This thread is for self-introductions: reading goals, reading method, etc.

You can nominate a book and explain why it might be a good book to read.

In a couple weeks we will have a straw poll to pick two books: one book that is accessible, and one that is level-neutral.

I nominate　老妓抄 by 岡本かの子。 It gets good reviews here on the Amazon.jp page, here is an excerpt from a review: 短編集なので、どれもこれも読みやすい分量でまとまっています。表題作『老妓抄』をはじめ、いくつかの作品に、その物語を最後にきりりッ！と引き締める、作者の詠んだ歌が素晴らしい味わいを醸し出しています。どの作品も印象的で、最近良く言われる、美しい日本語で、雰囲気も伝わってきます。

I think it will be interesting to read a book from a different era so that will become an element of the discussion, 'what was normal at that time'.
Also, it's on AozoraBunko

I'd like to nominate something by 柏葉幸子. I've read three of her books so far and liked them all. There's a lot to choose from, but I think 霧のむこうのふしぎな町 is the best bet for this book club. It's available on Kindle, so people outside Japan should be able to access it easily.

The official blurb from Amazon:
心躍る夏休み。6年生のリナは一人で旅に出た。霧の谷の森を抜け、霧が晴れた後、赤やクリーム色の洋館が立ち並ぶ、きれいでどこか風変わりな町が現れた。リナが出会った、めちゃくちゃ通りに住んでいる、へんてこりんな人々との交流が、みずみずしく描かれる。『千と千尋の神隠し』に影響を与えた、ファンタジー永遠の名作。小学中級から

(千と千尋の神隠 == Spirited Away)

I don't think it's the easiest book out there (it was one of the first books I tried reading and I gave up), but still firmly in the 'accessible' category, and given that you were willing to go through 君にしか聞こえない this should be fine.

I really liked the idea behind the Book Club but I'd allow to nominate more books. Two are probably too few and many people could skip a round just because they don't like the nominated book. For example if the previous round had had just two books, I wouldn't have read Go, which I really liked.

So I'd propose one more category, classic japanese literature, and I candidate one book of 夏目漱石. This would be my first japanese classic so I don't feel like I could suggest one book in particular, I'll leave the choice to someone who knows them more.

Sunehiro, I do agree that including some classic literature would be useful as a resource on the forum, since it's what a lot of people first read. I think こころ would be a good group read of 夏目漱石's work. I don't think that 坊ちゃん is that great, but it's a very easy read and pretty funny (good cast of characters). I also think 太宰治's 斜陽 is a really impactful and memorable book, so that would also be a good one. I've read all of those, so maybe I would read another one. There are also audiobooks available for all of those books. I don't know that the book I mentioned in my first post counts as a classic, but it's the same era, so maybe that wouldn't count.
I think people wanted two books to generate more discussion because we don't have a large number of readers to divide among books (just viewers, it would seem).

I'd really encourage anyone with remote interest in trying the book club to post and state said interest.
If you would like to find a book with certain features (plot, genre, vocabulary, ease of reading, dialogue-heavy, etc) make a post about your desire to find such a book and maybe people can recommend them.

The 'rules' of the Book Club will never be inflexible, so if people want to request other's to nominate a book for them, I don't see anything wrong with that, especially if it generates more descriptions of books and why they might be a good (group) read.

よろしく

Hello,

The idea of a book club is excellent. I'm not good enough to start reading a book, but if there is a group interested in read an easy manga, I will surely participate.

About the easy book, with a simple search I found a video on Youtube of a woman reading 岡本かの子. I like very much the idea to also have audio material to listen while reading. Here is the video:

I'm in.

My nomination is 蹴りたい背中 by 綿矢 りさ (Risa Wataya)

I don't know that much about it, but it won the Akutagawa prize and she wrote it when she was still a student, which piqued my interest.

It is available pretty much all formats: Innocent, Kindle, Paper, and English translation if you feel the need. I found this description of the English translation:

A winner of Japan's prestigious Aktugawa Prize for rising literary talent, "I Want to Kick You in the Back" follows Hatsu, who is in her first year of high school and having a hard time fitting in with her classmates. She meets Ninagawa, an outcast who is obsessed with a model/pop idol but who has no interest in the actual girls around him. Gradually, Hatsu develops an impulse towards Ninagawa, not of love or infatuation, but one that can best be described as a desire to kick him in the back.This novella does a great job of exploring the ambivalent feelings of a teenager in search of a meaningful relationship.

