reading-with-nixie

[reading-with-nixie]

[reading-with-nixie]

Top 11(ish) Books of 2017

This was a weird year for me reading-wise in a lot of ways. For one - I didn’t just fail my 100 book challenge, I basically turbo-failed it: I only read about 44 books (I’m on 45 now). Like last year, this year was not conducive to reading for many reasons. As most of you know, this year was pretty shit for me until about late September, and then in early October I switched to full-time employment and needed to chop my long commute into three much shorter parts - meaning that reading on my commute became harder.

All that said, I actually read more books that I actually liked this year than I have previously, because I started being less strict about my rules for putting down books. I used to only stop reading books if I had a major ideological difference with the text (not the story, the text - if this confuses you, talk to me). But this year I also stopped reading books if I noticed that I wasn’t inclined to read them. I finally settled into the fact that there are enough books out there that I’d love to waste my time on ones I don’t. So instead of 10 or 9 favorites this year - I have 11 or 12 (I lumped two books together; I’ll explain why when I get there).

So here we go, in no particular order:

1) Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

You’ll probably notice a trend for this year, which is that I read a lot of horror/thriller novels - Elizabeth is Missing falls into the thriller category, but only because of the point of the view in which it is written. Namely, the protagonist is an elderly woman named Maud who struggles with dementia. 

She is convinced that her friend Elizabeth has gone missing and that her older sister Sukey (who disappeared herself after World War II) was murdered by her husband. But no one is listening to her about Elizabeth, nor did anyone listen to her about Sukey - so Maud decides to solve both mysteries by herself. 

This book was memorable for me, again, because of the POV. The book portrays exactly how terrifying it is to feel with all your might that something is true, only to have everyone around you be dismissive. The reader also gets a glimpse into Maud forgetting things that her daughter, caretaker, and other people surrounding her say. So what happened to Sukey? What happened to Elizabeth? Is Elizabeth even missing in the first place?

All in all a very interesting read, but if you’re already terrified of aging, I’d maybe pass. 

2) The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley

Kameron Hurley is a Hugo award winner and a woman...which means she’s needed to deal with a lot of shitty nerd boys. This (pretty inclusive) book discusses feminist sff, misogyny in nerd culture, and (most prominently) what it’s like trying to thrive in sff as a woman. Especially a woman who writes diverse books. 

This book is great for feminists and nerds - but above all I recommend it for my woman writerly friends. I really enjoyed her snark, but the main thing I got out of this book was an extreme increase in my desire to create.

3) The Girl with All the Gifts by MR Carey

This was definitely one of the more inventive books I’ve read this year or possibly ever. I’ve described it to people as being a zombie book that reads (at least in part) like a fairy tale; it’s been compared to Matilda a lot -- which I think makes sense. 

The narrator for much (though not all) of the novel is Melanie, who is a child zombie who “grew up” in an army base/school for child zombies. Then one day the school is attacked and Melanie, her favorite teacher (their relationship is really fucking touching), and some military folks escape and must try to survive out in the world. 

The book switches narrators, which allows for some interesting shifts in perspective. Some parts feel more like a typical horror novel than others, but all in all I would highly recommend this to someone who is interested in seeing a unique approach to zombies or horror. Or just people who like horror novels and also like Matilda. 

4) All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Another really unique one -- but very, very different from the last. This one won the Pulitzer Prize and pretty much all the awards in 2014 and goddamn if there isn’t a reason. 

This one is less unique for the way it tells its story (it’s very lyrical, but not particularly groundbreaking in that regard as far as I remember), but for the content of the story itself. It’s a story set during WWII in Europe...but not the sort of story you’d expect. The main characters of the story are a young blind girl living in Nazi-occupied France and a German kid who ends up (obviously) working with Nazis. Neither of them ends up in a concentration camp or anything like that. Rather, Marie-Laure must deal with the social and economic everyday consequences of the occupation and Werner sees terrible shit happening around him all the time and doesn’t interfere despite having an increasingly bad feeling about what the German army is doing. 

Obviously, the novel is heavy as fuck, so definitely proceed with tissues. 

5) Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire and The Diviners by Libba Bray

These two go together in my head, so I’m also putting them together here. They have completely different premises, but I read them at the same time and there are some weird similarities. Most notably, both books have serial killer antagonists who remove body parts from their victims - and the same body parts at that. 

Every Heart a Doorway is a really interesting novella which explores the idea what happens to children once they return from magical worlds (a la Alice in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia). Nancy is a newcomer to a boarding school for these kids who makes fast friends with a couple of her classmates. When someone starts killing them, Nancy and her new pals come under suspicion and need to prove their innocence, and in so doing save the school from being shut down. It’s actually a novella, so it’s fairly easy to read in a short period of time. And gets a TON of brownie points for having a CANONICALLY ASEXUAL MAIN CHARACTER. 

The Diviners is set in the Roaring 20s and features a cast of teens with various and sundry magical powers that have to deal with shutting down a ghost that some dumbass rich kids unleash with a luigi board in the first scene. I was kind of pissed that there’s a scene early on in which sexual assault occurs and the narrative never addresses it as such - but aside from that major qualm I have with it, it’s solid. Also, totally spooky.

I recommend both of these books - just maybe not the same time? Don’t repeat my mistakes. 

