August & September Book Report!

A special nerdy edition

Y’all. It has been a great few months for my inner nerd. A lot of the rest of me is exhausted, but the part of me that likes reading books is very, very happy.

Look at this bookstore I found!! It’s called “Hidden Barn Books” in Bar Harbor, Maine!! So cozy!

Most of this edition is going to be for paid subscribers at first and will be accessible in a month to everyone else, but I have two recommendations I want to give to everybody right off the bat!

Nonfiction: Advocacy Made Easy by Cynthia Changyit Levin

This book was written by a dear friend of mine. If you enjoyed either of my two recent articles Advocacy for Scaredy Cats or 50 things you can do for trans rights, this is the book for you!!

It’s a warmly written, accessible, quick guide to getting started in advocacy. Before you start to say “how do I know anything will help anyways?” this book does a really phenomenal job with connecting stories of real, regular-person activism with genuine community-changing impacts! It’s available for preorder now and I highly, highly recommend it!

AND because the author is so cool and awesome, she shared a 20% off discount code for Good Queer News Readers!! Just use the promo code “GOODQUEERNEWS” at checkout!

Fiction: Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove

I think this book might end up being a top book of the year for me. The premise of this book is a hilarious genre blend between classic old fantasy stories and modern sci-fi and AI pilots. Imagine Ancillary Justice but with ruder computers and dracula.

I LOVED the overall flow of this book, the strange found/built family dynamics, the sassiness and affection of the AIs. I listened to this as an audiobook—which is fully cast and phenomenal in its own way—as well as reading the physical book, and I loved both. So queer, hilariously anti-capitalist, and very, very unique!

Okay, the rest of this is going to be for my lovely paid subscribers, but as a reminder:

If you want a free upgrade to paid, you can share this newsletter with friends, buy & review a copy of my book (and tell me about it), or literally just ask me and I will upgrade you for free, no questions asked.

Okay what’s up besties!! Just us cool kids here now. I’ve also got a whole bunch of new friends who are getting a free upgrade since they pay to support my homie KB Brookins. What’s up new friends!!

BTW I don’t like to post my upcoming location on the general internet, but if any of y’all will be at the PFLAG national conference this weekend OR Out & Equal’s workplace summit next week, I’ll be attending both to give presentations about joy and advocacy and would love to see you there!

Back to the books!

August

I spent a lot of the month reading the unpublished (yet!!) manuscripts of some of my dear friends, so I don’t have anything to share about those. But when they hit the shelves, prepare yourself for screaming. My screaming. And yours, because you’re going to love them.

In the interim, I did get to squeeze in a couple of outstanding fantasy novels by talented and award winning authors with the express purpose of making me a better writer, and it WORKED!

First up was a re-read of The Killing Moon by NK Jemisin. It was one of the first books I read as an adult getting back into reading, and reading it again as an author and a more intentional reader was such a different experience. Though NK Jemisin did also teach a literal masterclass, reading any book she writes is a masterclass in worldbuilding and complexity.

Next up was So Let Them Burn, by Kamilah Cole, which was an incredible young adult high fantasy about community, colonialism, resistance, belonging, trust, and DRAGONS! Casually queer, outright revolutionary, and gorgeous prose to boot. Thanks to plane rides and road trips, I read this in like 2 days.

THEN, while in Maine with my family, I stumbled upon Hidden Barn Books. Let me tell you, this absolutely adorable barn was certainly hidden, and they had BOOKS! I left with a signed copy of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, or as the author V.E. Schwab calls it on social media: Toxic Lesbian Vampires. She’s right!! This book demands you take your time. Pining. Actual moral greyness (not just a vaguely misogynistic man with no EQ. I see you booktok), this book is MESSY. I spent about 3 weeks reading this one and loved every second of it.

September

Nonfiction

I started the month by speed reading a lovely nonfiction for an article I was writing. The book, which I wrote about here, was called Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul, by Dorcas Cheng-Tazun, and it was absolutely delightful. So many great insights on ways that quiet folks, introverted folks, disabled folks, anxious folks, burned out folks, and more can contribute to the fight!

