What are you reading today?

Japanese Reading
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I finished up 神様の御用人 | L36 today! Looks like I managed to finish it before the mystery book club starts on Monday, just as I’d hoped.

Minor spoilers

The last chapter surprised me with a twist at the end that I totally missed all the foreshadowing of. In hindsight it wasn’t even that subtle, but somehow I didn’t notice at all, to the point that I didn’t even realize a twist was coming. It wasn’t a huge revelation or anything but I haven’t been gotten this completely in quite awhile XD

I mentioned I just started 夜は短し歩けよ乙女 | L43 last week, but I’ve hardly touched it and I’m thinking I might switch to something easier since I’ll be reading it read alongside the book club book. I have a few options on my shelf, so maybe I can leave it up to the poll thread…

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Almost finished with WK bookclub continuation of the second part of 海辺のカフカ. Should have it read end of this week.

Also picked up my reservation from the library, pleased to see it’s a hardcover :smiling_face:. I’ve had this on hold for a while but planning to finish it this time (although I really should study for the JLPT :flushed:).

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Well I’ve finished 叙述トリック短編集 | L33 (learnnatively.com) . If you’re looking for an unconventional mystery book with a sense of humour, this could be for you! I felt the language was slightly harder than I was used to, so I felt lost a few times, which hasn’t happened in a while since I started reading. I think L33 is about appropriate. The author enjoys playing with the reader, and while I’m not sure if the clewing is sufficient to solve the mysteries I overall enjoyed being taken for a ride. If anyone is interested, I bought it on the basis of Ho-Ling’s review, which sums it up better than I could!
ボクの事件簿: Nitadori Kei | 似鳥鶏 (ho-lingnojikenbo.blogspot.com)

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Oof, I finally finished 村上海賊の娘 一 | L41, and I have to say I didn’t really enjoy the ride. I like the historical plot, I like the titular character (and the others as well), so it should be an easy win, right? Wrong.

The pacing is hell.

For the first half, anything that happens is interrupted for the author to give some sources as for why it happened and why it probably happened that way.
Picture this: two characters, A and B, are talking. A says “hey, B”. The author immediately interrupts to give some background on A, including some notes from the diary of character C, and then goes on to explain that C would be familiar with A due to meeting him, as written in character D’s history of C’s family or something. Back to A and B, B is not happy about meeting A. Cut to an explanation of the dynamics between their respective families and why B would be annoyed.
And it just goes on. Overall, it feels like the author is trying to show us that it’s all super realistic, the best approximation of event he can come up with.

Then, we get the titular 村上海賊の娘, vinyl scratch, the author admits that “well, as far as we know she didn’t exist, there’s just that one family tree that mentions a daughter, contradicting other sources, and I’m going to extrapolate wildly based on that one untrustworthy source”. Basically, from there on, any historical character still gets the “and here’s why he would use those words in that order” treatment, breaking flow, while she gets “source: I made it the eff up”.
Not only does it pad the book like crazy (not much happens in that one book, in the end), it doesn’t even help with the suspension of disbelief. I did learn some history about 織田信長, the 毛利 family, 顕如 and others, so that’s nice, though.

Note: when the author quotes a source, he leaves it in its original version. It’s a good opportunity to practice some Classical Japanese.

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I started かがみの孤城 | L28 a few days ago, which has already done a lot despite only being less than 50 pages in. It’s taken a different path than I expected already; based on the cover and the title 孤城, I had assumed she would enter the mirror world and become friends with the wolf-mask girl, and that would be a secret meeting place for just the two of them. I definitely didn’t foresee a competitive 7-player reality game! Looks like I have lots of characters to get to know. It’s a bit of a relief though, as more characters should make it easier to keep the book interesting for all 554 pages.

I also read 赤い手袋 | L21 just a few minutes ago, which was fairly interesting and very short. I posted a review with more info if anyone cares. Other than that it’s been a pretty quiet week but I did finish another volume of チェンソーマン (series) | L24

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Ooh I might read that tonight. It’s been a long day and I’m feeling a bit too tired out to focus on any of my book club readings…

edit: read it. I liked that quite a bit! It gave me very similar vibes to ごん狐 and I had to check if they were by the same author (they’re not).

edit 2: Oh and I read it with a 朗読 cause I enjoy them. I shot the link off for Brandon to add, but it’s here - very nicely read, but the animation gives me the creeps.

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So I think I’m officially going to mark 吸血鬼ハンター“D”―吸血鬼ハンター 1 | L39 as Stopped for the time being; I’ve just got too much going on, and my book club deadline for that particular book is fast approaching. I’m swapping over to the English version for now (it’s an Eng book club), and I can at least say that everything I did manage to read in the JP version I read accurately, at least. :person_shrugging: While I still feel level 40 might be too high for the book, I’m currently thinking mid-30s due to the author’s love of description. Definitely intend to come back to it once things have calmed down.

And I guess, speaking of busy, here’s my current line up of books:
体育館の殺人 | L30 with our very own mystery book club,
FLESH & BLOOD 6 | L33 with the F&B club over on Wanikani (I intend on doing a small write-up for this series here sometime in the future. I’m a big fan, and I’d like to spread the good word), おばちゃんたちのいるところ-Where The Wild Ladies Are | L32 with the Intermediate Book Club on WK, and 異世界でおまけの兄さん自立を目指す | L29 as a non-book club book when I have two seconds of spare time and enough brain power to spare (which hasn’t been much lately, sadly).