6) The Secret History by Donna Tartt

If you know me more than just in passing, you know that I love me some Dark Shit™ in my literature. The Secret History more than satisfied that craving. The story, set in a rural Vermont college (apparently a Bennington expy...which I’m gonna go ahead and say is NOT a complement to Bennington), is one of pretentious classics students who are basically a cult. A new kid comes to the school, gets indoctrinated into said basically-cult’s bullshit, and gets fully entrenched into their bullshit when they semi-accidentally kill a guy and THEN kill one of the basically-cult-members (this is not a spoiler - the book literally opens with them killing the dude).  

It’s definitely not for everybody, but if you are also Team Dark Shit™ and like gorgeous writing - it’s probably for you. You’ll probably get even more out of it if you A) went to college in rural New England or B) were a classics student.

7) The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Hate U Give is another book that got a LOT of hype and 100% deserves every amount of praise it received. 

Sixteen year old Staff is one of few Black kids at a private school and still lives in a poor neighborhood, thus she divides herself up into two versions of herself to fit who those two communities expect her to be. One night, she’s being driven home from a party by an old friend (Khalil) they get pulled over and Khalil is fatally shot by an officer.

Both the media at large, at least one of Starr’s white friends, and a local drug lord try to paint Khalil as a thug. Thus Starr has to decide whether to stay quiet and keep her life in tact or to speak up and upend everything about her life.

Highly recommend, especially for other White folks.

8) Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Another thing to know about my reading habits: I really love mixed media and weird layout/typographical decisions.

Give me maps, photographs, whole pages with only one word, transcripts, just ALL the variety of ways of telling -- and I’m a happy camper. Like, go to a bookstore and flip through a copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. There is a reason its my favorite. 

Illuminae has an interesting story and all of these things. 

It’s sci-fi YA told from multiple POVs - the main characters are two halves of a couple that breaks up on the day that their home planet is destroyed, but there’s also an AI who becomes progressively more and more of an interesting character as it goes along. 

On top of a conspiracy, there’s a lot of action, potentially evil tech, and a scary af plague. It’s a little much for some readers, but I think it works - and it’s interesting to see several genres intersect. 

I highly recommend this for other mixed media loving folks and people who want to see how many tropes can interact with each other at once. 

9) Bird Box by Josh Malerman

Unlike most of the books I have on this list - I would actually recommend this to VERY FEW PEOPLE. It has aspects that could be triggering (namely, there’s a lot of suicide and some child abuse), it has multiple dog deaths (one of which is probably the saddest I’ve ever read; it had me crying on the bus), and is fucking TERRIFYING...but I loved it, so here it is.

In the world of Bird Box, something weird started happening - people started seeing something which launched them into a violent frenzy, causing them to sometimes kill those around them and always kill themselves. The book follows two stories - one is set five years after people started seeing whatever it is that’s driving them to madness, when Malorie and her two children need to leave their safe haven and travel down a river to a safe location that may or may not exist any longer; the other is set when Malorie is pregnant, people are just starting to see the thing, and Malorie finds (and loses) a chosen family in a sort of “how we got here” situation. 

I love this one for two main reasons: 1) It addresses things in a really interesting, vaguely Lovecraftian way because, by the very nature of the crisis, NO ONE has seen the thing (or even spoken to someone who has seen the thing) and lived to talk about it - so the characters spend the whole time wearing blindfolds, covering their eyes, or inside with things to block any windows and the readers spend the entire book having NO IDEA what the thing is. And that makes pretty much everything more terrifying. One of the most nerve-wracking moments in the novel is when a LEAF falls on someone’s shoulder and there’s the question of “OH SHIT WHAT IF IT WASN’T A LEAF” but the person obviously can’t just check. There are also several times when whatever the heck this thing is is in the same space as Malorie (in one of them it actually plays around with her goddamn blindfold) and obviously she wants to see what it is, but she can’t or she and her kids will die. Both Malorie and the reader also need to trust that her kids won’t look. 2) It addresses the sorts of questions that would occur in that situation. What if you view whatever the thing is indirectly? Are animals immune to the insanity? Couldn’t blind people just go about their lives more or less normally, provided they don’t end up around someone who saw the thing?

You can judge for yourself (or ask more questions), to figure out if this would be a good or safe read for you. 

10) Uprooted by Naomi Novik

To say that I enjoyed the experience of reading Uprooted would be completely incorrect. Anyone who was around me when I read it can tell you about the pained noises I was making most of the time. Most of the book was a conga of backfiring plans, terrifying bullshit, and the protagonist being thrown into generally unpleasant and/or bleak-looking situations. At one point I actually told Lauren “I...I don’t think I would ever say this...but it might be too depressing for me?” 

That being said, it’s actually really good - which is why I kept reading through the pain. All of the characters were really engaging, even the ones I didn’t like; I wanted to know what happened plot-wise; there’s a really interesting magic system; and so much fae nonsense. 

Agnieszka lives in a small village located near malevolent woods,a wizard takes her away from the village....and basically the entire rest of the plot is spoilers. But you should read it if you’re into fae nonsense. 

11) The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

I haven’t finished this book yet, but I’m close enough to the end that I feel comfortable recommending it.

This is another ensemble cast book featuring a spaceship full of compelling characters (one of whom is basically an alien cultural anthropologist - which is neat) that form an amazing little chosen family. 

It has a cool plot, too, but let’s be real - this book is about the characters and their relationships. Insofar as it’s possible to have representation in a book with mostly alien characters, this book pulls it off pretty well. There’s at least one lesbian couple, an essentially chronically ill character, an alien/AI relationship, and an alien who’s basically autistic. A fabulous people who like the ideas inherent in science fiction but are bored of pew-pew action crap. 

