Books bring me a lot of joy in so many ways, not the least of which is paying my rent through my translations of them. It is very nice to have a place to live! But I also love sinking into the world of another person’s mind, finding unnoticed pieces of myself in the story, discovering new ways to view the world around me, or simply getting out of my own head for a while. (It’s so noisy in here!) A somewhat unheralded joy, though, is maybe the communities we create through reading. There are the more structured ones, like book clubs or even BookTok (?? I do not know. I am an Old, and therefore constitutionally unable to pivot to video), and then there are the fandoms and the chance connections we make. I’ve made more than one friend by posting about books I love here or on social media. (Come say hi to me on Bluesky! It’s where I live now.) One such friend is the brilliant BL scholar Khursten Santos , who just happened to be doing some work in Tokyo while I was there this winter, so naturally we met up to talk all things BL (and some things not BL). She was on a quest to find a book by an artist I’d never heard of, and I was intimately acquainted with a large bookstore that held that book on its shelves. So off we went to score some new books to stuff into our already overstuffed luggage. And today, on this most fujoshi of days, I am here to pass on the BL and spread the good word about mememe. Don’t say I never did anything for you, blog friends. Don’t worry! I didn’t forget about you and my brain’s mission to battle all the books. My brain and I have simply been preoccupied with a little something called a vacation. Yes! I took one! I may have the worst work-life balance, but even I will take a vacation every ten years or so. And having taken my once-in-a-decade vacation, I have to admit holidays are pretty great and I really should take them more often. But I didn’t take a break from books. You can rest assured on that front. Even as I travelled around Japan with my sister, showing her my life on the other side of the ocean and weirding her out by suddenly becoming incomprehensible to her with the whole Japanese thing, I was popping into bookstores and seeing what they had on the shelves. Thanks to my diligence/obsession, I even managed to find the coolest bookstore ever in Nagoya. (I posted pictures over on Bluesky if you’re interested.) I will never stop bringing you the books! (Well, I mean, the internet might eat itself with the whole plagiarism machine situation, so who knows really?) I have happily devoured the Burachin series, in which artist Takeuchi and her editor M-ta devour hot guys in more or less interesting ways, because Takeuchi is an incredibly expressive artist. She has a real gift for drilling down into the raw emotion of a scene and distilling it into an image, like the panic attack she has in this volume at a hotel while on a trip with friends. She pokes the gentlest of fun at fandom from an insider’s perspective, making her manga always extremely hilarious but never, ever mean. But I’ve never really gotten the central point of the Burachin series: the hot guys and the chasing of them. I appreciate eye candy as much as the next person, but I am not a fandom person. I think I could have been if I had managed to come into contact with cosplay or boy bands or slash fiction when I was younger because I have an obsessive personality, and it would have been easy to switch the focus of my obsession from mathematics to making fictional characters kiss in story. But the internet didn’t happen until I was already basically a grown-up, and I never got the chance to encounter any real-world weirdos (complimentary) as I moved from place to place in Canada as a child. So I honestly couldn’t relate to Takeuchi and M-ta pouring significant amounts of time and money into the pursuit of the eye candy, despite how much I enjoy reading this report of them doing so. But then! I was interpreting at TIFF again for the first time in a few years and working with a bunch of famous people. Naturally, I am a professional. I’ve been doing this interpreting thing for a long time now, and I’ve worked with loads of famous people. And even before I was interpreter to the stars, I was interviewing my favourite bands and authors for my fanzine and other projects. Starstruck is not a thing that happens to me. I mean, famous people are still people. A few years ago (maybe more than a few now) (oh no, I’m so old), I was musing on the socials about the lack of cats in BL because it honestly seems like the perfect combination. Hot guys cuddling cats! Fujoshi seem to love the purr machines, and we obviously love the boys’ love part of the equation (that would be why we’re fujoshi). And who doesn’t love a manly man cuddling a little kitten? It’s the stuff of internet dreams! But I had never read a BL with any significant cat presence. I mean, I’d occasionally see a cat wandering across the panel, but the focus of the story was never the cat. And it seemed to me that this was a void in the BL literature simply waiting to be filled. Friend of the blog and BL scholar Khursten stepped up for me in my time of need when she suggested a manga that was not only BL but also all cats all the time. In the Edo era. Which was not a requirement, but a nice bonus nonetheless. Cats in kimono! What more could anyone want?? Hot on the heels of last week’s Mission!! comes another powerful title! It was honestly the “zettai” in this one that had me walking to the register with the first volume of the series in hand. A world where BL is absolute vs a boy who absolutely does not want BL. A clash of wills! Over who will get BL’ed! And then the obi boasts that this is an absurd BL gag manga, and reader, I was sold. The whole premise is that the protagonist lives in a BL manga world, but as the title informs us, he does not want to become a BL manga character. He’s his parents only chance for grandchildren after his younger brother succumbs to a classic BL move—the person he thought was his best friend confesses his undying love—in the very first chapter. Friends, I have a confession to make. Not only did I not post anything on the smuttiest day of the fujoshi calendar (August 1 because 8/01 can be read as “ya-o-i” in Japanese), I actually forgot about our most holy of high holidays completely. I didn’t realize my crime against all fujoshi until actual days after the fact. I can only assume this is a testament to how much the relentless, unending heat has addled my brain because I would never otherwise forget about the fictional fellas looking for some spicy action. So to atone for my sins, I vowed to read more BL, and first up is this hot little snack from Nakamura, creator of the classic BL Dokyusei which she simply cannot leave alone, so a lot of the BL we’ve gotten from her for the last however many years has been in the Dokyusei universe. And sure, I was just as teary-eyed as everyone else when Kusakabe and Sajo [spoiler redacted] and happy for a new book to translate and earn some money to pay for all these books I keep buying, but secretly, I also longed for new BL from Nakamura’s masterful pen. Vancouver! Do you want to hang out? Well, good news! I am coming to your warmer climes next month both as a featured guest of the fine Vancouver Comic Arts Festival and as the interpreter of a superstar featured guest coming all the way from Japan, Tsurutani Kaori. Come see me talk about translation and manga! Come see Tsurutani talk through me about manga and movies! It is going to be a good time, guaranteed.

