This is the home thread for this book club which will be starting 7th November 2020. The book is available as a digital book or a physical book - so if you want a physical copy get ordering now!
We’re reading this as the Absolute Beginner Book Club. This book club aims to help readers who are new to native Japanese content successfully read their first book. We try and pick books that are a good level for beginners, read at a steady pace, and encourage readers to ask any basic question about the text.
Visit the Absolute Beginner Book Club Home Thread to see what we’ve read already, and to get involved in picking the next books.
This book contains short biographies of 12 famous people from around the world. It includes stories of the lives of Osamu Tezuka (often called the “Father of Manga”), Sesshu Toyo (15th century Japanese artist), Leonardo da Vinci, and Ernest Thompson Seton (founder of the Boy Scouts of America).
This is part of a set of books aimed at Japanese elementary school children. This particular volume is aimed at students in the second grade. This means about 80% of the kanji used are from the first ten levels of Wanikani, and all of the kanji used should be from the first 18 levels of Wanikani. All of the kanji have furigana. The grammar used is generally JLPT N4 and N5 level.
The book is illustrated and the text is large and easy to read (no squinting at tiny characters). Click here to look at the original nomination post and see some example pages and the table of contents.
One of the advantages of this book is that each chapter stands alone. So if you fall behind at any point, it is easy to skip a chapter or two and catch up again with where the main group is reading.
|Chapter 1||10||Edison||Nov 7|
|Chapter 2||27||Marie Curie||Nov 23|
|Chapter 3||43||Beethoven||Dec 9|
|***********||Christmas Break||Dec 25-26|
|Chapter 4||59||Wilhelm Röntgen||Dec 27|
|Chapter 5||71||Ernest Thompson Seton||Jan 8|
|Chapter 6||85||Leonardo da Vinci||Jan 22|
|Chapter 7||99||Columbus||Feb 4|
|Chapter 8||111||Brothers Grimm||Feb 15|
|Chapter 9||123||Sesshū Tōyō||Feb 27|
|Chapter 10||137||Tomitaro Makino||Mar 13|
|Chapter 11||151||Momofuku Ando||Mar 27|
|Chapter 12||165||Osamu Tezuka||Apr 10|
|***********||Finish date||Apr 24|
The plan is to read one page a day. The main content of the book is 170 pages long, so it will take us about 24 weeks to work through the book. There will be a separate chapter for each thread, the links to each chapter will be added above.
- I want to take part in this book club
- I’m not sure yet
- I’m not planning to read this one but I might pop in from time to time to see what you are up to!
If you’ve read it before but will join in the discussion, please select ‘yes’!