I also have one anti-recommendation to close this out, because I feel the need to warn people away from this book.

DO NOT READ BOY, SNOW, BIRD by Helen Oyeyemi. It’s a transphobic piece of shit. 

It starts off gorgeous, has some nice magical realism, involves some really good discussion of racism and what it means to be biracial...and then gets WILDLY transphobic very suddenly in the last twenty pages or so. I’ve heard people say “OH, but it’s actually a METAPHOR, you see!” but here’s the thing, you can’t use real marginalized groups as your goddamn metaphors. NOPE. Stay away from this piece of garbage, or at least don’t give Oyeyemi your money and everything except the last two chapters out of a library copy. 

[reading-with-nixie]

Weekly Wrap-Up, February 22 - March 1

Keep reading

[reading-with-nixie]

Weekly Wrap-Up, February 15 - February 21

Only read 20 pages of All the Light We Cannot See read this week, but finished The Naturals (which accounted for another 109 pages).

I didn’t finish Geek Feminist Revolution as anticipated, but read another 107 pages of it. I also got 260 pages into Slated before I decided to DNF it. Admittedly a weird decision for me to make, since I usually only DNF books that make me angry and that didn’t happen with Slated. I guess I was just finding it to be kind of mediocre and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep has been waiting for me in the wings.

[reading-with-nixie]

Weekly Wrap-Up, February 7th - February 14th

Over the last two weeks (aside from reading the whole of Middlesex), I managed to sneak in 25 pages of All the Light We Cannot See (not too surprising, since I spent barely any time at home -- not that I’m complaining).

I also finished Boy Snow Bird, which I’m profoundly disappointed in. But that was another 137 pages.

In addition, I started The Naturals on my phone, which has proven to be very easy to read and I’m now at 356 pages. Should finish it within the week. Could finish it within a day if I tried. 

And I started The Geek Feminist Revolution (which is so fucking good so far), and I’m 95 pages into it. It’s a short book, so that means I’m about halfway.

So altogether that’s 613 pages. Which if you include Middlesex is a metric fuckton of reading. I’m hoping to get in a bunch more done by the end of the week. Regardless, I should finish both The Naturals and The Geek Feminist Revolution and be able to add them to the list soon. Hooray for quick reads!

[reading-with-nixie]

Weekly Wrap-Up, January 30th - February 6

Good News: I READ MIDDLESEX. IN NINE DAYS.

Bad News: I basically only read Middlesex, my progress in the other books I’m reading was so close to nonexistent I’m not even going to bother counting it.

[reading-with-nixie]

Weekly Wrap-Up, January 23-29

This week was fairly good for my reading life; I finished Elizabeth is Missing, reading 355 pages in the process. Which means tomorrow I’m gonna start reading Middlesex! So that’s exciting.

I also read 66 pages of All the Light We Cannot See, which is confusing but also excellent, so I’m not going to question it.

I only read ten pages of Boy Snow Bird this week, which is disappointing, but makes sense given that I spent so much time with EIE. 

In the middle of last week I had planned to start reading 100 pages every day, which is very do-able for me and means I’d be reading WAY more per week. But then I fucked up. So we try again starting tomorrow. I’m way behind where I should be right now, so I need to create ways to catch up.

[reading-with-nixie]

Weekly Wrap-Up, January 16-22

This week was (thankfully) not as terrible as last week, but I thought I had done way better than I did? Probably because I got a lot of reading done at the beginning of the week and then tapered off.

I FINALLY started House of Leaves, and got 42 pages in (including the prologue).

I read 29 pages of All the Light We Cannot See, because apparently I’m incapable of reading 30 or more pages of that novel per week? It felt like I got through a lot more of it, but maybe that’s just because things are starting to get a lot more interesting now.

I got 66 more pages into Elizabeth is Missing and an AWESOME 91 more pages into Boy Snow Bird.

This totals up to 336 pages, which is (as previously stated) WAY better than last week, but I didn’t finish a book and only read one average-sized book’s worth of pages when I’m aiming to get through two books a week.

So not great. I really need to intentionally invest more time in reading if I want to catch up and meet the target 8 books for January.

[reading-with-nixie]

WRONNG BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOG.

Weekly Wrap-Up: January 8-15

Unlike last week (which just FELT like a bad reading week), this was legitimately a bad reading week.

Keep reading

[reading-with-nixie]

Weekly Wrap-Up: January 1-8

I’ve decided to do weekly wrap-ups to have a more precise way of noting how on track I am. To read 100 books in a year, I should average 8 books a month and (as such) 2 books a week. When I’m reading multiple books at once (as usually happens when I set reading challenges) I tend to feel like I’m either reading way more or way less than I actually am -- and logging how many pages I’ve actually read could be very helpful. After all, I only read 100 pages of this book this week! and I read 500 pages this week! are two very different mindsets.

I imagine these wrap-ups will also be useful in terms of analyzing my reading habits, since this year I’ll be theoretically reading at least 4 books at any given time: One on my phone, one at my house, one in my purse, and one in my backpack. Right now I also have a book at bae’s, which I hope we end up reading together (we each have a copy), but that hasn’t started yet.

For reference, reading at least 50 pages of something (provided it’s 50 pages or more long) counts as having read a book. This means that I can start a book one year, finish it the next, and have it count for both. It also means that I can DNF books and (as long as I read through 50 pages) I can still count that book.

