For discussion of the Intermediate Book Club choice.

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The Butler did it.

So it seems I'll be the first commenting on this.

First of all I like to thank the guy(s) that suggested this book, it's surely one of my favourites books I've read in Japanese, maybe one of the book I enjoyed most in general (which is a lot of books, FYI).
So: thank you! Please suggest more books!

Comment:
well, English is not my first language so I won't dilate too much.
I liked a lot the main character, the story is also cool and the themes are well exposed.
I understood almost everything but I found two difficulties:
to distinguish those strange population names and to remeber the yomi of Korean's proper names.
That aside I SRS'd a dozen of words (could have been much more, but I was on the train for the large part of the time)

Anyway, if you're uncertain, read it: it's good

sunehiro Wrote:First of all I like to thank the guy(s) that suggested this book, it's surely one of my favourites books I've read in Japanese, maybe one of the book I enjoyed most in general (which is a lot of books, FYI).
So: thank you! Please suggest more books!

You're welcome :-) I think someone recommended it previously on this forum, several years ago (which is how I first came across it), so I can't take all the credit.

As for other recommendations, the same author (金城 一紀) has written 6 or 7 other books, so you could try one of them. Unfortunately none of the rest are innocent, as far as I know, but a number of them are available on Kindle, and of course all of them in dead tree format.

I've also read BORDER which I enjoyed. Now, technically BORDER isn't actually written by 金城 一紀, a fact I failed to realise until I finished it, but it is good none the less. 金城 一紀 wrote the 原案 and the 脚本 apparently, but it seems the book itself was written by 古川 春秋, which was not entirely obvious form the book's page on Amazon when I bought it. It is basically a police / murder story, with a supernatural twist, so very different to GO, but I liked it a lot.

As an added bonus, there is also a ドラマ which I thought was pretty good, and a manga which I haven't read so can't comment on. You can see a trailer for the ドラマ here, which will probably also give you an idea about whether you would like the book:

I'm also current reading レヴォリューションNo.3, which I like so far, but it is too soon to be definitive. It basically seems to be more of the same, quite similar to GO in many respects - perhaps a little too similar in some ways. I'm not sure if it has the same wow-factor as GO, but if you liked that you will surely enjoy this as well. It is also the first book in a series of 4 books, known apparently as ゾンビーズ・シリーズ, so it will keep you busy for a while. It has nothing to do with zombies, though, just so you know.

Thanks, sunehiro! I just realized the other day that this is the same Go as the movie with 窪塚洋介. So now I definitely want to read it. I really liked watching Audition and reading that book. I just realized I have also (recently) watched the whole Border ドラマ which was pretty good, especially the ending and the Simon and Garfunkel references (are those in the book(s)? It seemed more like a visual TV style thing).

sunehiro, I guess you don't have a スマートフォン with an offline dictionary? Do you think it is better that you don't use the dictionary anyway? With my technology on me I can't help but look up every word whose onyomi I can't remember, maybe I should leave the phone at home and get some reading done, lol. Though I'm reading 錦繡 by 宮本輝 for a second time and really want to get the subtleties and vocabulary down. But maybe I'll jump on the Go train, sounds fun. Especially since the next Book Club still has a nomination process yet.

edit: btw 古川春秋 is a cool name.

tashippy Wrote:I just realized I have also (recently) watched the whole Border ドラマ which was pretty good, especially the ending and the Simon and Garfunkel references (are those in the book(s)? It seemed more like a visual TV style thing).

I didn't pick up on any Simon and Garfunkel references in the book - but then again, I watched the ドラマ and I didn't pick up on them there either. Can you be more specific? It may be just that my American folk rock music knowledge is somewhat lacking...

Here's a screen shot with the referenced work: http://imgur.com/AoIg7jt

By the way, how similar is Go to the movie?

To NickT, I'll try レヴォリューションNo.3 cause I really like the author.

Border interests me but I'm not really into ドラマ and with this kind of works (those that are manga, books, drama or vn... is there a word for? multi-something?) I usually don't like reading the book.
Anyway, I like 金城 一紀 and I wouldn't probably have known him without the Book Club, so thumbs up for the project.

tashippy Wrote:sunehiro, I guess you don't have a スマートフォン with an offline dictionary? Do you think it is better that you don't use the dictionary anyway? With my technology on me I can't help but look up every word whose onyomi I can't remember, maybe I should leave the phone at home and get some reading done, lol.

