👨‍❤️‍👨 BL Book Club 🎓 BL University 📚 Sep 23: 僕らの食卓

Welcome to the Boys’ Love Book Club & BL University!

This is newly-formed book club for those who enjoy BL! :two_hearts: We have also recently established BL University, for those who wish to delve deeper into the world of BL.

Feel free to use this thread to discuss BL and share recommendations; important posts concerning nominations and voting will be linked in this post for convenience.

Set this thread to ‘Watching’ to be notified of future updates. :bell:

Book Club :open_book:

Current nominations

BL University :mortar_board:

Our professors have compiled Natively lists for those who want to explore and gain a deeper understanding of BL.

List Description Book Club
Early Western Canon Early BL works that gained popularity in the West
Beyond Fiction Non-fiction related to the BL genre
Epic Light Novel Series Long-running LNs by volume count
Epic Manga Series Long-running manga by volume count
Pre-Omegaverse The development of Mpreg prior to the Omegaverse
Top-Rated LNs The most popular light novels, according to ちるちる
70s Manga History of BL manga - 70s origins link
BL in Translation BL works from around the world available in Japanese

Have a look at the BL University List Suggestions (there’s also a spreadsheet) and feel free to add your own!

Book Club Selection Process :books:

🇳​​🇴​​🇲​​🇮​​🇳​​🇦​​🇹​​🇮​​🇴​​🇳​​🇸 → ​🇻​​🇴​​🇹​​🇮​​🇳​​🇬 → 🇵​​🇷​​🇪​​🇵​​🇦​​🇷​​🇦​​🇹​​🇮​​🇴​​🇳 → 🇷​​🇪​​🇦​​🇩​​🇮​​🇳​​🇬​

Nomination Phase
  • Nominations can be submitted when the thread title includes [NOMINATIONS OPEN]
  • Use the nomination template below to nominate your desired book.
  • You can nominate as many books as you like, but must wait 1 week between each nomination.
  • The current nominations will be displayed in a nomination list.
  • Any book type (light novel, manga, etc) may be submitted.
  • Non-BL with BL vibes (bromance, suggestive) are accepted.
  • Only the first volume of a series is eligible for nomination, unless the series can be read as standalone books (such as anthology series), in which case, any volume can be submitted.
  • Ensure your nomination isn’t on the list of Temporarily Excluded Titles.
  • A maximum of 20 nominations will be accepted.
Nomination Template

Copy and paste the text below into a reply, and fill out the information for your nomination.

Cover image (optional)
**Title**: Put the Natively link here.
**Book type**: (light novel, manga, etc)
**Available formats**: physical / ebook / audiobook / full-furigana (delete as appropriate)
[details="Summary - Japanese"]
Copy and paste the Japanese summary from whichever source you prefer. 
[/details]
[details="Summary - English"]
Check Anilist or similar sites to see if they have an English summary. If not, use a machine translator like DeepL or Google Translate.
[/details]
[details="Content Warnings"]
If you know whether the book contains adult content or potentially triggering topics, include the information here.
[/details]
**Reason(s) for nominating:** Share the reason you are nominating this book - it might persuade others to vote for it!
Voting Phase
  • A poll will be held to vote on the nominations.
  • Each person will be allotted 5 votes.
  • The poll will be open for 9 days, from Saturday to Sunday of the following week.
  • In case of a tie for first place, a runoff vote will be held to decide the winner.
  • The lowest-voted 3 nominations (as well as any ties) will be temporarily excluded from the following selection cycle to make room for fresh titles.
Preparation Phase
  • A dedicated home thread for the winning book will be posted; all further information and discussion regarding the book will continue there.
  • A poll to decide the start date will be opened, allowing time for people to obtain the book before the club begins reading.
  • A poll to decide on the reading pace will be included, based on how many pages or chapters people want to read every week.
Reading Phase
  • A weekly thread will be posted for discussion on the scheduled reading, usually on Sunday night or Monday morning.
Discussion Guidelines
  • Spoilers should always be hidden using spoiler blur.
  • When discussing a specific section, please mention where you are in the book, ideally by chapter so people reading different versions have a clear point of reference.
  • Feel free to read ahead if it’s exciting, but please refrain from spoiling ahead of the appropriate week.
  • If you have a question about grammar, vocab, cultural things, etc - ask! That’s a welcome part of the discussion too, and other readers will be happy to help.
General Information
  • The book club guidelines are decided by the community based on polls.
  • The book club selection process may be referred to by other names (nomination cycle, voting round), all of which refer to the same series of stages, beginning with the nomination phase and ending with the reading phase.
  • The winning book may be referred to as the book club’s “read”, “pick”, “choice”, etc.
  • The next cycle begins after the reading phase has started; there is usually an overlap between the reading phase and the next nomination phase.
  • If the book is part of a series, only the first volume will be read (but may continue via an offshoot book club).

Miscellaneous :mag_right:

Original Post

Previous Polls
Selection History

C - selection cycle

Temporarily Excluded Titles

These nominations received the fewest votes in the poll, and so have been removed to make room for fresh titles. They will be eligible for renomination after the suspension period has passed.

C - selection cycle.