I read 100-ish pages of Palimpsest, so it counts as both a 2016 and 2017 read.

I’ve read 68 pages of Boy, Snow, Bird (the purse read).

I read 23 pages of All The Light We Cannot See, which I’m really excited to continue, but am afraid it will take me several eternities to get through. This is my at-home book, since its a hardcover and would be the thickest by far if I didn’t have House of Leaves sitting at Nick’s.

I read approximately 340 of The Letter Q; on my phone I started it in 2016, but read barely any of it before the start of this year. I should finish it within 24 hours. Which is good, since it’s due back soon and I hate renewing books.

I also read the entirety of Alice in Tumblrland, which was my at-home book before All the Light We Cannot See and is much, much shorter. Thus why I opted to start out the year with it.

So if we’re not counting the one whole book I read this week, I read over 500 pages. which is way far and beyond what I would have thought. Rad! This is helpful already.

[reading-with-nixie]

[reading-with-nixie]

Top Books of 2016

Hi Y’all,

This has been a HORRIBLE reading year for me. I had a lot of (mostly bad) Life Events and therefore spent a lot of year having neither the time nor the concentration to read. So I only ended up reading about 25 books. But the good news is that I didn’t have a quantity goal this year. Rather, I decided to only read books with queer characters (LGBTQ+, which in practice unfortunately ended up mostly LGT -- though a lot of polysexual characters came up toward the end!). And a bunch of them were either badly-written or included pretty bad representation. But I managed to pick a surprisingly large number of books that were actually worth recommending. So here’s my top NINE of this year, in basically  no particular order, except for my top two.

Hero by Perry Moore.

This one has a gay protagonist, and that’s certainly a part of the story - but our Thom has a lot more going on in his life than just coming to terms with his sexuality. Mainly the fact that he has superpowers and has become buddy-buddy with an elite superhero team that his dad (a former hero) used to be part of and now has negative feelings toward. There’s also the fact that Thom’s mom left he and his dad.

I enjoyed this book partially because there’s a lot more to it than just a coming out narrative and also because it doesn’t shy away from other huge issues. Racism is a large part of one character’s backstory, another character has cancer and both are treated seriously but without being used in a way that feels exploitative. Rather, these characters issues are used to contrast Thom’s and put his own situation into perspective.

Recommended for: Social justice clerics and MCU fans.

Own Voices?: Yes. Perry Moore was openly gay.

George by Alex Gino

George has been talked about a lot in certain corners of the internet, and it’s really no wonder why. The book’s a middle-grade book with a trans protagonist. Seriously, George (who has spent her first day out as Melissa by the end of the novel) is a 10-year-old trans girl. It’s just about as heart-breaking as you can imagine, with our elementary schooler protagonist encountering issues with gender roles, most prominently that she wants the part of Charlotte in her school’s production of Charlotte’s Web but is denied the part for unfortunately obvious reasons.

But it’s also really optimistic. Melissa’s mom and brother don’t really get her dysphoria, but they’re earnestly trying to, which is a great first step. And her best friend is wonderful. While some bad things happen to Melissa over the course of the book, the end makes it seem like her story is set to continue in an upward trajectory.

Recommended for: Miniature humans confused about their gender and people who love them.

Own Voices?: Alex Gino is genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns whereas Melissa uses she/hers. So both are trans, just different variations thereof. So I’m gonna go with yes again here.

Saving Hamlet by Molly Booth

Full disclosure: This book was written by a friend from college. But know that I wouldn’t put it on this list if it wasn’t genuinely great. Sometimes I legitimately forgot that it was written by someone I know because it was so polished (as it should have been, it was published by Disney Hyperion) and just GOOD in a way that feels removed from anybody I know personally, if that makes any sense. ANYWAY.

Saving Hamlet tells the story of a girl who falls through a trapdoor and ends up in Elizabethan London during the first production of Hamlet while stage managing her high school’s production of the same play. She needs to deal with all sorts of changes in her life while putting on two productions of Hamlet at once and dealing with TimeTravel!Jetlag.

Our protagonist, Emma, isn’t queer (presumably. She expresses romantic/sexual feelings for several people, all of whom are dudes) - but her best friend is bisexual and actually uses the term. There is also a minor character who turns out to be gay in a minor reveal. The queerness of these characters isn’t really part of Emma’s adventure, but does factor in a way that makes sense. Doubly so because theatre.

Recommended for: Shakespeare geeks and people who would like to see a fresh approach to time travel.

Own Voices?: Molly is a GREAT ally, but as far as I know she’s straight.

Simon VS the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Speaking of queer high schoolers and theatre, there’s also this marvelous book. I FLEW through it, having read the vast majority of it on Christmas and staying up all night on 27th to finish it.

The premise is that Simon, a high school junior, has been having an email courtship with a anonymous guy who also goes to his school. Then he forgets to  log out of his email in one of the school library’s computers and someone takes a screenshot of them. Said dude then blackmails Simon. It seems like it could be REALLY deep and dark based on the description. But it’s actually pretty light-hearted and fluffy. Though Simon (and his email not-quite-boyfriend-but-basically-boyfriend) faces anxiety about coming out and gets bullied slightly after, there isn’t any violence against him and his family is pretty damn great.

The email exchanges were all so cute and good to read, and all the teenage characters actually think and talk like teenagers. Several of the characters fuck up in pretty big ways (sexism and racism are also themes in the books), which the narrative takes an understanding but firmly negative attitude toward -- which is exactly what YA should involve, in my honest opinion.

