaxed Schedule
Week
Up to
Approximate pages
Week 1
up to section 3
28 pages
Week 2
up to section 5
20 pages
Week 3
up to section 7
28 pages
Week 4
up to section 9
32 pages
Week 5
up to section 10
23 pages
Week 6
up to section 11
28 pages
Week 7
up to section 13
30 pages
Week 8
up to section 15
32 pages
Week 9
up to section 17
36 pages
Week 10
up to section 20
30 pages
Week 11
up to section 23
38 pages
Week 12
up to section 25
21 pages
Week 13
up to section 27
29 pages
Week 14
through end of book
29 pages
I’ll note section 22 is ~17 pages so it doesn’t matter which way I swing that, one week is gonna be long and 17 is short for a week by itself. I’ll link this post from the OP shortly for ease of finding, but I’ll put the poll here:
I was just checking my copy for difficulty and to see if it had endnotes, and I noticed that in the second sentence of the book Tanizaki tells us readers 恐らくは読者諸君に取っても、きっと何かの参考資料となるに違いない I hope everyone is ready to take notes…
(On the subject of endnotes, my copy does have them, but only 9 through the entire book, mostly brief ones about who famous-in-the-1920s people mentioned in the text were. I’ll probably summarise them as we go past them.)
I updated the OP to show that we’re following the relaxed schedule. Up to (but not including) section 3 for the first week, I’m digging in tonight!
edit: I was already familiar with the name due to exposure in English, but it’s probably not a household name anymore so to maybe save people some Googling, this is Mary Pickford, the original ‘It Girl’ of the silent film era who is referenced a time or two
文化住宅: type of Japanese house incorporating Western elements that was made popular in the 1920s and 1930s
I’ll also note that if you’re using the youtube read along linked in the OP it does skip a few sentences - nothing you wouldn’t be unable to figure out from context I think, but just be aware of it.
This week’s section ends just about 13 minutes into the second 朗読.
Literal grooming. It’s somehow hilarious that it was not an issue at the time of writing (at least the というくらい makes it extremely casual from the point of view of the narrator)
HERE 
)
It doesn’t sound particularly foreign…
neither is posting
