Thanks for your advice! I started it few days ago, also feel struggling on the first 2 pages. I wonder if this book is really suitable for the novel beginner? But the story seems very interesting so I still want to try.
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That’s a good idea! But I bought the book from Kindle store, seems it can only be read via kindle or Kindle app…
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The first page was definitely more difficult than the following ones (I’m ~20 pages in, as of right now). Try to persevere and push through it. Native material is going to be difficult like this, no matter how much prep you do, unless you opt to use a premade JPDB deck for a “deep dive” to learn relevant vocabulary before reading.
Also, feel free to post sentences that you have trouble with, someone will surely help with parsing/translating/understanding.
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I think it depends on what you usually read. For (children’s) books I usually read around ~L22-23, and this L26 is hard, but doable. (With dictionary lookups and the occasional DeepL support; I’m also using ttsu/yomichan.)
As a side note, I’m also reading ゆっくりおやすみ、樹の下で | L25, which is only one level less on paper, but despite that I’m finding it much more approachable. また has more complicated sentences and subject matter, and I regularly have to plug sentences into DeepL; in ゆっくり I sometimes go a whole sentence without any look-ups, and I barely had to use a translator at all.
Do you have a physical Kindle? There’s a really good dictionary for it that works with conjugated verbs. (Only for physical Kindle tho.)
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Thank you. I will try to push through it.
As a beginner I feel so great to have this book club.
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Thanks for your recommendations! I bookmarked ゆっくり and will try reading it next time.
It’s so nice to get a good dictionary! Hope it works with my old Kindle. Will try it tomorrow!
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Oh, and depending on how beginner you are (I can’t see your profile), there are multiple easier book clubs around. Roughly ordered by difficulty:
- WK’s Absolute Beginner Book Club (WaniKani Community; you can join for free without using WaniKani)
- WK’s Beginner Book Club (WaniKani Community)
- Children’s Book Club
- This book club
Good luck!
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I just wanted to jump in and thank everyone’s recommendation for the Audiobook once again. I listened to the part corresponding (more or less) to this week and, even though I didn’t understand 100% of it, I still understood most of it and I can follow the story quite well. It’s my first time listening to and Audiobook and I’m really enjoying the narration. As I’ve also joined a few other bookclubs, I unfortunately don’t have time to read the book alongside, but at least I can still participate this way 
I was going to post after catching up with this thread, but… it’s gotten quite long now! Which is great that people are actively discussing and asking questions.
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I may have read a little bit too far this week, because apparently the page numbers on Bookwalker are wildly different from those in the 文庫 version for some reason. I tried really hard to skim to find where I was supposed to have stopped based on the final line and I just can’t find it so I guess I’ll come back to discuss the plot in week 2 when there is a clear end of chapter 
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Here’s the section before the stopping line. Maybe that helps?
(Although I guess we are really close to week 2 anyway.)
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You can do a search for the final line in Bookwalker btw. The Bookwalker numbering depends on your device size, font size, line spacing, etc. so it’s different for everyone.
For week 2, I think it ends with the chapter, at least. I’ll have the weekly thread later tonight
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Thank you, I found it!
Ah, that explains why the page end was halfway down a page for me! Thanks!
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Thanks for recommendations! This gives a clear idea for the reading path where to start.
I finished 2 manga in WK’s Beginner Book Club last year. また is my first Japanese novel. I will keep reading along with the book club!
I imported the dictionaries into my Kindle ,it does help a lot. Thanks!
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I’m still reading week 1, although I’m technically not late as it’s still Sunday for me. I came across a really strange sentence.
그녀는 별 관심도 없다는 듯 다시 “냐아” 하고 울었습니다.
I’d never seen 별 관심 before, and obviously here 별 doesn’t mean star, but what does it mean instead? Is it another meaning of the word or a grammar point?
Now thankfully, I can still understand the sentence by ignoring the 별, but I’m curious.
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I don’t know Korean whatsoever, but could it be related to this?
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Oh, that makes sense actually. All those sylllables being omitted are just messing with me.
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Finally done with week 1!
인생은 푸딩처럼 같은 것이라는 얘기네요.
Life is the same as pudding? 
I feel like that quote is a good representation of week 1, the main character just keeps saying really random things.
I was totally not expecting the cat, so at first I was very confused. I was starting to wonder if this was in a fantasy setting, because why else would a character have a tail, but no, it was just the cat.
Some of the sentences have been very hard to read through. Grammar is harder than I expected, but I feel like it got easier towards the end of the chapter. Or maybe that’s just because I’d already gotten through the whole weird in the head thing.
I might reread through that, to get a better understanding of it, but then again I already have so many other books to read and things to do. I’ll see, or I may just reread it in a couple months, hopefully by then I should be able to read it a lot more easily.
So far, I’m at 276 LingQs, which is a lot but that’s okay. (every LingQ only counts for one form of the word, so every grammar point or particle stuck to it will count for another LingQ if I mark it as an unknown word). I’m debating just dumping them all into Anki, because I feel like that would be totally unmannageable, but then can I even learn the words fast enought without using an SSR? 
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For what it’s worth: I haven’t added new words to Anki in well over a year (maybe two?) despite being worried about whether I’ll learn anything by just reading. And well, I somehow still got better at Japanese.
Maybe not as “effectively” as with SRS, but I also didn’t need to do SRS, so that’s a win 
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Done with Week 1!
Page 8: I was tricked by the cat as well! I totally imagined a girl a first but was so confused why she would only say ナー, despite seeing the 鳴く verb. Maybe this girl can get out of gym class with the 頭がおかしい excuse Way more used to にゃあ but I’m sure the author did it on purpose just to toy with us XD
So far, everyone seems pretty interesting! Nanoka is cheeky and amusing, Hitomi-sensei seems like a great teacher, and アバズレさん seems interesting too. I wonder what アバズレさん is implying about herself/her job when she says 立派な大人じゃない. Plus, I’m really curious about the nickname as well.
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Idk if the story ever explicitly explains it, but it means something like slut/hussy afaict. More info here: Entry Details for あばずれ [abazure] - Tanoshii Japanese
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