Recommended for: David Levithan fans and people-people.

Own Voices?: Becky Albertalli is married to a dude, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but means that if she’s queer it’s not immediately evident if she’s queer. Regardless,she seems like a pretty kickass ally based off her work with LGBTQIA folks as an adolescent psychologist. Also, this interview  with her is pretty great and makes me want to be her friend.

Luna by Julie Anne Peters

I’d been meaning to read this book for a while and finally got around to it this year. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it really exceeded my expectations.

Luna is incredibly interesting for a lot of reasons.For starters, the protagonist is the sister of a trans woman dealing with being her sister’s only confidante while trying to navigate normal high schooler problems. Then there’s the fact that ALL the characters in the novel are flawed; the protagonist isn’t perfect, neither is her sister, and her parents are such complicated people. They all take turns being really selfish. But all of them are rendered sympathetic to varying degrees despite being flawed.

Another really cool thing about Luna is that its message is really different from a lot of other earlier LGBT novels (and being published in 2006, it’s definitely on the older side of literature about trans characters). A lot of older stuff tells readers that if people come out and/or transition bad things will happen to them. Whereas in Luna, bad things happen to the eponymous trans character, but the narrative makes it clear that NOT coming out and transitioning is the WORSE option for her.

Recommended for: Close friends and family members of trans folks (though probably not trans folks themselves; this book would make an excellent 101 course, but lacks a lot of nuance). Also, people who want to read about complex familial relationships.

Own Voices?: Julie Anne Peters has a wife, and judging by her work she’s probably a lesbian (though I guess she could be bi? Who knows? If you do tell me?). But she’s not trans.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

This book is so long; it clocks in at almost 900 pages, but it’s so, so worth it.

In case you don’t know about Cloud Atlas, it’s basically a series of interwoven short stories that take place over a freakishly long span of time. Reincarnation is involved and some really cool aspects thread their way through all or some of the stories. There’s some really cool thriller and dystopian stuff and a lot of good characters...one of whom is bisexual (and maybe what we would consider poly?) and whose lover appears in another story much older. Neither of the characters have their queerness at the center of their stories, but it’s still undeniable there.

Recommended for: People who aren’t intimidated and/or enjoy long, era-sprawling narratives. Fans of Margaret Atwood and/or Agatha Christie would enjoy some elements for sure.

Own Voices?:  Mitchell is married to a women, so it’s unclear.

Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente

This is maybe probably the trippiest thing I’ve ever read. The basic premise of the book is that we follow four protagonists, each of which gain access to a sexually-transmitted fantastical world. Yes, really. If you have sex with someone who has a map on their skin, you go to this world which has a very Lotus Eater effect on a lot of people. It is in turns beautiful and creepy.

Sex being the main driving force behind the plot, there are a wide variety of sexual orientations presented here. We have lesbians, bisexuals, and a wonderful poly triad among other things. I mean, people also have sex with humanized trains and bees (again, yes, really) - but that doesn’t operate in such a way as to minimize the queerness. It won a Lambda, so that’s pretty rad.

That said, please be aware that the book deals with rape and there is a suicide attempt.

Recommended for: Sense8 fans and people who enjoyed The Night Circus.

Own Voices?: Probably? All of Valente’s bios state that she lives with her “partner” specifically, so that to me points to her likely being queer. I’m not 100% sure of that though.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

This book was given to me by a friend a while ago and had been languishing on my bookshelf for a long time. Had I known more about it, it would have been there for a much shorter period of time. It was my second favorite of 2016.

Kavalier and Clay tells the story of two cousins coming of age in the WWII era and becoming comicbook industry icons. The story has some really interesting magical elements that blend brilliantly with the gritty realities of Kavalier and Clay.

Josef Kavalier is sixteen when he leaves his Jewish family behind in Prague and lives with the weight of worrying about their fates for the majority of the novel. Samuel Clay, on the other hand, must deal with the issues inherent in being gay in 1940s America. The novel is written like a biographical text, so we get to know both these characters (both their lovers) fairly well.

Recommended for: Fans of comic books, history, or comic book history. Also, Jewish folks.

Own Voices?: Michael Chabon is married to a woman, but as previously stated that doesn’t prove or disprove anything - it only means that nothing is conclusive. However, Chabon is Jewish.

Everything Leads to You by Nina Lacour

If you’ve seen me at basically any point in 2016, I raved to you about Everything Leads to You. It’s the best. It doesn’t really have any merit as Literature™, but it’s about girls who like girls getting to be HAPPY and there’s more to the book than just the romance. It’s a goddamn miracle. Everything got a lot of hype and it’s really, really well-deserved. It was my favorite of 2016.

Emi has a really rad internship helping design movie sets, and she’s doing her first solo set when she encounters a mystery. And a really pretty lady. Both the mystery and her feelings about the girl in question are both focal points of the book, with the plots twining together and being pretty evenly balanced.

There is no coming out story, since Emi already knows she’s into girls (there’s actually a subplot in which she needs to deal with lingering feelings for her ex). Emi’s experience with being queer is largely positive, but that can’t be said for all the queer characters in the book. The book examines racism (Emi is biracial) and class issues while not making the book ABOUT its social justice dealings.

Recommended for: Girls who desperately want a w/w beach read and art students.

Own Voices?: Yup! Nina Lacour has a wife!

[reading-with-nixie]

RIP this blog.

To be resurrected in January!

