If I remember correctly this has been nominated for this club:
Currently at 305 yen with 183 coins back (until April 24)
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I’ll be posting the last week for 眼球堂の殺人 shortly. This means voting will open on the 12th of May. Voting will run for a week, through the 18th. The new club will start on the 9th of June.
The nomination list here - as a reminder nominations can happen at any time, but there are rules in the top post regarding re-nominating books that have been cut due to lack of votes. The nomination template is likewise in the top post. We can have up to 20 nominations.
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After thinking about it a lot, I’d like to nominate :
Book: 黒死館殺人事件 | L50??
Is there an ebook available?: yes ! And as it’s out of copyright, it’s free ! There’s also an ebook combined with another work of the same author, 完全犯罪 (paid version - 文豪ストレイドッグス tie-in edition)
Content warnings if known:
Obviously, murders. Also, the author is famous for creating the mad-scientist-murders genre
Why are you nominating this book:
I’m intrigued by the idea of mad scientist murders, or more precisely, by how it all started. I’m also hoping this will be better quality than some modern takes on the genre. This book is also regarded as a classic
It’s definitely a book I’d like to read, however, I realize that even though the review on Natively is intriguing, many people will be put off by the difficulty. But it could make a fun summer challenge ! I browsed through the text and the japanese doesn’t seem that bad…
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黒死館 is epic, but the L50 is absolutely deserved
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what makes it so hard?
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Constant detailed tangents on incredibly niche subjects (art, history, architecture, chemistry, astronomy, chemistry, music, mythology… astrology, esotericism, mysticism, etc. etc.) with niche vocabulary to boot, a good portion (if not most) of which are completely made up (so good luck trying to independently look up/figure out what they’re talking about)
(also I think the subgenre it started is the ‘pedantry (衒学趣味) mystery’. haven’t heard ‘mad scientist mystery’ before tbh)
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I’m still game. I love this kind of books, going on a tangent for pages and pages on specific subjects, sometimes only distantly related to the main plot; what you saying reminds me of Infinite Jest and Gravity’s Rainbow. But I fully understand this is not everybody’s cup of tea
That’s on the author’s Wikipedia page
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Okay I read the actual article linked there and the Mushitaro section is based entirely on 完全犯罪, not 黒死館. That being said, ドグラ・マグラ seems like it’d be exactly what you want (and it is also a ridiculous monster)
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It’s time to vote! As a reminder, all the nominations with levels and nominator notes can be found 
here 
. The next book club with start June 9th.
THE POLL
As usual you have up to 5 choices and the poll is set to auto-close in a week
- アンデッドガール・マーダーファルス 1
- 砂の家
- 変な家
- 名探偵は嘘をつかない
- 私が大好きな小説家を殺すまで
- 時空旅行者の砂時計
- 『クロック城』殺人事件
- 黒蜥蜴
- 悲嘆の門 (上)
- 湖底の光芒
- 満願
- 推しの殺人
- ヨモツイクサ
- 後鳥羽伝説殺人事件 「浅見光彦」シリーズ
- 黒死館殺人事件
0
voters
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I agree that ドグラマグラ might be a better choice, but I wouldn’t say there are too many tangents in that book. You have to learn about pseudo-scientific theory and keep track of what’s real, the timeline of events etc., which is hard, but I felt like everything was built up with (albeit twisted) logic.
黒死館 took me far longer to read comparatively because so many of the references used were just knowledge flexes that may or may not be referred back to later in the book. For example, I was delighted when they mentioned the Riemann–Christoffel tensor because it reminded me of when I was studying differential geometry, but it was only very tangentially related to the plot and not referred to again.
I actually would love to read 黒死館 again with a book club to discuss all of the cool knowledge in it, but it might take half a year or more if we left no stone unturned.
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Honestly I’d do that xD And not just to lazily outsource research into all the random tangents. Only mostly for that reason. My main concern with the 三大奇書 is that they’re so long and dense is that I could see them basically killing off the club. They might work better as a standalone or offshoot club.
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A stand-alone club for 黒死館殺人事件, and indeed for all 三大奇書, would be a great idea. I have also read ドグラ・マグラ, and I agree that the most difficult thing for me, more than the pseudo-science, was keeping track of what was real and what wasn’t.
Maybe an informal book club, or at least one with looser schedule (as in 2/3 weeks intervals) would work best ? A completely informal club might die out, but a rigid, weekly schedule might not be appropriate for some really difficult parts.
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Is an informal club having a single thread to post and we could comment or post questions related by stating which chapter or percentage we are at?
If that’s the case, I’m interested to challenge a level 50 book 
I don’t really like a fixed schedule as it prevents me from reading more when I want to read, thereby losing the momentum.
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Either that, but it might be difficult to have a single thread for quite a long book, or a loose schedule such as “let’s have a thread for the first 25%, and let’s say we’ll read that within 4/5/x weeks”. I haven’t looked at the structure of the book yet, but I imagine this might be doable, give enough time for everyone to read at their own pace and still keep the discussion more or less on track.
Once we’ve selected our next official book and the schedule is established, I’ll run a poll to see how many people are interested in a stand-alone club.
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Last call for votes 
I have the poll set to auto-close but Discourse removed the ability to see it. In any case I believe it should be set for my midnight which is ~5.5 hours from now.
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黒蜥蜴 is declared the winner 
@MintTea as the nominator you have the opportunity to run this club if you wish. If not (I know not everyone enjoys it) I will run the club.
As a general reminder all club rules are in the top post and the next club is scheduled to start on June 9th.
湖底の光芒 is removed from the nominations having received no votes 
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Can you do it? I’m busy enough as is, don’t really want to add more to my plate right now.
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Sure, no worries at all 
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I have one of the physical editions of the book so I went ahead and made a schedule. This book divided up pretty evenly and I erred towards not heavily loading us with pages since 乱歩 can be a bit harder sometimes. We have a 7 week schedule, so a shorter club, with most week being 30-ish pages.
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