I do have an offline dictionary, and I use it to search the words I don't know and save them on a list. When I come back home I search the words with ctrl+f on the innocent version of the book and add them to Anki.
I just don't use this technique for proper names, because it would be useless pain, even though without knowing their yomi I usually skip over them so the plot becomes harder to follow.
Anyway, that's why I prefer innocent books, they spare me typing ~30 sentence a day.

Not remembering onyomi and searching on the dic is a pretty bad habit and you should feel bad for doing it so often
(It's not that bad actually, if you use a monolingual dictionary)

tashippy Wrote:Here's a screen shot with the referenced work: http://imgur.com/AoIg7jt

Ahh, them. Yes I thought they were a bit weird, I wondered what the deal with them was. 'm trying to remember if those two were even in the book... my memory is getting a bit blurry now and I think the book and drama are a bit conflated in my mind. If they were in the book they were far less prominent.

tashippy Wrote:By the way, how similar is Go to the movie?

I haven't seen the movie yet but I have it and it is on my to-do list. I might have some time over the weekend... I'll report back.

sunehiro Wrote:I do have an offline dictionary, and I use it to search the words I don't know and save them on a list. When I come back home I search the words with ctrl+f on the innocent version of the book and add them to Anki.
...
Anyway, that's why I prefer innocent books, they spare me typing ~30 sentence a day.

That's a good point and a decent reason to favour innocent books for the book club, even when you intend to buy them. I don't use Anki much anymore, but sometimes I'll control F the innocent version to find a sentence to paste into Lang 8 or an email to ask a native what it means. Also, that is how I pasted a few sentences into the AYNIK thread... it just makes it easier to discuss something if you can paste it somewhere. The Kindle is not very helpful in that regard.

sunehiro Wrote:I just don't use this technique for proper names, because it would be useless pain, even though without knowing their yomi I usually skip over them so the plot becomes harder to follow.

There is a names dictionary for the Kindle now which has made my life a lot easier in this respect. Also, in most books (but not all) the first time a characters name is introduced it has the yomi - Apparently my memory is not good enough to just remember it from seeing it once, so I normally add a note on the Kindle with the reading of that persons name. If I forget it later I can load up the notes and find it. I have to do this less now that there is names dic, I usually check if that gives the correct reading and if so I don't bother making the note.

sunehiro Wrote:To NickT, I'll try レヴォリューションNo.3 cause I really like the author.

Enjoy - I'm about a quarter of the way in. I hope to finish it before the next round of book club starts...

sunehiro Wrote:(those that are manga, books, drama or vn... is there a word for? multi-something?) I usually don't like reading the book.

I'm not sure what you're referring to but I hope someone has the answer.

sunehiro Wrote:Not remembering onyomi and searching on the dic is a pretty bad habit and you should feel bad for doing it so often
(It's not that bad actually, if you use a monolingual dictionary)

Haha, Thank you for reprimanding me.

I actually read chapter one of Go tonight finally! It's pretty good, though (spoiler)I'm not clear on oyaji's passports and spying and what exactly happened there, and did he die in Hawaii? The narrator is pretty sardonic and cheeky.

NickT Wrote:

tashippy Wrote:By the way, how similar is Go to the movie?

I haven't seen the movie yet but I have it and it is on my to-do list. I might have some time over the weekend... I'll report back.

I just watched the film... It's really good - and yes, it is quite similar to the book. The first 10 minutes was a bit OTT but after that it is well acted, thought provoking and quite moving in places.

Of course the book is still better, but that was inevitable really.

It's not great, but the best trailer I could find online is this one:

I'm not sure why they put the soppy music over the top, but it should give you some idea of whether you would like the movie.

Oh, by the way - Go is such a generic name it is hard to search for - If you put 2001 in the search as well, the year the film was released, you will get much better results.

Cool. Yeah, I've seen the movie. I'm kind of a big fan of 窪塚洋介。へへ。

But I saw it a couple years ago so it's not really helping me understand the book so much. I think I'll watch it again after I read the book, then if I read the book again I'll really be able to hear the dialogue come off the page.