[reading-with-nixie]

WHY HAS NOBODY TALKED ABOUT THIS

Okay. So I just finished Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. And generally I would have to say I liked it. I really appreciated the relationships between the young adults in the book and their parents.

But there was one thing about the book that I really didn’t like and have never seen/heard anybody on booktube, booklr, or any of the other places I get my reviews from.

Spoilers Below the Cut

I feel like some of Dante’s behavior toward Aristotle is really creepy and kind of terrible.

There was that one scene in which Dante coerces Aristotle to kiss him. Now, Dante does apologize, which is good. But his future actions don’t really line up with that apology. He repeatedly tells Dane in a variety of ways that he’s in love with him. And/or wants to kiss him. Like, bro, Aristotle knows already - back off??? I understand that Aristotle is in love with Dante too for the whole time - but you should never try to coerce someone into doing something they don’t want to do? I guess it’s kind of understandable because he’s a 15 year old boy with (presumably) no experience with relationships and limited (if any) experience sexually, but this still tells teenagers that this sort of behavior is totally fine - and maybe actually good

The narrative seems to have absolutely no problem with Dante’s behavior. If so, it reinforced it. Hell, the climax involves Dante’s parents (who, granted, don’t know about Dante’s coercive behavior) telling Aristotle that he loves Dante and that he needs to confront his feelings. Like, I agree that people should confront their feelings - but you shouldn’t try to just SHOVE someone at another person (or at their feelings for a person) like that. Also, don’t make an assumptions. Yeah, Aristotle loved Dante - we as readers know that - but Aristotle didn’t necessarily feel that way. You can save someone if you aren’t in love with them. Except that apparently you can’t.

And it really surprises me that I haven’t heard anything about this from people yet. I feel like if this was a hetero romance and Aristotle were a female character people would be freaking the fuck out. But because Aristotle is a dude and/or the book is one of a very small number that’s about being gay but not entirely angst-of-coming-out-centic people are either ignoring or not noticing that aspect of things?

Am I alone in thinking this way? Did anybody else have the same experience of being disconcerted by a lot of Dante’s behavior toward Aristotle?

[reading-with-nixie]

Transcript - Video 1: Tell the Wolves I'm Home and the AIDS Stigma

Hi, Friendships!

Welcome to BooksNCake, where we talk about books and actually not cake. This week we'll be discussing a topic that doesn't make people nearly as happy as cake; it's AIDS.

It's taken me a while to post this because I've had a very depressing week.

So, ya know. What can you do when you're having a depressing week then do research on depressing things?

The book [Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt] takes place in 1987 and is a book about a teenage girl named June Elbus and her relationship with her uncle who dies of AIDS as well as his partner and the rest of her family.

Um, it's obviously pretty depressing – but at its core it's a coming of age story. It's not so much about the AIDS epidemic or even about her uncle having AIDS as it is about June sort of growing up. So at it's core it's not really about AIDS – which in some ways is a good thing. We get to learn a lot more about her uncle than just that he has AIDS. He's an artist; by the end of the book we know all about his art, we know about about his relationship with June's mother – throughout their childhood as well as their adult lives – how they interact with each other in general; We know about his relationship with Toby, who's his partner who June becomes close to throughout the book. We also learn about like, even the little mundane things about him – we know what sort of chapstick he wore, we know what he smelled like, we know the coat he wore all the time, and we know sort of minutiae about his apartment. So there's a lot more to Finn than just AIDS. It's kind of nice. It's good in books to get representation of an issue as well as getting a look beyond that issue.

Um, instead of having a problem novel where is a character is [x] or whatever, you know, has AIDS. Getting a view of who that character actually is beyond that one thing is good. However, I've only read two fictional books about AIDS; and both those books have dealt with people's relationship with people who have AIDS – not about the people themselves; it's not from their point of view. We learn almost nothing about what having AIDS in the 80's actually felt like – or what having AIDS now even feels like. Granted, I haven't exactly gone digging for books that, like, prominently feature characters who have AIDS. I understand that obviously, um, it would be difficult to write books now from the point of view of people who had AIDS in the 80's because those people unfortunately aren't around anymore. Back in the 80's especially like, in the early years, if you contracted AIDS you passed away sometimes within days of diagnosis. Like, people would be walking around like normal and then, five days later, be gone.

So I went ahead and did a lot of additional research – or some additional research, I don't want to say a lot –  I didn't read another nonfictional book, I mostly just went to different websites (which I'll link below) and I watched a film (which is available on Netflix) called We Were Here, which is about San Francisco in the 1980's at the height of the AIDS epidemic and features people who obviously didn’t have AIDS at the time, but who existed sort of in the social spheres where AIDS and HIV were prevalent; AIDS was very prevalent in the gay communities of San Francisco and New York especially – and Tell the Wolves I'm Home  actually takes place in New York City so Finn was part of those populations that were most widely affected by the disease at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Um, unfortunately, like, we now know that AIDS doesn't just affect gay people. We do know unfortunately that AIDS does affect people with penises who have sex with other people with penises disproportionately.

According to the CDC in 2013 (so three years ago) in the US gay and bisexual males accounted for 81% of diagnoses among all males ages thirteen and older (this is diagnoses of HIV, not necessarily AIDS but for HIV which is the predecessor of AIDS) and 65% of diagnoses among all people diagnosed with  HIV. So in 2013 65% of ALL HIV diagnoses were gay or bisexual males – so we're looking at over half.

