Starting in Sept. 2024, the Seitokai Book Club is splitting into two (2)--a manga book club and a novel book club. We've decided to do this to better service our members.
After a tough vote and a tie-breaker, our inaugural Japanese Novel read for Sept. 2024 is 君は月夜に光り輝く. This book follows two classmates, one of which is diagnosed with a terminal illness that causes her skin to glow under the moonlight. She glows brighter as her time of death nears. This book has currently been graded at an upper intermediate/N2 level on Natively.
Come join us in the discord server! We can't wait to see you.
Get some more info below:
What if I've never read a book in Japanese yet? I'm not confident in my skills. That's fine! Not only do we ALWAYS have a group vocab sheet that we collectively (and anonymously) add to, but we have ongoing discussions about whatever book we're reading. That means you're free to ask questions, send screenshots, rant about a character or anything like that. You'll definitely find me asking about certain grammar points or if using a particular set of kanji for a word changes the nuance in a particular sentence.
What's the goal of your bookclub? Well, we're interested in fostering confidence in reading in your target language without feeling that you have no one to turn to. Our server has people of all levels of fluency, meaning that there's always someone who can answer your question. And if we can't, we have people we can reach out to ask. We won't leave you hanging!
You don't seem to choose books I'm interested in--how can I change that? Well, we take suggestions and vote as a bookclub for what we'll be reading next. If your book doesn't win the first time you submit it, try try again! A lot of our books have been suggested more than once before finally winning. Don't be discouraged! And now that we have two Japanese book clubs, you don't have to worry about your novel suggestions competing against manga suggestions.
I can't afford a copy of the book. Message me on here, discord, or instagram. Or send a message in the bookclub channel of the server saying that you need a copy. Someone will help. We're aware that Japanese learning resources are not available or readily accessible in multiple areas around the world. We all want to help each other thrive at meet out target language goals.
More questions that I didn't answer here? Message me on here, discord, or instagram! Or @tokidokitokyo!
Hope to see you there! Server | Studygram | Server Instagram
You might see some familiar names from tumblr in the server 😉🤗 We don't bite and you can watch in live time as we scream in agony over book characters, obscure kanji, and plot holes in any given book that we're reading.
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Sometimes, life gets the best of me and I'm not able to make my usual announcement post on here about what the current Seitokai book club read is. However, I do actually update it on the master Google Doc (links to associated vocab lists included), my Natively profile, and on the Seitokai instagram. These include the books from the start of the club in 2022 until present day.
If you're not particularly interested in the vocab lists or you hate accessing Google Docs bc it takes up Google Drive space, you can also see it on THIS NATIVELY LIST.
Or if you're thinking "ALL OF THOSE OPTIONS SUCK, I'M NOT LEAVING TUMBLR!," fair enough, I can't argue with that. You can always DM me, send an ask, or even @tokidokitokyo might make a post about it as well.
For July 2024, the Seitokai Bookclub will be reading the first volume of 気になってる人が男じゃなかった (The Guy She Liked Wasn't a Guy at All).
What if I'm not confident in joining the bookclub because I have difficulty with vocab? We've got that covered! For the Seitokai Bookclub, we collectively add to a shared vocab list so that a) no one feels ashamed of coming across a word that they didn't know and b) you can access the vocab list at any time (yes, even when that book is no longer being read by the group, you still have access to the vocab lists). If you have any other questions about joining the bookclub, the discord server, books we've read in the past, or where to start your Japanese reading journey, feel free to send me a DM or an ask!!
If you need assistance accessing a digital copy of the book, feel free to drop me a line!
Hope to see you there! | Seitokai Bookclub
More detailed FAQs under the break:
What if I've never read a book in Japanese yet? I'm not confident in my skills. That's fine! Not only do we always have a group vocab sheet that we collectively add to (anonymously), but we have ongoing discussions about whatever book we're reading. That means you're free to ask questions, send screenshots, rant about a character or anything like that. You'll definitely find me asking about certain grammar points or if using a particular set of kanji for a word changes the nuance in a particular sentence.
What's the goal of your bookclub? Well, we're interested in fostering confidence in reading in your target language without feeling that you have no one to turn to. Our server has people of all levels of fluency, meaning that there's always someone who can answer your question. And if we can't, we have people we can reach out to ask. We won't leave you hanging!
You don't seem to choose books I'm interested in--how can I change that? Well, we take suggestions and vote as a bookclub for what we'll be reading next. If your book doesn't win the first time you submit it, try try again! We've had many books that didn't win the first time, but were eventually read, so don't be discouraged!
Though I am horribly behind, today I will start to read 日本の歴史366 頭のいい子を育てるジュニア. This is a children-targeted book where you read a page everyday; the theme of this book is Japanese history and there are little ninjas hidden throughout the book to find. I think that it'll be fun to take notes from what I learn from each day, so I'm going to try to post those notes on here. That way, if anyone else is reading the book and has noticed that I misunderstood something, you can correct me!
1月1日 Summary:
Japan used to use a lunar calendar (in which the seasons started lagging--which resulted in leap months.) In 1873 during the Meiji Restoration, Japan switched to using a solar-based calendar. That year, Japan was the government introduced the western Julian calendar; it wasn't until 1898 that Japan began using the Gregorian calendar.
