Beatrice

Currently Reading: The Weavers of Alamaxa ~ Hadeer Elsbai 📚: 210/250

[queerlitaroundtheworld]

6 Queer Novels from Africa

(that aren't from Nigeria or South Africa - I truly appreciate that South Africa and Nigeria have such vibrant queer publishing scenes, but this list is trying to highlight some lesser known books)

1. These Letters End in Tears by Musih Tedji Xaviere (Cameroon)

2. The Sex Lives of African Woman by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah (set in multiple countries, author is from Ghana)

3. Obligations to the Wounded: Stories by Mubanga Kalimamukwento (Zambia)

4. All Men Want to Know by Nina Bouraoui (Algeria)

5. Stories of Our Lives: An Archive of Kenyan Queer Narratives (Kenya)

6. Fairytales for Lost Children by Diriye Osman (Somalia)

[lexsreadingcorner]

Bookish Question of the Week:

Regardless of whether you're a writer or not, pick a book that you would want to rewrite or expand upon. Maybe you want to add a new ending, change a character's traits, remove a scene you disliked, etc. Talk about what you would change.

[beareadsbookz]

I’d pick so many of Natasha Preston’s books, because I feel like they could be good if they didn’t have casual internalized misogyny, stupid endings, and overly predictable plots

[paigeagainstdamachine]

[booksinmythorax]

I'm already seeing advice from people in the US to purchase queer books and other banned or "controversial" books on paper as a way to combat the wave of government censorship that is coming. While this is a good idea (it is! absolutely!), it's not accessible to everyone, and truly, we're not going to be able to consumerism our way out of this one.

If you can buy the books, do. Whether you can buy the books or not, borrow them from your library.

Borrow the paper versions. Borrow the ebook or audiobook versions. Request the titles you want that your library doesn't have. The more a title circulates or is requested, the better librarians are going to be able to defend keeping it if and when it's ever challenged.

Use libraries like @queerliblib too. The more members they have, the better they'll be able to fundraise.

Your community resources depend on you using them. Borrow the books before they go away.

InB4: Piracy is not the solution here. We're trying to keep community resources available, not make sure individual people can read individual books. Different problems.

The books are still available. Borrowing them from your library and returning them on time and in good condition will help keep them that way.

[lexsreadingcorner]

I'm all for encouraging people to read more often and giving them helpful tips, but I'm not down with the whole "stop making excuses" shit. Look at the world. We're all busy, scared, and exhausted. Shut up.

[beareadsbookz]

The 17 Books I Read for Spooky Season, Ranked Best to Worst:

🥇 Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White, 5⭐️

🥇That’s Not My Name by Megan Lally, 5⭐️

🥈 The Wicked Unseen by Gigi Griffis, 4.75⭐️

🥉 Never Whistle at Night (anthology edited by Shane Hawk), 4.25⭐️

• The Grimrose Girls by Laura Pohl, 4.25⭐️

• All Systems Red by Martha Wells, 4.25⭐️

• Saint Juniper’s Folly by Alex Crespo, 4.25⭐️

• The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson, 4⭐️

• School of the Dead by AVI, 4⭐️

• The Bone Garden by Heather Kassner 3.5⭐️

• It Came From the Trees by Ally Russel 3.25⭐️

• No Escape by Maren Stoffels, 3⭐️

• The Witchery by S. Isabelle, 2.75⭐️

• Together We Rot by Skyla Arndt, 2.75⭐️

• Win Lose Kill Die by Cynthia Murphy, 2.75⭐️

• Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney, 2.75⭐️

• Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter 1.5 ⭐️

[inthetags]

Reblog and put in the tags if you can remember where you got the shirt you're currently wearing.

[theaologies]

Also who put Gideon the Ninth on the cosy fantasy table. Absolutely nothing about Gideon could be mistaken for cosy

[theaologies]

“You know everything will be alright in the end” this is the cruelest thing you could do short of intentionally exposing an 8 year old to anime

[matt-the-blind-cinnamon-roll]

Who the FUCK says Love Story is cute????? She dies of cancer?????

[book-challenger]

I do not agree with this table

[lexsreadingcorner]

Light from Uncommon Stars???

[beareadsbookz]

A Strange and Stubborn Endurance???????? He gets assaulted in the first third of the book and spends the rest of it being traumatized 💀 WHO PUT THIS DISPLAY TOGETHER????

[headspace-hotel]

You can identify a fake redneck by their passionate support of “blue lives matter.” Real rednecks have been in at least one physical fight and/or high-speed chase with police officers and would do it again

[action--cats]

[serialreblogger]

“redneck” is a valid culture, not a euphemism for “bigot”

[castironjackelope]

So this has probably already been said on this post but I dont wanna scroll through 66k notes to find it.

The term Redneck gain prominence with striking coal miners in Appalachia. They wore red bandanas around their necks to express union solidarity.

And they fucking FOUGHT police and Pinkerton strike breaker forces. It was a period called The Coal Wars.

The poor and working classes have a long history of community support and rejecting police authority.

If you’re pro-cop, you’re not a redneck, you’re a bootlicker who based your personality on a played out Jeff Foxworthy caricature. Get bent. Your ancestors are ashamed of you.