You can read more about Risa Wataya here... for some reason I find it depressing that she was born in 1984: http://www.booksfromjapan.jp/authors/ite...isa-wataya

Kindle version is here: http://goo.gl/52SlP9

It got kind of mixed reviews on Amazon.co.jp, but anyway I'd like to read it. I think someone recommended it on this forum way back, which is how I first heard of it.

jahnke Wrote:Hello,

The idea of a book club is excellent. I'm not good enough to start reading a book, but if there is a group interested in read an easy manga, I will surely participate.

About the easy book, with a simple search I found a video on Youtube of a woman reading 岡本かの子. I like very much the idea to also have audio material to listen while reading. Here is the video:

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out for sure. I would recommend you read こころ by 夏目漱石, and 斜陽 by 太宰治, both can be found in the Audiobooks sticky thread. 夏目漱石's 坊っちゃん is a pretty easy read with funny characters, and it's probably the best one to read first level-wise. Perhaps you could start an audiobook club.

btw, Anybody else want to nominate books or express interest in the next round?!

I had a brief look at 蹴りたい背中, which looks like it might be a fun read, provided it doesn't descend into the kind of narcissistic self-pity that seems to be all too common in this sort of stuff.

Just FYI for any Linux users, this is what I had to do to extract a zip archive in SHIFT-JIS format (which seems to be the default encoding in Japan):

unzip -O SHIFT-JIS filename.zip

nkf -S old-name.txt > new-name.txt

Where nkf is available in the Ubuntu repo (& doubtless others).

As for the book club, I have one to recommend, though afaik availability might be a problem: ねらわれた学園

Yes, it's the one and only novel I've read besides the one from the last book club

I do intend to participate in the next round, but once again progress will be slow because I intend to level up my skills by grinding through some manga for a bit, as my compulsive card-making interrupts the flow a lot less & provides a much more entertaining experience, e.g.:

To LOVEる ダークネス vol 3:
pages: 213
cards made: 81
cards/page: 0.4 (almost entirely due to モモ)

I've been thinking of reading 蹴りたい背中 for a while now - actually got myself a copy when I was in Japan last year and still haven't got round to reading it.

I think こころ is a good idea too, I read it in translation ages ago and I'd love to give the Japanese version a go.

To halfarsedly take charge...

LAST CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

So far we have:

Accessible:
ねらわれた学園　by 石川 樹
霧のむこうのふしぎな町 by 柏葉幸子

General:
老妓抄 by 岡本かの子
こころ by 夏目漱石
蹴りたい背中 by 綿矢 りさ


Or if I've got your suggestion in the wrong level or missed it entirely (kind of hard to tell what's an actual nomination), do say.
It's not much of a selection so far though, I must say. A few more nominations would be nice.

Well, this seems to have died a death. Rather than relying on democracy, I may as well just put it out there that I have just started reading 容疑者Xの献身 by 東野圭吾. If any else is interested and wants to read along with me then we can call it a book club and make a thread.

I'm about 15 pages in and enjoying it so far. It is fairly readable, similar to GO in difficulty I would say (much easier than AYNIK). A few uncommon words/kanji have popped up so far (塒, 袂 and 斡旋) but they are not so frequent to be a problem.

It is unfortunately not available on the Kindle, so I ordered the paper version from Amazon.co.jp and will use the innocent version to assist with dictionary lookups etc.

I actually don't know what it is about (I prefer it that way), but I believe it may be some kind of murder mystery or detective type story. It is pretty famous and has a good reputation I think.

NickT Wrote:A few uncommon words/kanji have popped up so far (塒, 袂 and 斡旋) but they are not so frequent to be a problem.

斡旋 is in the core10k, for shame!

I am currently reading ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石 and enjoying it enormously (far more than I would in English), though unfortunately it turns out that the Harry Potter deck I slogged through didn't give anywhere near full coverage of the vocab, so I'm still dependent on Rikai to a large extent.

