yeah, Brandon doesn’t want/can’t use the coins, if I remember correctly… but it’s nice to get some and it doesn’t cost the person who is buying stuff anything… 
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I finally finished 六番目の小夜子 - I’m sorry for being so late, I have a bad habit of having multiple books on the go.
I’m sorry to say I did have to force myself a bit with this one. I thought it stopped and started a lot (and then suddenly wrapped up very quickly) and there were long sort of dull moments punctuated by nice little creepy setpieces. I liked the play, for example. But overall I felt it didn’t all come together for me.
But! I’ve never read a book for a book club before! And I wouldn’t have heard of this without this club so I’d love to participate next time too 
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pretty much every book I have read for a bookclub so far would otherwise have lingered on my TBR indefinitely… it’s a good way to get to stuff outside your usual interest/comfort zone. 
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Very similar conclusion to me about 六番目の小夜子.
It was her debut, which I think makes sense, you can see some good bits, but it’s not quite sharp enough altogether.
I haven’t done too many bookclubs either, but they are fun when they come around!
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tbh horror as a genre feels like it stopped being about scaring people a while back lol
in that sense (imo) I would say that rather than western horror being scarier than Japanese horror it’s more that western horror centers around suspense a lot more while Japanese horror centers around the feeling of being disturbed (not to say there isn’t an entire absolutely based database of disturbing centric horror books, movies and more but it’s definitely not the “mainstream horror”)
Looking at the nominations though defining specific aspects in the book from reviews and stuff would definitely be a good idea since there are many books that would be considered horror by those aspects but will be classified mystery or suspense instead and vice versa (you even made a point in the list about 美濃牛 探偵石動シリーズ being suspense/mystery but honestly if we look at ハサミ男 it’s definitely in the maybe horror category and that’s also suspense/mystery by the same author. The nominations also have supernatural horror themed mystery books like 十三の呪 死相学探偵1 and 妖奇庵夜話 その探偵、人にあらず which are likely to be a lot more of a supernatural element than horror in my experience with these kinds of book series)
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is it? I personally feel like it’s gore only if you see the “insides” kind of mentality. For example The Human Centipede has entire scenes where the “goriest” things you see is the surgery marks but they’re not red or bleeding or anything like that.
Not sure if I’m misdefining gore though
How is ハサミ男 even a little bit horror? It’s a straight serial killer story with a trick. If we consider murder something disturbing/scary (and it obviously is in real life, but it’s so common in books it’s its own genre), then every murder mystery is also horror? Surely not.
I’m really struggling with the definition of horror. I’ve read very disturbing fiction that is not listed as any specific genre, and definitely not as horror. I’ve read very disturbing, scary mysteries. And I’ve read lots of very mild horror. So is it the supernatural, or otherwise unrealistic element that differentiates horror from suspense? Or is it a matter of degree? Or something else entirely that I’m missing?
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everything I’m gonna write here is imo (I wrote too many imo’s and decided to ‘disclaim’ first instead lol):
it’s close but it isn’t horror kind of vibe
a combo of how the author does the storytelling reminds me of horror more but also how the MCs thoughts and actions are described (like the sharpening of the scissors and things like how much it’s centered around their thoughts and memories of killing and etc)
if I compare it to mystery novels I’ve read/heard both in English/Japanese then usually there’s a lot more focus on “solving the mystery” than the “suspense of the murder” kind of difference, and ハサミ男 feels like it revolves so much more around the MCs thoughts of killing and this need that started and continued and about the “other personality” interacting with them rather than solving the mystery of the MC themselves or even of the copycat killer (even though it’s definitely the main plot point)
and in general serial killer stories have this thin line between horror and mystery and how much it sways to one side or the other feels like it has more to do with the writing style and what it centers rather than the plot (“the scream” movie series for example)
the entirety of the world lmao 
as time goes it feels like horror is becoming more and more abstract as a concept and people start focusing on specific aspects instead (the suspense or disturbance kind of aspects)
either that or horror will turn into a “supernatural only” kind of genre as time goes and everything else will classify as suspense or something
edit:
I thought of a good comparison to explain what I’m trying to say on the horror thing, it’s gonna contain spoilers to 変な絵 and 変な家 (both are NOT horror but I do have a point to make using them regardless lol)
both of these books talk about the theme of serial killers regardless of whether or not they actually killed.
In 変な家 there is absolutely no inkling into even a little bit of anything horror even though it includes several themes that can be considered “horror-ish” but are also prevalent in mystery (a curse, body parts, a secret child being raised as a serial killer, murderous family, etc etc)
compared to that 変な絵 which is VERY SIMILAR has a very specific scene where the focus drastically changed from anything mystery related into horror (the scene where the reporter is killed which is described into way more details than necessary for mystery purposes, and not in the gore-y way but rather in a “the author is trying to make you feel disturbed” way - regardless of whether or not it disturbs you in practice it’s very very obvious). It is NOT horror, but that specific scene is much more “horror-esque” than mystery.
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I have read neither of these but I love the way your choices for comparison are just a single kana apart from each other
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it’s that creators style lmao
they have another concept idea called 変なAI that’s the exact same storytelling but with a different plot on their youtube channel (they were originally a youtuber before they wrote the books) 
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