#emma straub

[bloodmoonlich]

It was so cruel what popularity did to people, what culture did to people, what magazines and TV news shows and the internet and social media did to people.

From American Fantasy by Emma Straub

[novelconcepts]

Another year, another absurd amount of books read (296, because if I wasn't reading or writing this year, my brain was on fire). I was asked again for my top books of the year, so here we go: 2023's top 10, in no particular order.

This was the first book I read of the year--literally, vacated the hangout with my wife and sibling-in-laws to sit on their couch upstairs and eat through it. Do you love The Fall of the House of Usher, but wish for a nonbinary protagonist and a lot more mushrooms? This is the book for you! (T. Kingfisher is fucking rad, I made a concerted effort to only list ONE of her books on here, but honorable mention goes to The Twisted Ones for fucking me upppp.)

A gay, post-apocolyptic Pinocchio retelling involving copious robots, found family elements, and a cool-ass treehouse. Klune always hits for me with his unrepentant queer family dynamics and sense of humor. Honorable mention to the first two in the Green Creek series (although that's got a lot more...adult elements in among the werewolves, you've been warned).

I thiiiink I found this through The Homo Schedule podcast (PSA: if you missed out on Jasmin Savoy Brown and Liv Hewson doing a podcast together, now you know better), and it wrecked my shit. Tons of trigger warnings, as this is a memoir about abuse within a queer relationship, but it's so beautifully written. I personally suggest listening to the audiobook first, then standing anxiously behind someone at a book warehouse sale, hoping they'll set down the only paperback copy so you can swipe it.

A fantastical-historical reimagining in which the KKK is filled with literal monsters, and Black women are resistance fighters armed to take them out. Visceral and intense, and truly an excellent horror story.

Just. Such a soft time travel story about a daughter and her father and cherishing the time you get with loved ones. I was thoroughly unprepared for how lovely I found this one. It's very kind.

Spooky house, take-no-shit redhead, protective sibling elements, bisexual recluse with a sword who really just needs a nap. I haven't found a Harrow book yet I haven't slapped five stars on. She's so good at character and atmosphere, and I'm always surprised at how fast her stories race by.

The whole Daevabad trilogy (of which this is the first book) is just magical. A girl from the mortal world finds herself embroiled with the centuries-long prejudices and wars of djinn in a fantastical city. It's one of the rare stories of its kind that does have a love triangle, but doesn't feel like a love triangle; it's far less interested in the insufferable "who gets picked" than it is in the actual horrors these people are both perpetrating and coping with. It's an intoxicating ride.

Fuck You, TERFS: the book. Given that fact, there's obviously quite a lot of transphobia to deal with, but it's very clear that those people are wrong, and it's a super-engaging (and super-oh-god-what-comes-next) witchy time populated with queer, protective, interesting characters I'm excited to see again in the follow-up.

Have you ever wanted a haunted house story with visceral imagery and a rather lovely twist? Gailey has you covered. As much as I enjoyed The Echo Wife, I think I actually loved this one more, and it makes me so excited to see what else they've got up their sleeve.

One of my final reads for the year, when I was just churning through hardcovers at the speed of sound. I love this book. I recognize it won't be for everyone, but it takes so much of what I love about IT (one of my all-time favorite books, despite its flaws) and twists it through the lens of an author who escaped the Mormon church. It's horrific, it's fantastically abstract in places, it explores childhood and memory, imagination and abuse, and almost every character is queer. It's a great "I simply cannot sleep until I've finished" read.

[writerswritecompany]

"I write little character studies and plot outlines, and I pretend I know all that I need to. Then I start writing and things always change. My understanding of characters always deepens, if not changes entirely. It depends on what they do and their reactions and conversations I uncover as I’m writing. " ~Emma Straub

Literary Birthday – 25 April – Emma Straub

Emma Straub is an American novelist and bookstore owner. She is also a New York Times-bestselling author.

[katiesbooks]

2021 Year in Review

[luveline]

This Time Tomorrow, Emma Straub

[kayteeaay]

“I’m just really going to miss you, you know?”Alice’s voice caught in her throat. “I don’t know how many people I really, really love, who really, really love me, you know what I mean? I know that sounds pathetic, but it’s true.”

“It is true,” Leonard said. “But that love doesn’t vanish. It’s still there, inside everything you do. Only this part of me is going somewhere, Al. The rest? You couldn’t get rid of it if you tried. And you never know what’s going to happen next. I was older than you are now when I met Debbie. Time to go forward into the breach. Until the future, at last.“

– Emma Straub – This Time Tomorrow

[scribblingcynic]

Alice wasn't a writer, but she'd spent enough time sitting at dinner tables with novelists to understand that fiction was a myth. Fictional stories, that is. Maybe there were bad ones out there, but the good ones, the GOOD ones--those were always true. Not the facts, not the rights and the lefts, not the plots, which could take place in outer space or in hell or anywhere in between, but the feelings. The feelings were the truth.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

[amor-barato]

Estou te dizendo, El, essa oferta não muito boa é sinal de que provavelmente vão fazer uma oferta boa, boa mesmo. Tenho certeza — disse ela, abrindo o notebook e começando a digitar. — Estou só tirando tudo e começando de novo. Adoro isso, me sinto uma assassina.

Elliot ergueu a sobrancelha.

— Ah, é?

Wendy não olhou para ele.

— Isso é meio excitante, Wen

Agora ela olhou para ele. Elliot caminhou devagar de volta à mesa. O gerente do escritório ficava lá fora, no final do corredor. Fora do alcance dos olhos e fora do alcance dos ouvidos, sobretudo quando a porta estava fechada.

— Vou te dizer quando algo é excitante — disse Wendy, desmascarada por um tremor no lábio inferior. — Senta aí.

Elliot girou a cadeira para que ficasse ao lado da dela, ambos de costas para a porta. Wendy desabotoou a própria calça, depois a dele.

— Me pergunta se você pode me tocar — pediu ela.

— Posso te tocar? — perguntou Elliot.

— Sim.

Wendy pegou a mão de Elliot e deslizou pela cintura dela.

— Não vou perguntar nada — disse ela. Só vou fazer o que quiser com você, e você vai gostar.

— Sim — concordou Elliot.

Ele fechou os olhos, vibrando de concentração. Era como na época em que estavam na biblioteca da faculdade, tão famintos pelo corpo um do outro que transavam nos banheiros unissex.

Emma Straub (Somos todos adultos aqui)