Discussions for the August Book Club - Beginner book.

*SPOILER INSTRUCTIONS*

If you want or need to share spoilers about a book's plot, use the phrase *SPOILER* or *ネタバレ*, and below it, insert your text formatted as white text. Doing this without spaces [ color=white ]Example text[/ color] creates white text which only shows if you highlight it.

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*ネタバレ*
The Butler did it.

Is this thread going to have spoilers? Might be worth putting that in the header if so.

Besides the title of the book I knew absolutely nothing about it when I started reading, not even the genre. That has enhanced the experience considerably.

anotherjohn Wrote:Is this thread going to have spoilers? Might be worth putting that in the header if so.

Besides the title of the book I knew absolutely nothing about it when I started reading, not even the genre. That has enhanced the experience considerably.

We hadn't discussed what to do about spoilers. I'll raise it in the other thread.

Spopiler instructions included in the initial post.

I post only to say that I've began to read the novel... and god, I'm slow! I can understand what's going on (with many dictionary look ups), but it's gonna be a long journey. Hopefully, it'll be useful too...

As a reference for future beginner, I'm a little over 6k vocab (not all from Core, I've mined many words from Yotsubato and someother sources), RTK, I've read some graded reader, a little NHK Easy, various children tales, all of Yotsubato and a couple of volumes from other mangas. Almost no listening skills, I'm focusing on reading for now.

I'll try to keep track of how many words I'll add, and of course I'm gonna write it when I'm finished, so the othern learners of my level will have a time scale. Don't hold your breath though...

I am really loving this book so far. Quite a bit of vocabulary I don't know, but I too probably only have just above 6k. This isn't really hindering my experience though because I am finding that I can understand words from context. I'm using evernote to read it so I can quickly highlight words and read it on the go on my phone. After I read a chapter, I look up some of the words I highlighted and put it into Anki with the context.
Anyway, I just got to the end of Chapter 3...

**SPOILER??**
They can't kill someone off already right? I want to keep reading but I'm already sad lol. Here's to hoping he's still alive?

And now on to Chapter 4! If I don't have too much homework this week, I'm really hoping I can finish by the end of the upcoming weekend.

Okay I know I just posted but

**SPOILER**
I just read the first sentence of chapter 4 and really? dead. okay. bye.

Has anyone found audio for this book?

Started reading today - only a few pages in. Not much to say about it as yet, except that so far except that I've read easier books. Will probably get easier as I get used to the writing style though - that happens a lot.
Also, apparently my vocabulary relating to mobile phones is a bit lacking, but I learnt some words so I guess that's cool.

Rotasu Wrote:Has anyone found audio for this book?

Not sure what you mean by this. There was a drama CD produced if that's what you are referring to?

As I went into this book blind, I had no idea it was three short stories! Whoops~
I finished Calling You the other night, and have started on the second. Still a lot of vocabulary I don't know but aside from that, I'm not having too hard a time understanding most of it.
Calling You was really good, I'm gonna read it again in a few months for sure! I think I saw there was a movie based on the short story too? Might give that a watch this weekend as well.
Honestly, this is my best experience reading a book so far. I usually give up, or want to learn every single word as soon as I come across it. It's a bit of a confidence boost.

I must admit, though I started the book club idea, it was partly a motivator for me. I stepped up my speaking practice round about June, and I think it made me too confident. I stopped Anki reviews for a while to focus on school, and wasn't reading much for the same reason. When I started reading these books for Book Club, I was amazed at how far I'd fallen behind, despite my gains in speaking and listening. So I have started Anki again; I didn't realize how much Anki reviews helps with general reading abilities. So I'm only a few pages in to this one. So far it doesn't seem like much has happened. I have noticed I can follow it better if I don't stop to ensure full comprehension of every sentence and just read at a good pace. For some reason even though my dictionary lookup worked before, it reverted, so I have been reading without lookups.

How is everyone else enjoying this book? Are y'all onto the next stories? What do you think of the protagonist in Calling You? Remind you of anyone you know? Or any Japanese media archetypes?

I finished the first story, just started the second. It is after all a very easy read.