[antonio-redgrave]

[beareadsbookz]

Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White is an incredible book that discusses this (also being queer and autistic in a world designed to kill you). It is pretty heavy though, so if you’re not okay with gore, child death, police brutality, and panic attacks, you should probably skip it. As always, check the genre and content warnings before reading!!

[lexsreadingcorner]

Me: I hate reading a series but actually I love this one and for once I'm excited to read the next book

Libby: *only has book one*

Me: *crying in the club*

[ijustkindalikebooks]

Tom Gauld for The Guardian's Autumn Reading Special.

[beareadsbookz]

You guys know that you can (and in my opinion, should) be pro choice while recognizing that abortion can still be traumatizing???

I’ve had multiple people questioning my inclusion of “abortion” in the trigger warnings list for my review of The Spirit Bares Its Teeth. I did not put it there because I believe abortion is wrong or bad and we should be scared of it; I put it there because there are people who have trauma around abortions.

One woman asked why I included it, and she was actually polite so I assumed she was asking in good faith. I explained that some people have had to abort pregnancies they wanted, some people were forced or coerced into abortions they did not consent to, some people had medical complications after their abortions, and some people simply found the experience of having an abortion to be traumatic in itself, despite choosing it and needing it, because it’s a very hard thing for a body to go through even if you want it. I also explained that in the particular case of The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, I included it because the abortion scene in that book is a teenage girl cutting herself open to remove a fetus after she was assaulted. It was a very gory scene and was upsetting to read for me, who has no relevant trauma, and I felt I would not be doing my due diligence to omit that from the trigger warnings.

The woman then replied and said that “that SPECIFIC case is valid I suppose” completely dismissing all of the other examples I gave? As if those are not also perfectly valid reasons not to want to read about an abortion??

Multiple things can be true at once. Yes, abortion is healthcare and is a necessity. It has saved lives and helped so many people. That does not change the fact that some people will still have trauma around that topic. Recognizing that is not and never will be “pro life ideology”, as some people have told me.

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi

goodreads

Have you read this trans book?

Yes and I liked it

Yes and I didn't like it

No

No but I'd like to

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onSep 16, 2024

Red is the blood of the elite, of magic, of control. Blue is the blood of the poor, of workers, of the resistance. Clear is the blood of the slaves, of the crushed, of the invisible. Sylah dreams of days growing up in the resistance, being told she would spark a revolution that would free the empire from the red-blooded ruling classes’ tyranny. That spark was extinguished the day she watched her family murdered before her eyes. Anoor has been told she’s nothing, no one, a disappointment, by the only person who matters: her mother, the most powerful ruler in the empire. But when Sylah and Anoor meet, a fire burns between them that could consume the kingdom—and their hearts. Hassa moves through the world unseen by upper classes, so she knows what it means to be invisible. But invisibility has its uses: It can hide the most dangerous of secrets, secrets that can reignite a revolution. And when she joins forces with Sylah and Anoor, together these grains of sand will become a storm. As the empire begins a set of trials of combat and skill designed to find its new leaders, the stage is set for blood to flow, power to shift, and cities to burn.

Mod opinion: I've heard of this book already, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I am interested in it though, but it might take a while for me to get around to it.

[beareadsbookz]

I read it and I liked it, although I felt like her book Faebound was much stronger structurally speaking. I felt like the Final Strife was a bit of a mess, although it had really strong concepts and a good plot (unlike a LOT of books I’ve been seeing come out recently, so that was refreshing).

The POV’s were all over the place and weren’t marked, so on audio it was sometimes difficult to know who was speaking because the pov character would shift without warning but only for a chapter or a couple of paragraphs, and then would switch back, again without specification.

However the romance aspect was compelling and I liked it a lot. I liked how Saara handled the topic of disability and thought the sign language was super cool. I really really loved the conversations the book had about addiction, who it affects, how it’s used as a tool by those in power, and why addicts are not bad people for being addicts. The mystery concerning the other lands is also very compelling and I can’t wait to read the sequel and learn more about that.

I think if this book had another round of developmental edits, it could’ve been easily a five star for me. I did rate it a 4.25 though, so it definitely wasn’t bad by any means.

[beareadsbookz]

I shall never emotionally recover from this

[beareadsbookz]

For those who can’t see the images

Book recommendations for hispanic/latinx heritage month:

My Chicano Heart by Daniel A Olivia’s

Lineage Of Rain by Janel Pineda

The Storyteller’s Death by Anna Dávila Cardinal

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

No Filter and Other Lies by Crystal Maldonado

We Came to Welcome You by Vincent Tirado

[beareadsbookz]

⚠️Calling All Queer Readers⚠️

If you’ve ever wanted to join a book club that reads queer books with a focus on intersectionality and diversity, I have wonderful news for you!

Fable is a book club app (which has expanded to include clubs for tv shows now too!) that combines the community aspect of Goodreads with the more user-friendly reading tracker features of Storygraph. It’s super easy to set up a profile and start reading with friends!

The QueerLit Book Club is the club I moderate where we read books by queer authors about queer characters. Right now we are reading We Are Okay by Nina LaCour.

I also share lots of book recommendations for different months/categories (pride month, immigrant heritage month, spooky season, holidays, women’s history month, etc).

If any of this sounds interesting, please feel free to come check us out here: https://fable.co/club/the-queerlit-book-club-with-bea-202365139676

[wonderstruck]

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading