reviews, releases and recommendations of LGBT media
It’s a companion post of sorts to one of my previous rec lists, where I recommended people books based on their favourite Richard Siken quotes. This time the quotes are lesbian, though.
The idea is very simple: I asked our followers on twitter to choose their most beloved quote by Mary Oliver (which isn’t easy, I know!) & then tried to figure out what book does it remind me of. Sometimes based on vibes alone, sometimes based more on the plot. So let’s go.
There’s something about a good histrom that just perfectly scratches a certain itch for me. And once I find an author whose books I enjoy, I will binge their entire backlist. That being said, it’s still an area where, at least in tradpub, it’s very cishet and white. So, here I’ve done my utmost to find you 10 recs that are very much not cishet (although they do remain quite white, so if anyone has recs of their own, please do drop them in the comments!). For that time when you just need a good histrom.
Here’s another compilation post about trans & nonbinary books that all came out in one year. This time the year is 2019. Sometimes you just gotta go back in time, right?
Like always, I decided to only feature books with main characters or love interests who aren’t cis. (Or really important side characters, like parents). Of course, it’s not just YA, there are adult books on this list as well. And it absolutely is not all one genre.
For this post in particular, I’m sure I have missed some books. Please leave a comment, if you know of any books I should add! And as always, books by LGBT authors have a rainbow emoji next to the title.
See also: trans & nonbinary books of 2021 and of 2020; 100+ books by trans & nonbinary authors; twitter’s favourite trans books.
Specific labels may vary but all the books in this post have achillean main characters & are written by achillean authors. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t be reading m/m books which aren’t, roughly speaking, ownvoices. Rather, a place to celebrate the few that are.
Of course, I’m only human, so if you spot any mistakes or missing titles, let me know!
Taking a break from making very niche rec lists for a super specific trope used in an even more specific genre! So instead, I’m here today with books from various genres, featuring an even bigger array of tropes, but all of them sharing a specific representation. And yeah, the title gives it away, I know; it’s not a surprise all the books listed below have main characters who are on the asexuality spectrum. Hopefully, the selection is broad enough that everyone finds something for themself!
This idea is sort of born of this thread (which was a great thread, if I do say so myself, so there’s a little bit of overlap in some signs…but I’ve mostly tried to add new books), but I decided I wanted to turn it into a blog post featuring all LGBT books, instead of solely sapphic ones. And here we are! This post contains thirty six books, one for the sun, moon & rising for each sign. So, if you’re looking for a way to create a little fun TBR, look no further!
Of course, I couldn’t start this post without having mentioned Anaïs, who is vastly more knowledgeable of astrology than me, and who helped a lot with fitting the right books in.
Want to skip to your sign?
A companion post to the one from the beginning of the year. Over 100 books with canon bisexual and/or pansexual protagonists. Or love interests. Or really major side characters.
My guidelines for choosing books to include in this post were pretty simple: either a character just uses the label or the text makes it abundantly clear that they’re bi/pan. (As you can imagine, not a lot of fantasy or historical books use modern labels.) If I missed anything that you think should be on the list, please let me know in the comments!
Like always on this blog, the rainbow emoji indicates that the book is by an LGBT author. 🌈
Hopefully July is treating you all well so far (I’m sat here, watching torrential rain)! Today’s post is one that, with luck, you’ve all been anticipating. Anna posted about YA releases on Friday, and now I’m posting about the sapphic releases of the second half of 2021 (bi releases will be up in a few days too, so keep an eye out!). Not all of these have sapphic main characters, but they do feature (to the best of my knowledge) somewhat prominent sapphic characters at least.
You can, of course, find January to June’s releases here.
Undoubtedly I have missed books (we all know that, as soon as I post this, there’ll be five more to add, minimum), so I’ll be checking back on the post pretty regularly to add more.
July’s book of the month is a welcome addition to the subgenre of romance that features trans main characters. If you find yourself loving YA trans lit, but pining for something more adult to go along with that, then you’ll want to check this book out. So without further ado, scroll on to find out more!
Today’s post is a collaboration with a group of bloggers. The idea came from Mols and she reached out to a number of trans and nonbinary bloggers, in hopes of creating a truly giant rec list of books. So here we are, with over 100 titles!
