And even then it can still be hit or miss based on:
But I agree; I’d personally never recommend anything for ABBC without having read through the whole volume.
Yeah this one’s tricky
I definitely considered ルリドラゴン to be quite easy, but a fair few people really struggled with it (or was it a different ABBC? I don’t quite remember). At some point you can’t really intuit what’s difficult for an absolute beginner anymore.
Oh I agree. I guess I was more focused on pointing out the flaws with using a single data point (Natively levels) since it can have downsides.
I mostly pointed at your tool since I assumed it was coming down to a…do we trust the voting system e.g. do we want to be more empirical? I think your tool does a good job in that department.
I also agree with this too, especially for the reasons listed. It’s helpful to even hear this is a consideration though since as a newer member to the group I wasn’t sure how things went in the past. As the only difficulties I’m aware of are some of the comments surrounding the difficulty of Horimiya for example.
Eh, I’d argue with this. If you regularly read ABBC manga, you will have a comparison. You just have to keep in mind, how that specific ABBC compares to the average, which is done by looking at how people react to it. For example Horimiya would be the absolute hardest I’d still consider for ABBC (it’s maybe even somewhat harder than that, but the pace of it helps).
I’ve gone through 75 pages of amazon books searching for a manga for the ABBC (non found btw), and I’ve found this gem, that’s just a bit past the difficulty of Horimiya (at least according to manga analyzer), so I didn’t recommend it, but otherwise it would’ve been a match made in heaven, slice of life, furigana, very good image quality, looks great and it’s cute, and the most fanservice you’ll see is thighs.
愛してるゲームを終わらせたい 1 サンデーうぇぶり | L22 it’s this one from natively (seems to confirm my suspicion about the difficulty, 10 points for manga analyzer). It’s about a girl and a guy who play the “I love you” game, where you tell the other that you love them, and they lose if they get flustered. It’s a pure romantic comedy and I’m loving it.
It’s a bit too hard for ABBC, but strangely maybe a bit too easy for BBC (all it is is long tbh). But definitely worth giving it a shot if someone found Horimiya to be maybe a bit too easy.
So we just need to form the Borderline Beginner Book Club to account for this right…right? (I’m joking)
No need to come up with new words, just use the one we have already, BBC Primer book club. Just gotta then make an ABBC Primer as well
I forgot. 
Just shows my ignorance, I didn’t know we had the Primer clubs! I appreciate the serious answer to my stupidity though.
Oh don’t worry, I was also trying to be funny.
since that didn’t work, I’ll go and dig myself a hole to hide in
Don’t worry, I’m still recovering from a procedure so it’s me I’m the problem 
Ah, I see, so they removed your funny bone. Got it
I don’t think 
would allow this club. The only viable entries would lack kanji.
I’m a bit confused what the trouble is here. Have we ever been burned by the Natively level? That’s my heuristic for both ABBC and BBC.
(I also mostly suggest things I have already read, but just because I’m passionate about them, not because it gave me a better grasp on the difficulty.)
Not really, but I tend to recommend stuff nowadays that’s not on natively. Already looked through that catalog a couple times (from levels 15-21), and didn’t see anything that would interest me, while also being appropriate for the club.
Ah, fair enough! Yeah, if it’s not on Natively, giving it a read first so it’s added and graded is a good idea.
I want Brandon to add the button so you can look at all the books you’ve added to natively and get a big warm fuzzy feeling about being a pioneer
oh me too…
I’m going to throw in another suggestion tomorrow. It’s very handy the deadline automatically localises to my timezone! That’s a cool forum feature!
