I decided to pause daily habit of watching an episode of Japanese drama or variety shows for the time being because:
There are too many interesting Korean shows at the moment.
There are lots of Japanese novels that I’ve bought that I wanted to read more than watching Japanese shows now.
So I will do what I prefer to do now than forcing myself to watch Japanese dramas just to fulfill the daily habit. This actually made me excited to continue reading the RTK again (something I’ve paused for months).
I find that there’s pros and cons to joining book clubs
Pros:
Helping me to stay engaged even when the book’s pace is so much slower than I had anticipated.
Having someone to ask if I have questions about the book
Cons:
Having to stop myself from reading too fast.
Keeping quiet about story so as not to give out spoilers if I’m reading ahead.
But all in all, I’m glad that I joined an online book club.
Btw, I’m so glad that I sold the Kobo Libra Colour ereader (I think manga with color still looks best in iPads and it’s easier to zoom in and out as well) and get a Kobo Clara BW instead. It’s so clear and light and makes me want to read all day instead of watching Japanese shows.
But I guess I need to find some interesting Japanese shows soon if I want to improve my listening skills. Hopefully next month…
They’re always audiobooks (and a variety of other sources/formats)
Also I agree re: book clubs - and am finding informal clubs are nice, bc I can read at my own pace. For more structured ones tho, I’d just keep notes for each week’s portion (regardless of when I read it), or wait until the last week to join, and read the whole thing then
It’s the same gyst, just no schedule. Sometimes it’s post off a larger club that votes and starts, and sometimes someone just puts it together for a specific book/series, and there’s no larger club. Example: マリア様がみてる 1 Discussion Thread (Maria-sama/Marimite Informal book club)
Not quite Each informal book club is different. Most of the informal clubs I’ve been in have had a schedule (most recently, 理由) and I found the ones that don’t have a schedule I just end up dropping because people reading much far ahead of me is demotivating since then I had to bounce around in the thread to find people’s thoughts when I get to that section.
I think the main thing I see in common with informal clubs is they’re small (in number of people) and tend to only have one thread.
Ok fair. I’ve only been in one that had a (suggested) schedule but was still read at your own pace. So I’ll revise my statement to I’m finding schedule-less book clubs are nice, wrt the “I have to stop myself from reading ahead” thing
Right, that’s the disadvantage of the one-thread approach. With scheduled one-thread you can sort of ameliorate it, at least. Does something like “sub threads for each chapter, but no weekly schedule” work for you?
I don’t know what a subthread is So far as I know you either have one thread, or you have many.
If you mean like how the nonfiction club had a schedule but then posted all the weekly threads at once…I dropped it as soon as I saw those To me the point of a book club is to be reading with people and able to actively discuss - without fear of spoilers - what is currently happening. If I just feel like I’m playing catchup I’d rather just read alone The nonfiction club admittedly didn’t have spoilers, but again, I didn’t get to enjoy the feeling of reading with people.
Different strokes for different folks. We read in very different genres generally so we probably won’t overlap in clubs either
Yeah that’s definitely part of the fun. For me the fun is getting to discuss in detail with other ppl at all - bc outside of book clubs, I almost never get to talk about individual sections, just general impressions. Whether I’m ahead, behind, or in-sync is fine
I would hope that’s true for any club. I’ve certainly had to remind ppl in scheduled clubs to be careful about that.
I have occasionally considered the mystery ones, so ya never know. I’m pretty erratic with book clubs tho, so probably low risk
I guess there are pros and cons for having a schedule or not. Having a schedule will help one to push through reading the slow moments of the book and allows everyone to read and discuss together. The cons would be when the curiosity had to be suppressed when the story gets exciting
Since I’m mostly interested in investigations/mystery (not horror type of mystery), it seems that scheduled book club would work better to prevent spoilers being accidentally revealed.
Finished a really great book during the long weekend.
Even though there isn’t much action in the book, it’s really interesting and exciting that finished it in 3 days. (I usually take about 2.5 weeks to finish a light novel).
So, I’m wondering if I should try the reverse bingo challenge as well to make myself clear the backlog of ebooks that I’ve already purchased before I start learning Spanish in 2026.
Another possibility is to just use a random number bingo card and cross out the numbers based on the number of books I’ve read without matching it to the suggested prompt list.
Each informal book club is different. Most of the informal clubs I’ve been in have had a schedule (most recently, 理由) and I found the ones that don’t have a schedule I just end up dropping because people reading much far ahead of me is demotivating since then I had to bounce around in the thread to find people’s thoughts when I get to that section.
So far as I know you either have one thread, or you have many.
To me the point of a book club is to be reading with people and able to actively discuss - without fear of spoilers - what is currently happening. If I just feel like I’m playing catchup I’d rather just read alone 
The nonfiction club admittedly didn’t have spoilers, but again, I didn’t get to enjoy the feeling of reading with people.