Unfortunately 容疑者Xの献身 doesn't seem to be among the thousands of review materials I have - must be in a different batch.

NickT Wrote:Well, this seems to have died a death. Rather than relying on democracy, I may as well just put it out there that I have just started reading 容疑者Xの献身 by 東野圭吾. If any else is interested and wants to read along with me then we can call it a book club and make a thread.

I've actually just started the same book a few days ago, what are the chances?

It's the third book of the "Galileo series", I've read the first two but the stories are totally uncorrelated so it's good to start with 容疑者Xの献身, which is also the first full lenght novel in the series (the other were short stories).

I've found 東野先生's book very funny and enjoyable so far. The language is difficult enough to get new words (a lot of idiomatic compounds), but also easy enough to be enjoyed at a nice reading speed.
Got my paper copy for Christmas together with a lot of other books, including the fourth of the series and some by 夏目漱石.

輝く夜 by 百田尚樹 was a nice Christmas read, too.

sunehiro Wrote:I've actually just started the same book a few days ago, what are the chances?

It's the third book of the "Galileo series", I've read the first two but the stories are totally uncorrelated so it's good to start with 容疑者Xの献身, which is also the first full lenght novel in the series (the other were short stories).

I've found 東野先生's book very funny and enjoyable so far. The language is difficult enough to get new words (a lot of idiomatic compounds), but also easy enough to be enjoyed at a nice reading speed.

Good stuff. Any other takers? I don't think 2 is enough to justify a book club.

I expect you'll finish quicker than me, based on how fast you seem to race through books on your 読書メーター account. My usual pace is about 1 book a month, but this one might take me longer as I don't have a Kindle version.

I read a bit more this morning, and I agree with your assessment so far.

Whatever you guys decide (I'll keep doing my own thing), you should set up a Skype call after the book is finished and discuss it in Japanese. Like a real book club dammit!

anotherjohn Wrote:Unfortunately 容疑者Xの献身 doesn't seem to be among the thousands of review materials I have - must be in a different batch.

Heh, turns out I've got a paper version of this book.

I've got a stack of books left behind by my brother when he went back to Japan. Time was it would take me an afternoon just to read through the titles, so I was never entirely sure what was there. I had another look today and noticed this one among them.

I bought 翳りゆく夏 and パラドックス１３ yesterday. Going to read the latter if anyone else is interested. It's about everyone in Tokyo suddenly disappearing except for 13 people. Post-apocalyptic stuff by Higashino Keigo. Was going to buy something from Murakami but decided after Kafka on the Shore I wanted something I probably understood more. ***** was that book strange. I should go back and read Norwegian Wood though...

I decided I'd rather just choose my own books, which is why I haven't posted in this thread until now, but since pretty much everyone else seems to have come to basically the same conclusion I wonder if maybe we could think about a different format. This thread has ended up being just a place where people post what they're reading and I actually find that quite interesting. What do people think about the idea of a book club where we all just read whatever we want but try to make an effort to post about it?

I second the nomination for 霧のむこうのふしぎな町! I live next to a Japanese international college, and one of the students gave me this book. She said she reads it every time before she travels to a foreign country. I've only read a few pages from it, but it looks like it would be a good choice for group reading because a more advanced koohiista could clear up some of the dialects used in the dialogues that I don't think everyone could figure out on their own.

I'm also sticking to my own thing. Sorry. :-|

I'm currently trying to plow my way through 下妻物語:ヤンキーちゃんとロリータちゃん, which is a little dense at points but also quite funny.

Everyone should read 夢をかなえるゾウ. Not too difficult to read, has Osaka dialect, and teaches you about life.

Anyone else using Goodreads? Maybe we could start a group?

comeauch Wrote:Anyone else using Goodreads? Maybe we could start a group?

Most of us use http://bookmeter.com, which is Japan-specific. Unsure if it has a group function, but we can certainly follow each other's activity.

読書メーター does have a group function, so we could, I guess.

I think Splatted has the right idea though. A kind of anti-bookclub where instead of everyone reading something together and talking about it, we all read different things and talk about them. I like to hear what people are reading, but the current 'What are you reading thread?' thread doesn't get much attention.