Sooo lots of book clubbing going on, for better or worse. Every except F&B is on a schedule, at least, so once I finish that week’s reading I don’t have to feel guilty about not reading more that week. You’d think with all my complaining about being busy I’d stop trying to pick up books, but the Advanced book club on WK has started ユージニア | L30??, which I know several people on here are also reading, and a re-read club for 秋の牢獄 | L30 is starting up. I read the same author’s 夜市 | L31 way back as my first (?) real novel and have wanted to read 秋の牢獄 since, so I’m tempted…

I don’t think anyone actually cares if I’m behind in a book club besides myself, anyhow. Maybe it’s poll time, see what the rest of the community would do in my shoes?

Should I add more books to my pile?

  • Yes! You should start both
  • Yep, but just pick one
  • Nah, I agree with your dwindling sense of restraint, stick with what you have

0 voters

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Wow, I’m not sure how you can manage being in so many bookclubs. I was going to read along with the mystery bookclub this time around, but it turns out I’m pretty bad at keeping to a schedule! I’ll probably just have to read it on my own later on. I also don’t really like reading multiple things at once. Even if I set multiple things to “reading”, I can only really focus on one thing at a time. I’m not sure how many books at once you can handle, but it seems like you already have a lot on your hands! :laughing:

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Yeah, I’m kinda wondering where my limits are myself. :sweat_smile: I didn’t really intend to join so many clubs at once, but the books just happened to all look interesting at the same time. :\ I work really well with schedules, which is about the only saving grace of all of this, and the only reason I’m contemplating these extra book clubs.

The poll so far is a tie between “don’t pick up any more books” and “pick up both”, which is… :sweat_smile: about right. Right now I’m thinking I’ll see if I can get my current book club readings done for the week, then see how much free time I have left over afterwards to start one/both of these books. This wouldn’t necessarily be guaranteed to be consistent time-wise, but eh. The upcoming holidays will be both good and bad; good because I should, in theory, have more free time to read. Bad because my daily schedule goes straight out the window and makes it more difficult for me to optimize my (no longer) free time.

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I’ll say that 秋の牢獄 is self paced so you can sneak it in whenever and reply to people later. It’s a low stress option. It’s also, so far, a very smooth and straightforward read. A couple of us commented in the thread that it’s been awhile since we read something that required so few lookups. It feels kind of on par with a typical 赤川次郎 book?

ユーギニア, for full disclosure, has been a more involved read. More vocab to look up, places and famous incidents being referenced. The conversation in the thread is also a mix of English and Japanese due to two Japanese people joining / it being the first bilingual book club. You can contribute in whichever language feels most comfortable for you, but that’s more reading to take into account.

Edit: I actually owe some replies in ユーギニア but I’m at work browsing online while waiting for tasks to complete and I don’t like typing lots of Japanese on my phone :upside_down_face: typo rate goes through the roof

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Woops, I voted that you shouldn’t read any other books, then went “oooh ユージニア looks interesting” read the sample and it’s really good so I guess I’m reading that now despite being in a similar position to you in terms of already reading too many things :see_no_evil:

Are any of the things you are reading a candidate to switching to audiobook only? I think that’s what I might try for 体育館の殺人 to try and juggle things better :thinking:

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So I finished 邪神ちゃんドロップキック 17 | L18, and now I’ll be jumping to よふかしのうた 1 | L25 .

The idea is to keep reading at least a manga for the days I don’t feel like picking up the light novel, at least until I take the N2 in December.

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Success! Can’t believe I’ve tricked someone else into another book, haha.

Unfortunately my listening skills are poor enough that I wouldn’t be able to understand anything spoken. :frowning: I am listening to 体育館 as I read along, at least.

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The 吸血鬼 Appreciation Society approves of this decision. Please let us know what you think of it. :pray:

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Not what I’m reading right now (which is all the book clubs) but what I will be reading in December. @omk3 had the great idea over on the WK forums to have a Japanese learning themed advent calendar thread, where people can make their own calendar or follow someone else’s. I eventually decided to do a Aozora Bunko short story advent calendar which I put in this: post Japanese Advent Calendar 2022 🎄 🇯🇵 - #14 by pocketcat - Japanese Language - WaniKani Community

Would be happy to have anyone join in :slight_smile: :snowman_with_snow: The stories I picked vary from “5 minutes” to “30 minutes” (presumably this is based on character or page count) but beyond that I know nothing about them aside from being familiar with a few of the authors.

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I finished よふかしのうた 1 | L25 today, and while I enjoyed I’m not sure I’ll continue unless I find a better source for reading.

The quality of the digital format I had was so bad that I had trouble recognizing some Kanji and made it very annoying and more slow than it should be.

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Well, my plans for last week started off strong, then just slowly went down the drain, haha. Ended up being a very hectic week last week, leaving me a little bit behind book-club wise this week. I think I’m going to go with the one(?) person in my above poll who suggested I should pick a single book; I’ll probably pick up 秋の牢獄 | L30 when I have some time in between my other books. Thanks for the input, everyone!

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I was planning to read more かがみの孤城 | L28 last week, but accidently read 人外教室の人間嫌い教師2 ヒトマ先生、私たちの希望を見つけてくれますか......? | L27 instead… Ah well, it happens. I’ll probably continue reading かがみ for real this week. I also finished 本好きの下剋上~司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません~第三部「領主の養女1」 | L31 on audible, and had to pay for the next few volumes. I wish these audiobooks were cheaper, but at least they’re 100% worth it!

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It’s actually somewhat worth it to opt-in to the marketing emails because they occasionally run sales where you can buy a bundle of credits for cheaper than usual. They also sometimes have big blow out type sales where a ton of stuff is 50% off (including JP titles). Can’t remember the last time I paid full price for anything on audible :sweat_smile:

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Oh, good to know! I’ve been buying the 3 credit bundles to get a bit of a discount, but I’ll keep an eye out for limited time deals too

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