Tracking my summer reading here bc I’m kind of over Goodreads atm!!
The Kings and Queens of England and Great Britain by Eric R. Delderfield
At the back end of my spring semester I became very interested in specifically the Plantagenet Dynasty (thank you Dan Jones) so I picked this up from the library to learn more about the overall history of the monarchy
Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater
Ok so I first read the Raven Cycle when I was (I think) 13. I remember liking it a lot then over the past year or so I started realizing it had a decent online fan community (inspiring me to start a reread). I started the reread last fall, but put off getting into BLLB when I realized it had no Ronan pov. I decided to read it when summer began because I knew I would be able to get through it easily and gently now that I had no major academic responsibilities. I actually massively enjoyed it!
In Memoriam by Alice Winn
AHHHHHHHH this book made me feel sick but I couldn’t stop reading it. It was so good. Literally everything I could want in a book. I’ve always been very interested in WWI, both because of the war itself & how useless & based on nationalism it was, but also because of the poetry and culture that came from it. I also think that the queer perspective was so so amazing & well done. Wilfred Owen, author of Dulce et Decorum est was probably a gay man!!! So the inclusion of and emphasis on the m/m love story between the two main characters did not at all feel out of place, if anything felt very appropriate and realistic. It is also my fantasy to be a rich public school boy in England soooooo… But yeah this book was perfect.
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
Hi so this book also made me sick. It did that thing where the writing was super descriptive to the point it felt nauseating. All this aside, this book was very very very good. It explored uncomfortable and taboo themes like enmeshment/emotional incest, intergenerational trauma, violence, religious bigotry, and the most hypocritical sort of homophobia stunningly well. Young Mungo is not a Romeo and Juliet story; it is hardly a love story. It’s a story with love, and with pain, and it makes you as the reader want to give mungo a whack and yell at him to run away before it’s too late (even though you know deep down that he won’t listen to you.) I choose to believe that the ending was hopeful, because if I believe otherwise I will not be able to think of this book without getting incredibly angry and unjustifiably critical.
Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt
This book was essentially 200 pages of limerence & youch it hurt. I felt as delusional as the narrator, longing for someone who hardly will give me a second look. I found the book begrudgingly relatable, both because of the narrator’s fixation on men and masculinity, as well as the strained relationship between the narrator and his parents and the isolation between the narrator and his peers following his coming out. Overall, this one hit a little bit too close to home.
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