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    Music Recs: 6 Sapphic Songs as Delicate as Mary Oliver’s Poetry

    I’m sure I’m not the only one who still can’t believe Mary Oliver died. She was such an amazing person, such a calming force in this world. Her poetry was always simple but evoking the most complicated feelings; delicate but hitting straight in the heart with a power of a bulldozer. She was one of a kind. She was making the world a softer place just by sharing her words with us.

    So I was wondering how to celebrate her beautiful legacy on Reads Rainbow, because there was no doubt in my mind we have to talk about a lesbian poet as iconic as her. And I decided that as much as I love her poetry, I want to do something different. I mean, I can let you know what are my favourite collections of hers… But I wanted to translate her tenderness into another medium. Hence the songs.

    What works better with poetry than music, right? (I’m from Poland, we have a whole genre literally called ‘sung poetry’. Remind me to talk about that more some day.)

    I selected six songs by sapphic artists that sounded to me as softly as Mary’s poems. I hope you’ll enjoy. And when you’re already at it, check out what 2018 LGBT music videos I recommended the other day.

  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: Gay Spanish Poets

    If there’s one thing me and Anna want to do with this blog, it’s expand your horizons when it comes to LGBT lit. So, in that vein, we also want to review and recommend some literature that you might not have thought about reading before, namely literature in languages other than English. And to kick this off, I decided to write a post about some gay Spanish poets.

    I know, I know. Your first thought may be something along the lines of woah, this is pretty niche, I don’t know if I’m interested in this. But. Bear with me here (and also with the length of this post, my slightly rusty/clunky translating skills, etc, etc). I spent an afternoon down a rabbit hole (aka Wikipedia) just to find some gay Spanish poets (it’s a procrastination technique). Most of them don’t have English translations, so it’s gonna go like this: a little bio about the author, and then one of my favourite poems of theirs, which I’ll attempt to translate (or, where possible, provide a translation from the internet). Hence why I’m apologising for the length of this post and my translating skills before we even get started.

    I really hope you enjoy reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it (and staring at the cost of actually reading some of these authors’ collections. No one should be charging upwards of even £20, not including shipping, for a poetry collection. No one), and let me know if this is something you would like to see more of!

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

    Today is the day (for better or for worse). We’ve reached the last part of our recs list (sad face). You can find the rest of the list here. I’m really not sure what to say here, because it’s all been said, and I just feel like saying more would mean talking out my arse, so like. On to the books!

    A brief reminder of the key:

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

  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

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

    I really hope I can say “here comes the post you’ve all been waiting for!!” and be right… Well, the post does come, so I’m already halfway there… In any case! Like the title says, this is part 3 of our very big and very great, and very much made up of books by & for the LGBT community recommendations list!

    Today I give you books number 51 all the way to 75. There’s only one post in this series left! (So far. Charlotte & I hope you guys would be interested in more posts like this when we hit our next followers milestone!)

    Question we already asked on twitter (here): would you be interested in a Q&A, to get to know Charlotte and me better? Let us know in the comments!

    Before you dive in, make sure you read part one and part two of our Great Big LGBT Rec List! And take one more look at how we mark the rep in this series:

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

  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

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

    It’s Friday, which means (you guessed it!) Anna is finally letting me post the second part of the Great Big Rec List! (I’m kidding, kind of. Anna keeps the posts on this blog regular.) Anna posted her first 25 here, and you can find all of the parts of this list here or by the link in the menu up top.

    So, here is a list of 25 of my favourite LGBT books. I say of my favourite because, not unexpectedly, when I tried to write down only 50 books, the list kept spilling over (so did Anna’s, which is good news for you guys because it means there might be more than 4 parts to this series). The books on here are all ones I’ve loved, and they’re also all ones which end on a, if not always outright happy, then hopeful note. (You can always trust me and Anna not to rec you tragic gay stories, or ones which end up burying their gays, just fyi.) There are some books that need trigger warnings on this list, so if you’re wondering, just drop us a comment and we can answer any questions!

    Once again, the key to the rep is:

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

  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    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!

  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature,  Most Anticipated & Best

    Book Recs: Best of 2018

    As 20gayteen comes to a close, me and Anna wanted to take a moment to reflect on the best books we read this year. Of course, you know that, given the chance, each of us alone would be able to go on for days about our best reads, so, after some deliberation, we decided to only post three books each (yeah, I know. Only. Three).

    Not unexpectedly, we then each took ages in picking those three (there have just been so many amazing books this year!). But, in the end, we have this. Three books each, representing (some of) our favourites from 2018. Enjoy!

  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: Graphic Novels

    Let’s be real, what’s better than some graphic novels. I mean, you get a great story and great artwork! (Also, you get a nice boost to your reading challenge, if you’re a bit behind at times like me…)

    So today I’m here with ten titles, all of them featuring LGBT leads, most of them actually having way more than one character who’s not cishet. A Christmas gift for you all, if you will. :>>

    Enjoy!

    And if you need more, here’s a post about LGBT graphic novels, part II.

  • All Recommended,  Book Recs,  Literature

    Book Recs: NA Romances

    If you’re like me, then you’ll understand that sometimes, you really have to read a romance novel. And, of course, 99% of the time, you just can’t find a decent LGBT one – it’s all either sex-filled and lacking tension, or straight-up awful. So, the point of this list is to rec you ten of the best LGBT NA romances I’ve read (hopefully, to be the first part of many).