I also spent most of my mornings reading about 10 pages a day of the book “Rewrite your Rules”, by Morgan DeBaun, and then taking some time to journal and sit with the questions she asked. I will admit that my reading “guilty pleasure” (though I don’t actually feel much guilt and am putting it on the internet for all to see) is books about business, personal growth, success, productivity, screen time, and self-improvement. By and large, I find myself mostly drawn to books in this category written by Black Women. I don’t want to exploit someone else and call it networking. I don’t want to worship at the altar of homophobe billionaire oligarchs. I want to do work that feels good, spend my time well, get out of my own way, maximize the positive impact I can have on the world, and take care of my family while I do it. I find that Black Women writing self help and business books often have the brilliance and real world wisdom that I’m actually looking for.

While doing my traveling last month, I also finally got off hold at the library for “What if we get it Right?” by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. THIS BOOK!!! Made up largely of a series of interviews with climate activists about hope, change, progress, and dreams for the future, this is the balm I did not know how badly I needed when it comes to climate. After all, there can be no good queer news if there is no earth on which to have the news! This book is a love letter to climate justice, a graspable vision of the future, and a kick in the pants to get the heck to work!

Fiction

First off was my most anticipated (and, sadly, most disappointing) read of the month: Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. There was a lot I loved in this book—it had some really memorable characters, a really gorgeously described physical setting, and I really loved the setup. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I were a person in academia with the flavor of trauma R.F. Kuang seems to carry from that experience. This seems like a very funny satire of academia, though I wish the character growth didn’t take quite so long. Truth be told, I think I just wasn’t the target audience for this book; it reads like one long inside joke for academics who really like philosophy or linguistics. If that’s you, I think you’ll genuinely love it.

As an isolated book I enjoyed it and I had a reasonably fun reading experience, but as an RF Kuang book I was definitely hoping for something a bit more profound. I loved the way she started to explore the pains of chronic illness, but I wish it had showed up in more ways than just character experience (i.e. some metaphor or visual representation of it).

Then, since I only had a couple days before leaving for my trip, I decided to do a re-read of an old favorite: Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi. I absolutely adore translated Japanese fiction and magical realism, especially when it touches on issues I care about! This is a strange yet gentle novella about a woman who pretends to be pregnant so she doesn’t have to do the dirty work/invisible labor at her office. It follows her through the nine months of getting increasingly attached to this fake baby, and is such a trip all the way around. I love it.

Mid-way through the month, I finally started reading The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Talk about messy! Talk about real! Talk about dreaming of a better future! Le Guin is one of the most brilliant minds of science fiction and revolution, and this is seen as one of her seminal works. It follows a physicist living in an anarchist society on a barren planet who decides to take a visit to the planet of wealth, capitalism, and greed and is changed deeply by what he finds. I still have about 60 pages to go, but I’ll leave you with this quote I read last night that continues to stick with me:

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”

I absolutely love that. I try to live my life in a similar way--if there is a way I am hoping the world will change, I have to live my life in a way that makes that true. I have to be a vote of belief in that better world, not just a voice telling others to do it.

Finally, I’m about halfway through Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune, which I got as a birthday gift. There’ve been a lot of valid criticisms of house in the cerulean sea, but given that authors, like the rest of us, are people who have the ability to reflect on past mistakes and grow/change, I decided to give it a shot to see how Klune has grown in the past few years. The first book in the series was heavily inspired by the 60s scoop—the horrific practice in Canada of stealing indigenous children from their homes to bring them to residential schools. The second book appears to have completely dropped that premise and is now a very heavy handed metaphor about trans kids. I’m enjoying the young characters (though most of the adults are not super memorable) and will probably finish the book, but it’s unlikely to earn a spot in my recommendation rotation.

~Fin~

Okay, whew! I’m tired just looking at all that. But also my heart is full. I love to read, and it’s really important to me to MAKE time to read; not just to hope a free hour shows up (because it won’t). I read at least one page every single night before bed (usually a lot more, but sometimes literally it’s one) and start every day by reading a few pages before I look at any screens. I plan out audiobooks for my road trips or my cooking time, and I schedule in a no-screens lunch break for me and a book at least once a week. Not everyone has the ability to make quite so much time, and I doubt I’ll have this much time at every period of my life, but I hope if you are wanting to read more you’re able to make that time for yourself!

I’d love to hear more about what YOU’VE been reading this summer! Anything I should add to my TBR??

That’s all for now! Until next time!

All my love,

Ben