It’s been a weird, transitional year filled with an exciting variety of stresses and challenges… but hot damn, did I have some excellent fiction to carry me through it. Below are my favourite books I read in 2022, from funky queer sci-fi to uplifting teen rom-coms.
As of next year, I’ll be moving across to Story Graph for all my book-cataloguing needs! Send me a friend request if you’re on there~
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2021 was another categorically Really Weird Year, but gosh there were some good books! This is my personal list of favourites, ranging from chaotic coming-of-age comedies to mythical urban fantasies to mecha battles to portal fantasies to time-hopping romances and back again. Take a look and see what catches your eye—and as always, let me know what your favourite reads were! There are always, always more novels to add to the pile.
(A title like “Best Queer Books I Read in 2021” would be superfluous—basically, assume these have queer protagonists or at least main ensemble cast members. It is the sensible option at this point on this blog)
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We’ve reached the final book recommendation post for Pride Month 2021. This time, I’m dipping into another medium I read a lot of, and which is yielding an increasingly varied and exciting platter of LGBTQIA+ storytelling: manga.
The distinction between “queer manga” and manga that falls into romance genres like yuri (which might feature close relationships between women, but don’t always touch on subjects like queer identity—and may even still be floating in the “close, pure, romantic friendship” tropes of the olden days) is somewhat blurry, but for the purposes of this post I’m combining them all under one umbrella. Some of these are more of the fluffy romance variety that brushes over what we might consider queer themes like coming out, and some of them deal with that more directly and poignantly. Some of them are fluffy romances that also talk about the realities of being queer in modern day Japan!
I’ve tried to gather a variety, though remember that this list is merely some of my personal favourites from my personal reading habits: there is plenty more manga with LGBTQIA+ content out there that I have yet to get to! So, as always, please do leave your own recommendations in the comments.
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Earlier this month, I listed some of my favourite works of YA sci-fi and fantasy featuring queer protagonists. Now, we return to the real world for yet more! These are all set in a realistic, modern day and focus on the emotional ins and outs of growing up: first loves, figuring out your identity, navigating the many weird liminal spaces you might find yourself in as you teeter between what we call childhood and what we call adulthood.
As always, please leave your own recs in the comments below—I’m always looking for more!
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Queer stuff can sometimes be hard to get your head around—take it from me, a person who has been on a deeply befuddling identity journey and been swimming in the deep pool that is queer theory for nearly four years. Academia on queer and gender issues is notoriously difficult for the everyperson to get into, often associated with stuffy and complex language and galaxy-brain concepts that may or may not resonate with one’s own day-to-day experience.
This is not universally true, and I promise not all academics are trying actively to make their work inaccessible as some sort of wicked ploy. Still, trying to Do Your Research and hitting a mental roadblock can be alienating and demoralising. Not everyone can pick up Judith Butler and immediately absorb that stuff into their brain (seriously, don’t feel bad—I have senior supervisors who admit to needing to read her work a couple times to “get it”!).
The good news is, you don’t have to! There are more accessible, beginner-friendly resource books on queer identity than ever before, and I’ve compiled a little list of some of the texts I’ve found most helpful, both for research and for fun.
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I read a lot of YA novels here on this blog. Certainly not as many as some other folks, but enough that I have a few excellent books up my sleeve if you ever ask me for recommendations. So this month, in honour of the celebrations of LGBTQIA+ activism and liberation that take place in June, I’m compiling some lists of favourites from the field of YA with queer protagonists.
Today, we look at sci-fi and fantasy: in the stories below we have swashbuckling pirates, ghost boyfriends, magic-thieves, teen witches, space wizards, and more! Queer readers are getting to see themselves in an immensely exciting variety of magical adventures, and this is merely a handful of my personal faves. Read on to see if any pique your interest, and leave any recommendations of your own in the comments!
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2020 was certainly a year of ups and downs, as just about every annual retrospective post will tell you… but today we’re going to focus on the “ups”, particularly as they pertain to books! Because goodness, there was some goodness out there in the booky world: some that uplifted me, some that sent me on harrowing and fascinating journeys, and some that knocked me clean over (see above).
Read on for my favourites that I read this year—novels, graphic novels, and even a smattering of non-fiction. I hope that you find something that sounds fun, because these works certainly brought me joy this year!
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Guess who read an awful lot this year? With the amount of books that I enjoyed, I figured I’d put together a big roundup! This is divided into three sections based on the mix of things I was reading – expect to find manga, yuri, a bunch of good YA, and a sprinkling of genre studies. Continue reading
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The Afictionado 