🕵️‍♀️ 推理小説読書会 📚 Mystery Novel Book Club 👮‍♂️ Preparing to read 赤ずきん、旅の途中で死体と出会う!

I might have already started with the apparent winner… the prologue probably makes sense after you finish the book… because right now, that feels like pointless 3000 (?) characters… :sweat_smile:

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I haven’t started reading what looks like will be the winner yet but I am reading ‘And then there were none’ in preparation (have seen various adaptations but never read it before). Have heard that it is heavily referenced in 十角館の殺人.

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Dang, might be fun to re-read myself; last I picked it up was years ago. And I love catching references when I read. :eyes:

Just a few days left to vote!

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I might go the school kid route and watch the movie… :rofl:

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Why would you go and put the idea in my head? :open_mouth: I’m having enough trouble keeping up with my current reading/listening/work/rest of life, without another book added to my schedule. But no, I had to go look at the first few pages, and now I may not resist reading to the end… We’ll see.

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Just borrowed the audiobook for And Then… from the library as I also haven’t read it since middle school :sweat_smile:

(and weirdly there was no ebook or paper copies)

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Hahaha! Sorry everyone for adding to the book pile! I will say that it’s a VERY breezy and fast read (so weird to read like half of it on my commute this morning when I’m so used to how long Japanese books take me :sweat_smile:)

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That’s like half the reason I’m going to re-read it, haha. Give myself that sense of quick read power :muscle: before we dig into a JP book, haha.

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I want to read “And Then There Were None” but only after reading 十角館の殺人. I think reading the original first would make me annoyed with the Japanese version if they copied a lot of story beats :sweat_smile:

I am excited to read 十角館の殺人 though! It’s been on my to read pile for over a year!

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I had forgotten it’s possible to read a book in two days! It had been a long while since I had read anything not in Japanese. I wonder when the day will come that reading in Japanese will be just as effortless. :sweat_smile:
So, finished “And then there were none”, and was reminded why I don’t love Agatha Christie (I know I’m in the minority, so don’t mind me). A fun enough read, but too clean and soulless for my taste. Murder as just a riddle, and one that’s so presented as to be nearly impossible to be solved by the reader. Characters that I care so little about, I had to constantly refer to the beginning to remember who was who for most of them. I do however very much enjoy the trope of people trapped in an isolated location, being bumped off one after another. I wonder how 十角館の殺人 will compare.

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You read a lot of harder / more literary books. If you start reading pulp trash that day may already be here :joy:

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I guess to be fair to Christie, I don’t think ATTWN is necessarily one of her strongest titles (my apologies to ATTWN fans!). At least, that’s been my impression from the selection of her work that I’ve read. Christie definitely does have her own style, though, can’t argue against that. I always wonder if I’m supposed to be able to guess who the murderer is; makes it fun on re-reads to try to piece together hints better to better get a sense of how substantial they are. :sweat_smile:

We need a pulp trash club, haha. Have it be a nice morale booster.

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I would definitely participate :joy:

@Naphthalene ever wanted to head a book club?

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I actually had a similar experience to be honest! Wasn’t super impressed. That said, I have seen various adaptations of it on tv over the years so it might be unfair of me to judge something where it’s all about the riddle of it all when I already knew the plot. But yeah, I think I expected more interesting writing and characters.

That said, means that I am less likely to judge 十角館の殺人 poorly in relation to it!

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I feel like Flesh & Blood is probably at least approaching pulp trash :sweat_smile: (this is not me saying it’s bad, love me some pulp trash)

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It might be closer than the usual WK book club fair to pulp, but afaik it doesn’t quite reach that level, haha. It’s no highbrow literature, but so far I’m not getting super generic isekai vibes from it, which would be my closest definition of pulp at this point in the Japanese reading journey. We need to find some real bodice rippers or something; I once saw a book series described as “beer and pretzels horror”, and that sounds just right for a potential pulp club.

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Hmm while I do like to read pulp trash myself, there are too many ways that can go wrong. As @eefara said:

There’s more than that, but that’s definitely a big part of it. It’s not hard to imagine something like KonoSuba winning out of popularity alone.
I guess I could put a rule that fan service is NG, but overall I feel it’s not optimal for a book club :thinking:

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I was mostly just generalizing for the sake of space more than anything; defining pulp gets oddly specific as far as I can tell.

Finished my own quick re-read of And Then There Were None. :+1:

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Ah, by the way, I was not specifically replying to you, that was a literal quote for the sake of explaining what I meant by “many ways [such a club] can go wrong” :sweat_smile:
Re-reading my post, that was pretty unclear, so I tried to edit it a bit.
(My point was that, while I do like some pulp trash, there are too many things that would fit that descriptor and, statistically, something I would hate to read would get picked)

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I’m closing voting - 十角館の殺人 | L34 has won! :tada: I’m very excited to dive in :smiley:
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Just to reiterate the schedule of events (this is also in the main post):
Today (July 29th*): Voting opens on reading cadence the chosen book will be read at. This week also serves to give time for people order the book if they’re planning to read paper copies.
August 8: First week of book club! :sparkles:

I’m also removing the nominations テスカトリポカ and 大鞠家殺人事件 as they did not receive any votes. :hocho:

Edit: CADENCE VOTING :sparkles:

*While I live in an North American timezone, I will try to open weekly threads in the evening the day before my time so that people waking up on the continents ahead of me timewise don’t have to feel impatient :sweat_smile: It’s currently July 28th for me still

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