Early on AIDS had the reputation of being a gay disease – a disease that only homosexuals got. And the media and even serious serious medical journals terms were being tossed around like “gay cancer” and people actually earlier on referred to it as “gay related immune deficiency.”  So it was actually a proposed NAME for it. Which there is some amount of ground for because the first instances of AIDS were among  people having penises having sex with other people with penises. But fact of the matter is that that's still not very good reasoning  though – because if you think about it we wouldn't name a disease – right? - after a trait that other people have. Like, we would never name a disease Heterosexuality Related Immune Deficiency because that would be dumb. Yet, there it was, there is was.

So that was unfortunate ,and it was also unfortunate because it gave a lot of people who were homophobic an outlet for their discrimination, for their homophobia, that seemed legitimate. A lot of people lost their jobs because of having AIDS, a lot of people needed to move and move their families – and there was no legal repercussion for this, it wasn't covered by the law. And of course unfortunately the government wasn't doing anything to help early on with AIDS. Of course a lot of people who were religious tended to say that (sort of going off the idea that AIDS was a disease that only people who practiced sodomy got) that it was their fault for getting it, that it was a punishment from God that they got it, that they had sinned and deserved God's wrath in the form of this disease. And politicians actually latched onto AIDS in a horrible way and onto, in some ways, the gay community, in this way.

There were a lot of places that were closed or that were threatened with closure that were cornerstones of the gay community because they were accused of “selling death.” And like, probably there were some proprietors of businesses who just didn't give a shit, but the majority of places actually spread education about AIDS. People like Diane McGrath, who was a New York City Republican Mayoral candidate in 1985 actually said (I'm looking down because I'm reading a quote) “It is our duty to protect these people from themselves if we are forced to; the AIDS virus has no civil rights”; I don't think I need to tell you why that's fucked up. And there was also a proposition in California, Proposition 64, which was proposed in 1986 and 1988 that called for the quarantining of people with AIDS.

And this would have affected people like Ryan White, who some of you might be aware of – if you were alive back then you definitely would have known about him – was a Kokomo Indiana middle student in 1980s who contracted AIDS  through a blood treatment that he got because he was a hemophiliac. And then his school expelled him...because he had AIDS. Parents were worried about their kids catching it – which made sense, the government wasn't spreading any information about AIDS until – I think the first press release was put out in 1987, when lots and lots of rumors had already spread – they were concerned about having their children sit in the same room that Ryan was sitting in, sitting in the same desk that Ryan was sitting in, breathing the same air as Ryan. Parents had a lot of concerns. People were absolutely terrible about Ryan's AIDS. Ryan's family actually needed to move, they were among the people who needed to move because of the AIDS epidemic. It's funny because Ryan White's mother was also very religious – she was a Methodist, and to the best of my knowledge continues to be a Methodist.

From everything I've read and everything that I've watched about the AIDS epidemic and the stigma it very much seems like if you were alive during that period it was very, very hard; if you lived in either New York or San Francisco, you lost people. Especially if you were part of the gay community you lost people, but even if you weren't. Apparently there was a mother who came into the AIDS unit of a hospital and watched – came over and over and over again and watched three of her sons pass away from AIDS. So it was a very hard time, I am very happy I must say that I wasn't around for that. But I think it's important that we talk about it; that we continue to talk about homophobia even though in many ways it's been lessened in outright severity since then.  Referring to a disease as Gay Related Immune Deficiency absolutely would not fly at all today, anywhere, that would not have been published in a serious medical text today like it was in 1984 or whenever that journal was published. We have come a long way, but I think it's important that we remember the past, that we honor those who we lost to AIDS.

And yeah, if you guys have any recommendations of reading about AIDS, additional documentaries, anything – especially fiction – about characters with HIV – contemporary or not, that would be very useful. I'm not sure that I want to do another video about AIDS because this was obviously very emotionally taxing. But I would be interested in reading more about the topic.

[reading-with-nixie]

Top 10 Books of 2015!

Hello All!

Since I’ve completed my 100 book challenge, plenty of people have asked which book was my favorite. I don’t think I could pick out one that stood out over all the others - but I said that I would do a top 15. However, I realized that if I kept doing “Top [x] Books in 20[x]” lists - things would get out of hand quite quickly.

So here are my top ten books of 2015, in no particular order.

1) Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

Several books that I read this year were COMPLETELY different from what I had expected.

This was one of them.

Based on everything I had heard, I expected a high-octane horror about demons (or something) - but what I got instead was a novel in which most of the horror had nothing to with the supernatural and everything to do with how cruel people are capable of being to other people.

Rosemary’s husband and neighbors are all about twelve sorts of emotionally and sexually abusive - and said abuse is actually PORTRAYED as such. Which is pretty goddamn revolutionary for a male writer publishing in the 60s.

I’m surprised Tumblr isn’t more into this book.

High recommended for people who want to fight for reproductive and other rights.

2) Vicious by VE Schwab

If you’re a fan of works that enjoy fucking with genres, you MUST get your hands on this book.

This is one of those books where nearly all of the characters are terrible, which I personally am weirdly into. It’s about superheroes - but neither “hero” nor “villain” (and you can debate which is which) are remotely decent people.

I’m not going to talk about the plot too much for fear of spoilers - but it’s incredibly gripping and emotionally evocative.

Would highly recommend, even for those who aren’t ordinarily into the superhero genre.

Also, it’s getting a sequel!

3) Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

If you know me IRL, it should come as no surprise to you that reading a well-known highly acclaimed sad book featuring queer issues would be of interest to me.