**SPOILER**
I must say, I think their efforts at changing the future were pretty half-arsed. If they'd just had a rational discussion on how to fix it so that she didn't walk out of the bus at that time they could have come up with something pretty easily. If he'd jumped on the bus and delayed them for about thirty seconds there wouldn't have been any problem, and they had plenty of time to both plan and implement that. It's not like he got there just as she stepped off the bus. I realise it wouldn't have been as dramatic or anything, but it bothered me while I was reading it.

**NOT A SPOILER BUT SOME PEOPLE THINK IT IS**
Still, it was a decent enough story. I think the concept of timeline-breaking-mental-telephones could have filled up an entire novel, so pity it's not.

Last sentence above is a spoiler - please hide.
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I read the last chapter of the first story up to the final chapter of the second story yesterday, making cards as I went.

Unfortunately I didn't keep track of how many cards I was making, and discovered to my horror that I had added over 180 difficult cards in one go.

My anki session today took nearly 3.5 hours as a result

I really don't think that's a spoiler - it's the premise that's laid out in the first chapter.


Thanks to a trip to the purgatory that is Shinagawa immigration office I got quite a way through the second story today. Not liking it as much as the first. I need to make another trip there tomorrow (fml), so might finish it then.

At the point of having read just the fist chapter I can say that is not something that has been revealed and I do consider it a spoiler. Also I disagree with the attitude that something isn't a spoiler if it's near the beginning; if it significantly affects how you view the preceding events then imho it's a spoiler.

Okay, well, passive-aggressively spoilered. It really isn't though - it's the premise and the blurb basically gives away as much information - not the time crossing, but that's presented matter of factly in the story and not as any great reveal.

Thanks Aikynaro for humouring me. To explain myself rather than be argumentative: I feel that something can still be a big deal even if it's not presented in a way that clearly shows we're meant to take it as such, and the second chapter in to a 5 (4 really because the 5th is tiny) chapter story is actually pretty far on imho opinion.

I just finished the first short story so here are my thoughts:

SPOILER!

I completely agree with Aikynaro about their attempts to change events. That was really weak. not only would it have been easy to stop　her walking out in front of the car they could possibly even have stopped the accident if リョウ had gathered info on the driver and vehicle and シンヤ had told the police that he was driving under the influence.

I also disliked the time skip happy ending. It's not that I think it should have had a sad ending, but my opinion is that time skips should pretty much never be used to resolve issues that are present at the end of a narrative. Coping with an event as traumatic as the one here is obviously not a short term endeavour, and a time skip does seem 100% necessary to resolve it, but it still feels quite trite and cliched to me. Simply leaving the future unknown would have been far more preferable.

On the positive side I thought the portrayal of リョウ was very good. Every piece of narrative felt tinted with her point of view and she really came alive to me as a character. I wish I could have gotten a better idea of her relationship to her parents though. They felt like quite a distant presence throughout the story and I couldn't tell whether that was because she wasn't close to them or because they didn't play a part in her relationship to シンヤ.

Spoiler!

Edit: I forgot to say

Spoiler!


I thought the aftermath of the accident was superbly written. Thanks to that and the excellent portrayal of リョウ throughout the story it was genuinely upsetting, which is impressive considering how little time I'd spent with the characters.

Finished this book last night. Enjoyed the stories, particularly the descriptive passages in the third story, though I found some of the dialogue hard to follow in places, and the relentlessly miserable tone of it started to wear on a bit.

Progress was delayed by my desire to finish ねらわれた学園 first, as I found it easier, something I can now quantify. I do have something of a hair trigger where making Anki cards is concerned, but:

ねらわれた学園
pages: 264
cards made: 498
cards/page: 1.9 (many from before I had even finished core 10k & seem ridiculously easy now, e.g. 怒鳴る)

君にしか聞こえない
pages: 201
cards made: 716
cards/page: 3.6 (including 花の萼, possibly the most obscure word I have so far added )

Something odd about 君 was that the word 如き appeared a whopping 11 times in the third story, and not at all in the other stories, making it seem almost like it had been written by a different author.

The 後書き was particularly enjoyable - almost moreso than the stories!