reviews, releases and recommendations of LGBT media
Forgive me if I keep this brief, this post took longer than I expected, and I really need to sleep. But here it is! The final part of our “like this, try that” series, this one dedicated to solely straight media.
Apologies for the sort of… eclectic mix of media. When we thought about this, we realised we didn’t actually know a whole lot of straight media ourselves, so asked twitter (and pooled some ideas). So yeah.
Happy Pride and enjoy!
Another part of our “If you liked this, try that” series! So far, we recced you books and movies this way. And now it’s time for music!
I chose ten pretty popular musicians and for each one, based on their most distinct traits, I tried to recommend you 3 less popular artists. Of course, everyone I encourage you to listen to in this post is a member of the LGBT community.
Happy Pride, guys! Discover some new music!
About, oh a month or two back, I asked a question on twitter. Namely, if you had to rec a single LGBT book (cruel I know), what would it be.
Well, these are the results — 50+ books recommended by 50+ folks!
Another installment of our new series! The formula stays exactly the same: I chose 10 popular titles and based on each of them I recommended 3 less popular and, of course, LGBT titles.
If you’re looking for new things to watch during Pride (or just in general), this is definitely your lucky day!
Discussion posts aren’t exactly a regular feature on this blog, to be sure, not least because we generally find ourselves wondering what exactly we can discuss. But today, we do actually have a topic for you.
And it relates to history.
I (Charlotte) made a tweet about 9 days back (here) asking people to read a nonfiction book about LGBT history sometime this month. Really, the reasoning behind it is what spawned this post.
So read on, and let us know what you think!
This month we decided to add a little series to the blog, one that centres on reccing a piece of media, given another, more popular piece of media. It’ll come in four parts: books, films and TV, and music, and then straight media specifically.
So today’s post is the first of those parts. We’ve picked 10 pretty popular books or series (which may themselves have some form of LGBT rep), and recced you three other books depending on what you might like about that series.
(As ever, 🌈 means the author identifies as LGBT.)
Our first rec list of the month has a theme! And that is, books which fit the labels assigned to the colours in Gilbert Baker’s pride flag (with the added black and brown stripes, obviously).
So we took each label as a prompt and tried our best to come up with a theme, and a book each to pick that theme.
And if you want to take this as a book tag and do your own post, please do because we would love to see what you’d rec!
(As ever, 🌈 means the author identifies as LGBT.)
As a special Pride Month celebration, me and Anna decided that this year we were going to pick each other’s TBRs. Now, both of us are notoriously bad at actually keeping to TBRs, so this could go absolutely terribly, who knows!
We each picked 5 fiction (or poetry) books and one nonfiction book that we thought the other might like (or hoped). So check back in July to see how we got on!
(Oh, and keep following, because we have some exciting things for you this month!)
Last day of Pride, but not the last interview!! We will be back with those in the weeks to come!
Today though, as always, we have an interview that both Charlotte and me are super excited about! We got a chance to talk with Julian just days before the first arcs of his upcoming book – How To Be Remy Cameron – became available for readers. (It comes out on September 10th & you definitely want to pre-order a copy already!)
We chatted about different ways of channeling your artistic energy, the spaces we still need to fill with LGBT characters, and how important it is to just be yourself.
Have fun reading!!
It’s here. Our last buddy read (for now at least). It is probably safe to say that neither me nor Anna have had a stellar time here. We were hugely disappointed by the first one, Anna couldn’t even finish the second, and I didn’t enjoy the third at all. So, a lot has been riding on this book to make up for all that.
Read on to find out if our high hopes were met!
We don’t talk about music a lot on our blog, but I guess when we do, it’s with a bang! Which is to say, I’m here today with a list of 60 LGBT artists. And yes, I say artists, not just songs – each and every one of them is an out member of our community. (Well, there are a few bands and some of them only have a lead singer who matches that description, but you know!)
I had to make some decisions regarding the way of presenting all this beauty to you. First of all, I divided those sixty artists into three groups of wlw, mlm & those who are not cis. (I was gonna go with “trans/nonbinary”, but there are also genderfluid, gender nonconforming artists, even a Two-Spirit one, so I figured I need a pretty broad umbrella term here). Obviously, there are some intersections within those groups, but I wanted even numbers… And lastly, I linked them all to my favourite album/single of theirs on Spotify, so I could put covers & make it all look pretty.
So! Take a quiz and figure out who should you listen to!* Or just scroll through them all.
*Charlotte made me specify that when I say “dancing alone in your room” in the quiz, what I mean is dancing slowly with your eyes closed, the sound of rain coming through the window & maybe by the end of it you won’t be as tired anymore.
It’s time for another part of our new favourite series!
Kayla is a really good friend, but more importantly – one of my favourite authors in general & authors of LGBT books specifically. So obviously I jumped at the opportunity to have her take part in this project faster than Charlotte finished saying “interviews”.
Let’s just say, we’re very thankful to Kayla for finding a few free moments to email us her answers to our silly questions. And that also means a huge thanks for sharing some vague but hilarious and lowkey exclusive details about her upcoming books! You guys should be really excited about everything she has in store, just saying. 👀👀
Ready or not, let’s do this, guys!!
Week three of our little, proud project is upon us and this time we were reading a book with a bisexual protagonist. Cool fact about this book is that the MC actually uses the label, it shows up multiple times and there’s actual on page representation. Feels good, feels organic. (It’s also another book by Ashley Herring Blake where that happens!)
That being said, if you count me and Anna individually, we’re currently going 1 in 4 for how good our buddy reads are. So, to say we’re really hoping the last book improves on that is an understatement…
Read on to find out which one of us actually enjoyed this week’s book!
How publishers market (or don’t market) LGBT books is something me and Anna have complained about a fair bit to each other before. So we thought, why not turn those complaints into a bit of a discussion. As people who aim to promote pretty much every single LGBT book we can find, this is something important to us. We want these books to do well, so the way they often get marketed is… annoying to us in the least.
Before we start, we want to make it absolutely clear that we have nothing to do with publishing in any way. This is just our (often frustrated) perspective as readers and as bloggers.
So, let’s go!
So hey, today’s interview is special for two reasons! First of all, we talked with Sophie Cameron and we both love her! We chatted about music, getting inspiration from television ads & the next book Sophie is working on. But this post is actually also part of a blog tour for her latest book!
Last Bus to Everland came out in the UK back in May, but the American edition is getting released today. It’s getting a brand new, beautiful cover by Aimee Fleck, too! So that’s what we’re here to celebrate. (Scroll to the end for the whole schedule for the blog tour.)
And since I said we’re celebrating the book, do be aware that Charlotte reviewed Last Bus to Everland on her blog!
Brody Fair feels like nobody gets him: not his overworked parents, not his genius older brother, and definitely not the girls in the projects set on making his life miserable. Then he meets Nico, an art student who takes Brody to Everland, a “knock-off Narnia” that opens its door at 11:21pm each Thursday for Nico and his band of present-day misfits and miscreants.
Here Brody finds his tribe and a weekly respite from a world where he feels out of place. But when the doors to Everland begin to disappear, Brody is forced to make a decision: He can say goodbye to Everland and to Nico, or stay there and risk never seeing his family again.
Sophie Cameron
Published: 18th June 2019
Goodreads
Rep: gay mc, gay li, gay/pan/lesbian side characters, hijabi side character, side character in wheelchair, side character with agoraphobia
I’m starting to feel like I could disappear, and they wouldn’t even notice.