There's a book, Laundry, with movie of same name, whose intro reads exactly like its opening monologue. I don't know why I haven't been able to get through that book yet, but 窪塚洋介's in that too, and it's pretty good, not as good as Go probably. It actually has a similar feel to the plot structure and focus on one character's journey of Go, but the 主人公 are different superficially--one is a 在日韓国人 and the other, kind of a 知的障害.

Well, I'm having fun now! All right!

Reading report: I'm not really sure if anyone else is reading this book now. Anyway, I read chapter one the other day on Yomichan. I hadn't yet set up the flashcards generator so I was just reading through with mouse-over definitions. Some of it was a little hard, I think because I was focusing too much on the vocabulary and not on the overall meaning of the paragraphs.
I tried to read on my Kindle today and couldn't find exactly where I was in the book, so I just started reading somewhere near the end of chapter one again. For some reason my monolingual Japanese dictionary lookups on the Kindle don't really work on certain books, including this one. But I felt like I was understanding more than the first time what I was reading, just by using my RTK kanji knowledge even if I see a certain word all the time and should really know its よみ by now.
Perhaps it's because I already read it while looking up words, but I realized something might be true about a thing my old coworker told me. His dad came to the US as an adult from Puerto Rico. He said he was only able to learn English by ceasing to mentally acknowledge that he was reading a foreign language. I read on a poster here's blog recently how the generally accepted notion that Japanese is impossible can create a kind of mental block in learning. When I'm on the train reading on my Kindle sometimes I am aware that someone is noticing what I'm reading and maybe that it's not English, and I know I must look like a genius despite the fact I'm reading it to learn the language and am not really there yet (where I can read effortlessly).
Sometimes when I'm in a public place speaking Japanese with someone, I forget I'm speaking Japanese and I think about what we must sound like to a nearby person (I'm a bit self-aware/conscious, trying to lessen that a bit, but that's beside the point; I'm also observant and assume others are even though they're generally not--i.e. INTP) based on what we are saying or what I'm saying, and then I remember "Oh, I just said that in Japanese and I'm speaking Japanese so actually they don't know what I'm saying unless they for some reason know J".
So I am getting to feel like in a sense you have to allow yourself to forget what you're doing in order to actually do it. Maybe this is the same for running, though I am not a very experienced runner. Maybe this is relevant to the learning kanji while high thread, too. Whatever you can do to forget what you're doing and just do it...
I'm kinda busy nowadays but I hope I can read a few pages of chapter 2 today even if I don't finish it. Even if it's a 一人ボチ book club.....;/

Just wanted to mention that I've been reading GO for the past few weeks and am now ~80% of the way through it & hope to finish it this weekend.

I'm reading it in Firefox with the help of Rikaisama & resisting the temptation to make flashcards, completely eliminating vocab issues & making for a much more pleasurable experience all round.

And the books a cracking read.

I intend to move on to AYNIK next, after which I will have read all 3 book club books before the next one has even started

anotherjohn Wrote:Just wanted to mention that I've been reading GO for the past few weeks and am now ~80% of the way through it & hope to finish it this weekend.

I'm reading it in Firefox with the help of Rikaisama & resisting the temptation to make flashcards, completely eliminating vocab issues & making for a much more pleasurable experience all round.

And the books a cracking read.

Can you provide a link to the book? I'd like to read it as well.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/GO-%E8%A7%92%E5%...7%EF%BC%AF

It's also an innocent book

Splatted Wrote:http://www.amazon.co.jp/GO-%E8%A7%92%E5%...7%EF%BC%AF

It's also an innocent book

Thanks for that, but I really wanted to read it in Firefox.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

Splatted Wrote:http://www.amazon.co.jp/GO-%E8%A7%92%E5%...7%EF%BC%AF

It's also an innocent book

Thanks for that, but I really wanted to read it in Firefox.

Search for the innocent book thread, there are some lovely anki review cards that some nice person uploaded. I read the book with rikaisama as well, can recommend for good practice!

Woot, finished!

I thought the last chapter was a bit daft but thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless.