Sponsored by Nightfire, publisher of ECHO by Thomas Olde Heuvelt.
From international bestselling sensation Thomas Olde Heuvelt comes Echo, a thrilling descent into madness and obsession as one man confronts nature—and something even more ancient and evil answers back. Travel journalist and mountaineer Nick Grevers awakes from a coma to find that his climbing buddy, Augustin, is missing and presumed dead. Nick’s own injuries are as extensive as they are horrifying. His face wrapped in bandages and unable to speak, Nick claims amnesia—but he remembers everything. Something is haunting Nick, and something has awakened inside of him– something that endangers the lives of everyone around him.
I regret to inform you that this is another newsletter with a Censorship Corner links section, and that’s excluding the vast majority of the LGBTQ book censorship stories I come across. (Follow Kelly’s weekly Censorship News Roundup if you want to see more.) It’s not all bad news, though: you’ll see that an unexpected group came to the rescue in one case…
But that leads in perfectly to the charity I want to highlight this week, which is PFLAG’s Read With Love program, which is attempting to get more diverse books into libraries. You can find out more at their website, including ways to donate.
Read Harder Challenge: LGBTQ Edition
This is the mini series where I make the Read Harder Challenge even queerer. You can check out previous editions of the newsletter for the earlier challenges. We’re getting near the end now!
14) Read a book whose movie or TV adaptation you’ve seen (but haven’t read the book).
There’s lots of options for this one! It was difficult to narrow it down, so I left off Carol aka The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith for being too obvious.
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters / The Handmaiden by Park Chan-Wook (movie)
Fingersmith is the best book I’ve ever read, and it’s actually been adapted twice: one by the BBC, and one reimagining by Park Chan-Wook. This adaptation moves the setting from Victorian England to Japan-occupied Korea. It’s gotten some criticism for supposedly having a “male gaze,” especially in the sex scenes, but I personally disagree. What I love about this adaptation is that it sparks a really interesting conversation with the book. They not only have different settings, but also different endings. I think it really adds something to an already amazing story.
More queer books that have been adapted:
- Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli / Love, Simon (movie) and Love, Victor (TV show)
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker (movie and musical)
- The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister edited by Helena Whitbread / Gentleman Jack (TV show)
- Revolutionary Girl Utena by Chiho Saito (TV show and movie)
15) Read a new-to-you literary magazine (print or digital).
I have to admit that any literary magazine would be new to me, because I haven’t read any before! Poking around online, though, it looks like there are quite a few interesting queer-centric lit mags to choose from. Here are some that looked the most intriguing!
Anathema: Spec From the Margins
Anathema is an online speculative fiction (including SFF, horror, fabulism, and more) literary magazine that publishes three times a year. The stories are all by queer POC/Indigenous/Aboriginal creators. The covers alone are gorgeous, and I can’t wait to dive into some of these stories.
More queer literary magazines:
16) Read a book recommended by a friend with different reading tastes.
This is a task that I can’t really give recommendations for, because it’s unique to you! Hopefully you have a friend who is well-read in queer lit and can give you some recommendations. I’ve found that having a focus on sapphic stories has introduced me to all kinds of genres and formats, because I’m much more likely to try it out if I know there’s a queer main character.
Use this task to try out a genre that’s unfamiliar to you. Maybe you can read a mystery novel with a queer main character for the first time — did you know this was one of the first genres to include queer characters? Or dip a toe into the world of manga with a yuri, BL, or queer manga title.
If you don’t have well-read queer friends away from the keyboard, online friends definitely count. (We’re friends now if you’ve read this far. No take backs.) Ask on social media for queer book recs and pick one that you wouldn’t have read otherwise. I’d love to hear how it goes!
17) Read a memoir written by someone who is trans or nonbinary.
An already queer task! That makes this one a breeze. There are so many great trans or nonbinary memoirs to choose from, but here are just a few highlights.
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
Two of the books I’m recommending for this category, this one and Gender Queer, have been among the most challenged in the last year of increased censorship. Read them yourself to see the beautiful, important stories that young people are being denied. These essays explore Johnson’s childhood, along with advice to young people (especially Black queer and trans people) about surviving and growing in a world that can be hostile to them. Reading All Boys Aren’t Blue will make it obvious that this book is being willfully misinterpreted, because Johnson is so generous in their explanations of the ideas they’re exploring here.
- Tomboy Survival Guide by Ivan Coyote
- Redefining Realness by Janet Mock
- Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
- Death Threat by Vivek Shraya
Make sure to get your own Read Harder Book Journal from Book Riot to track your reading for the year!
Censorship Corner
- Furries Are Leading the War Against a Book-Banning Mississippi Mayor — they helped raise over $100,000 for the library, which is being denied funding for carrying “homosexual materials.”
- On this same topic: Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate Group To Attend Ridgeland Aldermen Meeting to Address Library Funding
- Jack Guinness, the author of The Queer Bible, which was the specific named by the Mississippi mayor as an example of books that have to be removed, has said he will fight the attempted ban.
- What Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Could Really Mean for LGBTQ Kids
- 11 Recently Banned Books—And What Book Bannings Really Mean for Kids
All the Links Fit to Click
- OUT Maine donated 900 LGBTQ books to school libraries!
- I Found My Queer Guidebook in “The Well of Loneliness”
- Time To Curl Up with a “Quozy” – A Queer Cozy Mystery
- 19 Queer Love Stories For Whatever Kind Of Valentine’s Day You Had
- Quiz: Which Queer Romance Novel Should You Read This February?
- 30 LGBTQ Kids’ Books About Love
- Preorder these 2022 queer Black romances.
- These “under the gaydar” YA sci fi books don’t mention the queer content on the covers.
- Read these queer Indian novels.
- Here are some sapphic fake dating romances.
- Read these 5 short stories with queer sex.
- Dahlia Adler, who runs LGBTQ Reads and wrote Cool for the Summer and the upcoming Home Field Advantage, shared her top LGBTQ YA books of 2021.
- The cover for Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun was revealed at Entertainment Weekly.
- Alexandria Bellefleur was interviewed about her F/F romance Count Your Lucky Stars at The Seattle Times.
- Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James was reviewed at The New York Times, NPR, and The Washington Post.
- Two biographies of lesbian playwright Lorraine Hansberry — Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun and Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry — were reviewed at Bay Area Reporter.
- Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman was reviewed at The San Francisco Chronicle.
LGBTQ Book Riot Posts
- Soft and Quiet: Self-Censorship In An Era of Book Challenges
- 9 of the Best Queer Post-Apocalyptic YA Books
- From the vault: Every Book Should Have Queer Characters
- Beyond Bechdel: A Brief History of Queer Comics
- Don’t forget to check out our new line of bookish, Wordle-inspired merch! There are mugs, t-shirts, hoodies, and more. The campaign is temporary, so order yours now!
New Releases This Week
The Boy With a Bird in His Chest by Emme Lund (Queer Fiction)
This is a queer coming of age allegory about a boy who is hidden away from the world because (as you might have guessed) he has a bird in his chest. When a disaster endangers his life, he is sent to live with relatives, and a whole new world opens up to him. It’s a story about hiding the tender, beautiful parts of ourselves, and what happens when we let people in.
The Chandler Legacies by Abdi Nazemian (Gay YA Contemporary)
This is a boarding school story following five main characters, including Ramin, a transfer student who came here because it’s not safe to be gay in Iran — only to be harassed by his classmates in what was supposed to be a refuge. The five of them all get into The Circle, an elite writing group, and they begin to open up to each other, including by discussing the abuses that go unaddressed in this prestigious school.
Parallel Hells by Leon Craig (Queer Short Stories) (UK Release)
Let’s Get Back to the Party by Zak Salih (Gay Fiction)
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Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You by Ariel Delgado Dixon (Lesbian Thriller)
My Secret Valentine by Julie Cannon, Erin Dutton and Anne Shade (F/F Romance Anthology)
The Magic Between by Stephanie Hoyt (Bisexual M/M Romance)
Her Heart’s Desire by Anne Shade (F/F Romance)
Escorted by Renee Roman (F/F Erotica)
Enchanted Autumn by Ursula Klein (F/F Fantasy Romance)
Watching Over Her by Ronica Black (F/F Romantic Thriller)
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Errant by L. K. Fleet (F/F Bisexual/Lesbian Fantasy)
The Thousand Eyes (The Serpent Gates #2) by A. K. Larkwood (Sapphic Fantasy)
Bruised by Tanya Boteju (Sapphic YA Contemporary) (Paperback Rerelease)
Silver-Lined Secrets by Aleksander Petit (Asexual Gay YA Adventure)
Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi (Queer YA Speculative Fiction)
The Alpha’s Son by Penny Jessup (M/M YA Werewolf Fantasy)
A Complicated Love Story Set in Space by Shaun David Hutchinson (M/M YA Sci Fi) (Paperback Rerelease)
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Spin With Me by Ami Polonsky (Non-binary Middle Grade Contemporary) (Paperback Rerelease)
I’m Looking for Serious Love! by Shoko Rakuta (M/M Manga)
Kase-san and Yamada Vol. 2 by Hiromi Takashima (Yuri Manga)
Adachi and Shimamura (Light Novel) Vol. 8 by Hitoma Iruma and Non (Yuri Light Novel)
Heaven Official’s Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu Vol. 2 by by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, translated by ZeldaCW (M/M Light Novel)
Woodsqueer: Crafting a Sustainable Rural Life by Gretchen Legler (Nonfiction)
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
That’s it for me this week! Until next time, you can find me at my bi and lesbian book blog, the Lesbrary, as well as on Twitter @danikaellis. You can also hear me on All the Books or you can read my Book Riot posts.
Happy reading!
Danika