To see the full list, though, and not just my contribution, you have to check out everyone’s posts! So head over to those lovely people: Mols @ Mols by Moonlight, Artie @ ArtieCarden, Ocean @ Oceans of Novels, Anniek @ Anniek’s Library, Bertie @ Luminosity Library, Andee @ Mouse Reads, Danni @ The Rush of a Book, Vee @ Vee_Bookish!
Please keep in mind, all the books are written by trans and/or nonbinary authors, but not every single one of them features such rep.
The final post in our intersection series is here! Today we’re looking at books which feature neurodiverse or disability rep. That does, of course, give us a vast array of stories to choose from, and we couldn’t represent every possible facet of it in a single post. As such, perhaps even more than the lists, this is very much a starter pack. And if you don’t see a more popular one on here, that you might have been expecting, that’s just because we wanted to highlight those which aren’t often recced.
Everything else we’ve featured in this series can be found here: Black, African & Caribbean lit, East Asian lit, West Asian lit, South Asian lit, Southeast Asian lit, Indigenous lit, religion in lit.
The penultimate rec list in this series is one that covers LGBT lit in which faith and religion play a big role (but isn’t always the sole focus, mind). We’ve done our best here to feature as many religions as possible, but, as you might expect, some are (as ever) easier to find than others. The sections are sorted alphabetically (with a miscellaneous section which represents books covering multiple religions) so are easily searchable.
The series so far: Black, African & Caribbean lit, East Asian lit, West Asian lit, South Asian lit, Southeast Asian lit, Latine lit, Indigenous lit, neurodiversity & disability in lit.
We didn’t find much more examples (outside of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism), but here, have this documentary about a lesbian Taoist priestess and her daughter.
This was probably the trickiest list so far. We wanted to cover as many different indigenous peoples as we could—obviously limited by what’s published and/or available and/or translated—of which, there are some easier to find than others (as is probably clear). There’s also a fair amount of overlap with at least some of the previous lists, so we’ve tried not to duplicate books (although authors may feature more than once here, and across lists).
This list is a little bit different to the previous ones. We aren’t marking with flags, or including an emoji to indicate diaspora. Instead, we’ll split the list by continent, and make a note for specifics. As such, this is going to be a longer list than previous ones (although undoubtedly you’ll spot where we couldn’t find any books).
And once again, briefly, some links to the series so far: Black, African & Caribbean lit, East Asian lit, West Asian lit, South Asian lit, Southeast Asian lit, Latine lit, religion in lit, and neurodiversity & disability in lit.
And more links! Hausa lit, New Zealand lit (not all indigenous), some Sami lit (although not translated into English), North American lit (and here).
Next up in our intersectional rec posts is Latine lit! We’ve done our best to cover as much of Latin America as possible here, but once again, what we can offer depends very much on what we can find and, as such, you’ll see pretty clearly where the gaps are. But. We hope you find something to enjoy on here! And there are plenty of links to search further (& if you speak Spanish, you’re in luck, we found some untranslated lit too!).
As before, we’re using flags to mark a country of origin (where possible) and a separate emoji (🏹) to mark if the author is a diaspora author.
And once again, briefly, some links to the series so far: Black, African & Caribbean lit, East Asian lit, West Asian lit, South Asian lit, Southeast Asian lit, Indigenous lit, religion in lit, and neurodiversity & disability in lit.
As ever, more links: this Mexican book, which remains untranslated (boo), Chicana/Latina lesbians, Latine YA books, 9 books to read before you die, this Venezuelan book, again untranslated, some untranslated Ecuadorian essays, Puerto Rican lit (not all LGBT, but some by nonbinary authors), this (translated into German and French) book of stories about Argentine trans women, more Latin American authors, and some poets!
The last of our lists covering Asia (if only because with the remaining regions we’d probably struggle to get 30 books), today we’ve got for you 30 books by Southeast Asian authors. I’m kind of running out of things to say in this introduction, since it’s much the same as previous posts: we haven’t read all of them, so it’s more a collection, than a rec list. So yeah. Enjoy.
As before, we’re using flags to mark a country of origin (where possible) and a separate emoji (🏹) to mark if the author is a diaspora author.
And once again, briefly, some links to the series so far: Black, African & Caribbean lit, East Asian lit, West Asian lit, South Asian lit, Latine lit, Indigenous lit, religion in lit, and neurodiversity & disability in lit.
And more links! Indonesian lit (primarily in Indonesian), Malaysian lit, Singaporean lit (and also here), and variously here.
