Week 4 of 十角館の殺人 🕵️‍♀️ Mystery Novel Book Club 👮‍♂️

Also, more weird obscure/outdated kanji!

冒瀆 (ぼうとく) instead of 冒涜 blasphamy
口許 (くちもと) instead of 口元
抽斗 (ひいだし) instead of 引き出し drawer
欠伸 (あくび) instead of…well… あくび
恰好 (かっこう) instead of 格好
莫迦莫迦しい (ばかばかしい) and 莫迦 instead of 馬鹿
谺する (こだまする)…I had a hard time finding this one! It’s from 木霊 (こだま) like the tree spirits in Princess Monoke but when used as a verb means “to echo” (which is so cool XD)

(Please forgive me, I read a lot of modern novels so I’m having fun with this XD)

4 Likes

I think despite the references and similarities it stands on its own really well. I’m also really enjoying it so far and can’t wait to find out what will happen next! :blush:

6 Likes

I’m with sycamore; despite the references, this definitely feels like it’s own book. If anything those of us who read ATTWN beforehand are going to get bamboozled by the author; I could definitely see the book setting something up specifically to mislead someone who’s read ATTWN.

6 Likes

You’d probably love one of the other books I’m reading (天使の傷痕 | L33) - it was written in the 1960s and is chock full of unusual kanji usage. Some of it’s basic stuff like kanji for words mostly mostly written in kana these days (ex: 総て、成程、筈、或) but sometimes it will throw a curve ball like 曳金 (modern writing: 引き金) which isn’t even in my Japanese dictionary and I had to find by googling.

Oddly I feel like I’ve seen 恰好 a lot - I think it’s kind of like 訊く vs 聞く where it’s a common stylistic choice by authors, or 云う vs 言う. Using 許 instead of 元 also seems common in older books, I sort of wonder if there was a shift at some point. :thinking:

If you can’t tell I’m a bit of a nerd for old writing :joy:

Also agree that ATTWN probably isn’t spoiling anything. This story is already different in several major ways. I think it was nice to have a refresher to more clearly pick up the homage though.

6 Likes

That does sound good! I’ll add that to the stack.

1 Like