Book Recs: The Great Big LGBT Rec List (I)

We talked about this giant rec list on twitter before & if anyone thought we’re only joking… well, you guys just don’t know how serious we are about LGBT literature yet.

100 LGBT books. Fifty from me & fifty from Charlotte. Our favourite titles that we think everyone should read. Posted in four neat parts over the first two weeks of the year, so we can start off 2019 properly.

Of course, for this list to make sense, you have to know what rep you can expect from each book. And this time, to make things obvious right away (and also to make everything cuter), we chose to use various emojis. And so it goes:

lesbians & wlw relationships: ☀️
gays & mlm relationships: 🌿
bisexual characters: 💎
trans, genderqueer, non-binary, gnc characters: 🌷
LGBT authors: 🌈

And because most of the list is composed of novels and short stories, we decided to mark poetry as well: 🌉

Let’s go!

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley 🌿
The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum ☀️🌿🌈
Taproot by Keezy Young ☀️🌈
American Hippo by Sarah Gailey ☀️💎🌷🌈
Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong 🌿🌈🌉

Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak 🌿🌈
How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake ☀️💎🌈
Midnighter and Apollo by Steve Orlando (writer) & Fernando Blanco (artist) 🌿🌈
If Not, Winter… by Sappho, trans. Anne Carson ☀️🌈🌉
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden ☀️🌈

Cinderella Boy by Kristina Meister 💎🌷🌈
Autoboyography by Christina Lauren 🌿💎🌈
Crush by Richard Siken 🌿🌈🌉
We Are Okay by Nina LaCour ☀️💎🌈
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee* 🌿💎🌈

A Tiny Piece of Something Greater by Jude Sierra 🌿🌈
Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones 🌿🌈🌉
Ice Massacre by Tiana Warner ☀️🌈
Whatever.: or how junior year became totally f$@ked by S.J. Goslee 🌿💎
Princess Princess Ever After by Katie O’Neill ☀️🌈

The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich** ☀️🌈🌉
Avi Cantor Has Six Months to Live by Sacha Lamb 🌿🌷🌈
Motor Crush by Brenden Fletcher (writer), Cameron Stewart & Babs Tarr (artists) ☀️
Maurice by E.M. Forster 🌿🌈
Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan ☀️🌈

*Please note that Mackenzi Lee wrote a later book that was full of transphobia and homophobic stereotypes. Please also note that she has been called out for signing other authors’ books.

**Please note that Adrienne Rich was a TERF.

That’s it from me today, guys! Look forward to later this week for part II of this rec list from Charlotte! I hope you will have fun reading those!

And that you won’t ever say again that finding good LGBT books is hard. :>>