In preparation for her visit to this land of maple syrup, I’m re-reading Metamorphose no Engawa (translated by me into English under the title BL Metamorphosis ) and falling in love with it all over again. It’s been a while since I read/translated it, and I’d forgotten a lot of the subtle moments and details that make this series so special, how Ichinoi and Urara shape each other’s lives in meaningful ways over a shared love of a particular artist. I’m glad Tsurutani’s visit is bringing me back to this series now because I could really use the reminder that we need to leave ourselves open to connection with each other in a non-conspiratorial, non-bananas way after reading Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger about how our connections are fraying and distorted. (The book is so good! You should read it!) Oof! It’s been a year compressed into a month, friends. Feels like I only yesterday I was telling you about the delights of Edo-era artisans , and yet! It was almost a whole month ago! How?! I am overwhelmed in all ways, most notably in the deadline way. Yes, I have been working hard on many translations for your reading pleasure, which means I have had less time to write about books for your critical delight. But never fear, I could never stop telling you about books. I will always have Thoughts. And I have so many about Hikaru . This is another one of those books that’s been following me around bookstores both online and off since the first volume was released in 2022. The cover is very enticing and naturally attracted my eye. But as you know, Mount Bookstoberead is large enough that I need an oxygen tank to climb it these days, so I held off from picking up what looked to be yet another high school story with attractive art. And then a friend recommended it as BL horror, and you know that very nearly reeled me all the way in. But given that it’s a regular Kadokawa release and not on any BL imprint, I assumed it was more along the lines of queerbaiting/nioi-kei than actual BL, and put it on the backburner once more. I have danced around this title for quite some time. Can you believe it? We made it. We’re here at the end of another tumultuous year of plague, still standing. Mostly. The plague part feels less uncertain and chaotic than it did during the “time is a flat circle” period when the future seemed impossibly distant, and Japan was refusing to let me come hang out (a personal slight from which I may never recover). But a little over a year ago, they were like, yeah, sure, I guess you non-Japanese can enter the country again even though you totally ruin everything. And so I spent half of 2023 on that side of the ocean, enjoying a winter of cosplaying at winter (no one needs a Canada Goose coat in Tokyo and yet so many people have them!) and sweating out all my bodily fluids and then some during what I think was the hottest summer on record. Naturally, whatever side of the ocean I was on, my brain never once quailed in the face of its never-ending battle with the books. Which you probably know already, unless this is the first post you’ve ever read here. (In which case, hello, new reader! Welcome! There are twelve years of archives for you to enjoy!) But what you may not know is that I don’t write about every book I read. Part of that is I only write about things I think are fun or interesting in some way because shining a light on the good stuff is way more rewarding than crapping on the bad stuff. But I am also a busy translator (have you seen my publication list ? I have no work-life balance), and sometimes, a deadline gets in the way of me talking up a book I really loved. So now seemed like a good time to pick up a few of those books and give them the love they deserve. Maybe this will become a new tradition? It’s hard to say since I’m notoriously forgetful. But for this one year, it can be a thing we all enjoy! All BL all the time! After (way too) many years, it’s time for a new editorial policy here at Brain Central, and I am pleased to announce that this new policy is more hot guys in compromising situations. In the month of August. More objectification of objectively fine men! For one month of the year! What’s not to love about that! Or maybe this is just a policy particular to this particular year and this particular August because I have been coincidentally reading a whole lot of BL. I did not plan it this way, but maybe I should have. This steamy summer is certainly food for thought for future summers. Is it just the heat in Tokyo that has my head turned towards a different kind of heat? Would I have spent this sultry month reading edifying nonfiction books on the history of the labour movement in the United States or the abortion movement in Canada if I wasn’t so damned hot all the time? Who can say! Subscribe Subscribed Brain Vs. Book Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now. Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now. Brain Vs. Book Subscribe Subscribed Sign up Log in Report this content View site in Reader Manage subscriptions Collapse this bar Subscribe Subscribed Report this content View site in Reader Manage subscriptions Collapse this bar