Quests, created by Top Contributors, are such a labor of love, and they put so much time and effort into research and curation. As Pagebound grows, we have been brainstorming sustainable ways to create more Quests that the community is eager to see. We're trialing a new idea for a community-voted Quest, inspired by a List.

How this will work:

1. Royalty members can nominate a List (their own or any community List) that would make a great starting point for a Quest. Royalty members will receive a notification tomorrow with a link to a form to fill out by EOD March 31st to nominate. The form will include context about what makes for a great Quest.
2. The entire Pagebound community will then vote on which nominated List will inspire a Quest. Everyone will receive a notification on April 1st with a link to vote.
3. The creator of the winning List will be able to accept/reject.
4. If they accept, we will create a Quest inspired by their List, adapting the title & book list if necessary to fit Quest guidelines (for example, if a List has 20 books, we will reduce it to 15 for a Side Quest; if a List includes all 7 books of a series, we would put book 1; all books from the Quest would come from the original List curation). In the Quest description, the List creator will be credited and their List linked. The resulting Quest could be either a Main or Side Quest, but it will not be open to book additions since there will not be anyone actively maintaining the book list (similar to when a Main Quest hits its 100 book cap and is closed to further additions).

We hope this idea will encourage quality List-making, give the entire community a voice in Quest creation in a sustainable way, acknowledge our Royalty supporters, and result in more diverse Quests. We think it can be a fun community-building activity! That said, we will see if this trial achieves those goals before deciding if and how often we'll repeat it.

Thanks for helping us trial and your open-minded participation! Jennifer & Lucy

i looked up some reviews and realised that there's an edition of this book with an introduction to the honkaku genre written by shimada soji (also translated by ho-ling wong, i believe), which i think provides some very interesting context for anyone else who's as unfamiliar with japanese literature/the honkaku genre as me!

In the manner of Van Dine, Ayatsuji also did away with focusing on the latest science in The Decagon House Murders, and set the murder and the solving of the case with an isolated house as its stage from start to finish. But he ruthlessly eliminated all the elements which Van Dine had thought necessary to make his stories “literary,” such as the depiction of the American upper class; the witticisms; the attention to prideful women; the cheerful conversations while the wine is poured at dinner; the polite demeanour of the butler and servants. Thus his novel approached the form of a game more so than anything previously written.

As a result, his characters act almost like robots, their thoughts depicted only minimally through repetitive phrases. The narration shows no interest in sophisticated writing or a sense of art and is focused solely on telling the story. To readers who were used to American and British detective fiction, The Decagon House Murders was a shock. It was as if they were looking at the raw building plans of a novel.

People devoid of any human emotion, only moving according to electrical signals: a setting reminiscent of the inside of a videogame. Ayatsuji Yukito’s unique method of depicting such abstract murder theatre plays, in which he hides his murderers, follows the traditions of the “whodunit” game of the Kyoto University Mystery Club. The participants in this game are given nothing in print, but have to guess who the murderer is based on an oral reading of a detective story. In a tense situation like that, where every word disappears the moment it is spoken, there is no need for beautiful or witty writing.

Ayatsuji Yukito first introduced this technique, dubbed “Symbolic Characterisation,” and his experiment The Decagon House Murders was also his debut novel. Some have mistakenly taken his calculated abstractness as inexperience in expressive power or even a lack of writing skill, and he was criticised harshly when the book was first released. However, he had his reasons for writing the book the way he did. And to everyone’s surprise, bot-like characters from videogames became widely popular soon after the book’s release, just as Ayatsuji’s style of detective fiction had already foretold. Thus Decagon found its place among other masterpieces. Anime (Japanese animation) which would soon take over the world, would also feature the closed-off worlds of the Ayatsuji school.