C1 eliminations (eligible for renomination from C3)

C2 eliminations (eligible for renomination from C4)

5 Likes

Exciting, thanks for starting this!! :heart_eyes: I would prefer to just do a book club as BLCDs can be difficult and expensive to get outside of Japan but I’m happy with whatever really! Also very flexible with whatever start date people want. :smiling_face:

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True, I was shocked when I saw that the 美しい彼 drama CDs were 5000+ yen new… I’ll have to keep an eye out for them on Mandarake. :smiling_face_with_tear:

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I don’t own a lot of BL stuff, but if something pops up in the club that I have (or can access via audible/KU), I’ll glady join. :slight_smile:

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BL life is so expensive, isn’t it? :laughing:

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Thanks for taking the initiative, @bibliothecary! I would definitely be interested! I voted book club on the “what type of club would you prefer”, but I’m fine with media as well. Voted next year to start just because things have been really crazy for me for a while, but I will do my best if need be. :muscle:

Question: I’m pretty sure S. Korea has a thriving BL industry, correct? (Tell me if I’m mistaken, of course.) Would we want this club to be as multilingual as possible, or just stick with Japan for now? There’s enough BL in one country to last us for a good long while, granted, but I wanted to ask.

I did a little bit of snooping on my own on my usual secondhand sites. It looks like you could score a decent deal if you’re patient/lucky (example), but I’m guessing the franchise is new enough to be able to retain it’s secondhand prices, at least for how. :thinking:

I wish BLCDs would start going digital. :\ Think of all your poor/international fans, please. :frowning:

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Very excited to see this club :eyes: Maybe this can be the push I need to finally start reading BL novels in Japanese (笑)

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Just chiming in as an aficionado of both country’s BL: Yes it does but the tropes and types of stories are a little bit different. Korean BL is usually in webtoon or webnovel/multi volume ebook format which allows for really long continuous stories vs. Japanese BL which is typically shorter 1 volume of manga/novel unless a story blows up.

A lot of Japanese BL is translated to Korean but there is less Korean BL translated into Japanese at the moment (and webtoons that are translated may be difficult to find on platforms region locked outside of Japan). So, that is to say that it would be possible to read things that exist in both languages but if it’s a must-have criteria it could become restricting. :thinking:

I will let @bibliothecary weigh in though since that’s just me giving my unsolicited opinion! Lol :laughing:

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Although there is a huge amount of Korean BL content (particularly webtoons and webnovels), I can forsee some issues trying to include Korean and making the club multilingual:

Deets
  • Given that obtaining physical copies outside of Korea is difficult and expensive, any suggestions would have to be available digitally, otherwise many wouldn’t be able to participate, which does limit the titles that could be chosen.
  • Unlike physical books, webtoons and webnovels are often only available from one source (although popular ones can be available from several different retailers), and often there are restrictions on purchasing (needing to have a Korean resident registration number, official documents to validate your account/prove your age, etc) as well as limited payment options (only accepting Korean cards, for example).
  • As @bungakushoujo says, webtoons/webnovels do tend to be quite lengthy (although you could decide on reading a certain number of chapters per title)
  • The number of titles that are available in both languages that are available digitally and can be accessed by international buyers and accept international CCs / other international payment options and don’t have account validation restrictions… is probably very small.

It’s not impossible, but I think it would be more trouble than it’s worth to make it a multilingual club. I think a Korean BL club might be feasible with a bit of thought, but keeping this one Japanese-only provides a lot more choice, content-wise.

I haven’t had a proper look at it yet, but there is a free section… :eyes:

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I’m in the camp of “will join if what’s nominated interests me”. By and large I don’t care for series about high school students which cuts out a sizeable chunk of BL, although definitely not all.

FWIW (regarding the multilingual aspect) - if Natively ever adds Mandarin, Taiwanese BL shows have been :fire: in my experience

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Woof. If Natively adds Mandarin, that opens up all those danmei webnovels… Food for years.

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Ah, I’m already in too many book clubs right now, but I’m definitely interested in a BL book club as well, so I’ll keep an eye here!

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Looks like we can start a BL book club soon! :heart_eyes:

Would those who voted ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ to joining the club also vote on the poll about when to start? It’s the last poll in the original post. @sanitiz3n @Naphthalene @pyororon @Jyinra @Biblio @Nicole216 @cat @nikoru @enbyboiwonder @MonnieBiloney Thank you! :two_hearts:

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Actually I’m so much “maybe” that I can’t even imagine joining a club right now :rofl: Might as well have voted “no”, I guess… If the right book comes along at the right time, I might actually join, but not actively planning to do so.

In other words, please don’t wait for me or anything :blush:

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I voted for all… not sure that helped. :rofl:

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My preferred option is yesterday and it’s not in there :stuck_out_tongue:

More seriously anytime is fine which is why I didn’t vote.

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Excellent, next year is winning. :pray: Much as I would love to start yesterday, as Naphthalene so aptly put it, that would definitely be something of a “my eyes are bigger than my stomach” kind of situation.

Gives me time to think through my potential nominations as well… Do I nominate stuff I already own, or stuff that I’ve been wanting to read but haven’t picked up yet because of all the stuff I already own? :thinking:

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can we put requests for the poll or should we wait/leave it to biblio?

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