This novel (which was published in the 1950s) is about a guy named David, who is so far in the closet TO HIMSELF that he’s basically in Narnia. But like, Narnia as ruled by Jadis because it sucks. David goes abroad and gets himself a manfriend and shit gets very, very bad and very, very sad.

Highly recommend this book if you have a high sadness threshold and if especially if you want to read a book with gay characters.

4) I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly

This is another sad book, but it might be the least soul-crushing of the ones on this list.

Barbara fights giants. But are they REAL giants, metaphorical giants, or giants from the D&D campaign she’s in? It’s clear that something bad is happening in Barbara’s life - but what is it?

Highly recommend this book to people who love psychology and/or speculative fiction and/or are looking to get into graphic novels.

5) The Humans by Matt Haig

If I absolutely NEEDED to pick an absolute favorite of the year, this might be it.

This book is about an alien who has shapeshifted into the form of a famous mathematician and has been tasked with killing anyone who knew about an earth-shattering theorem that said mathematician discovered.

But it’s SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT. It reads more like a philosophical meditation on mathematics, love, and human nature than a work of speculative fiction. You don’t need to be into speculative fiction to enjoy this - since what is technically the plot only takes up probably about a quarter of the book.

Highly recommended for nerds who wouldn’t mind reading about the value of love, kindness, and being gentle.

6) Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Over the past couple years or so I’ve read many books that got a lot of hype - from friends or booktube - and once I’ve read said books I just didn’t get it.

On the other hand, Station Eleven’s hype was well-deserved.

This book goes back and forth through time - back to when a deadly epidemic was sweeping the world and much of the population is dying off and forth to when a traveling performance troupe performs Shakespeare for survivors while striving to survive themselves.

Like most of the books on this list however, there is more than meets the eye in this book. This book isn’t just about the apocalypse but its aftermath - specifically looking at which things, large and small alike, become vitally important to someone only when they are gone.

Highly recommended for literally anyone.

7) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

I know that I’m thirty years late to the party.

At this point, I’m sure that most (if not all) of you have heard of it and many of you have read it.

But for those of you who haven’t yet heard of The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s a dystopia set in a near future where reproductive rights straight-up don’t exist and the hierarchy of households is very rigid a la civil war plantations. 1984-esque security measures are in place and anybody caught breaking the rules is executed publicly as an example.

One of the most interesting things about this novel to me was that it takes place VERY SHORTLY after the dystopia was established. The protagonist and her friends remember the shift from the world we recognize to the world in THT. Also, the protagonist has no interest in trying to overthrow the powers that be - she just wants to escape the reach of the society she has been crammed into and live her life like she used to.

Like much of Atwood’s work, this is a cautionary tale - in the world in which THT takes place the women’s revolution ALREADY happened, feminist movements cropped up, succeeded, and then were undermined - in much the way that many members of the Republican party are currently attempting to undermine them. It’s a very chilling read.

Highly recommend to people with vaginas and people who love people with vaginas. Also anybody who loves dystopia’s but is seeking more variety in their reading.

8) Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

I knew next to nothing about this book when I started, and the back cover (which talked about drugs, sex, and rock n roll) made me feel like I was going to hate it. But sure enough it’s one of the most beautiful books I read this year.

For those of you who read The Outsiders (which I also read this year) - it’s sort of like an answer from the socs.

The characters in this book live lavishly in California - having the money and freedom to do whatever they want - and they certainly do. But they do anything and everything to fill up their time because their lives are unbelievably empty.

Nobody cares about anybody in the world the protagonist (Clay) lives in, to the point where he never refers to his sisters by their names. I really just write to write an essay (or twelve) about this book.

Warning though that there is a very gruesome rape scene.

Highly recommended for those who enjoy lyrical, beautiful literature and fucked up books/people who regularly took Gloria’s classes at Marlboro. I sent her an email recommending this to her after reading it.

9) Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

Yes, it was adapted into this Warm Bodies.

I haven’t seen the movie, but I’m willing to bet that it’s MUCH lighter than the novel, and also geared toward a young audience. Which makes sense, if you just give someone a synopsis it reads like light, stupid YA. I kept talking to people about it when I was reading it and explaining that “it’s better than it seems I promise.”

R is a zombie who bites someone, eats their brain and (thanks in part to a memory transfer) falls in love with his victim’s girlfriend. Sounds dumb, right? But it actually reads like literary fiction and was obviously written with an adult audience in mind.

While R can’t speak very well, he has EXTREMELY intricate thoughts. The book deals partially with his inability to communicate with the world and the question of who people are if they forget who they are - and whether or not R and his zombie comrades are even human at all. In terms of the humans, it addresses how the humans and zombies of the book are similar and different - and also praises optimism (unusual for a book in this genre).

Highly recommended for optimists and empathetic folks.

10) The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld

A very super cheery book set in a prison death row, featuring a storyline about a deathrow investigator trying to get a guy off deathrow who doesn’t want to be off deathrow.

It’s another book that’s beautifully-written and lyrical. But it balances that out with a lot of grit.

Warning that this book is amazing - but also depressing to the point where it was occasionally too much for me. Make sure you know what you’re going into.

Highly recommended for people who would like to read about the justice system. And pessimists. Also people who loved The Night Circus.

[reading-with-nixie]

Finished the book a couple days ago -- I actually prefer the movie.

[3/10] favorite movies: Stardust

I never imagined I’d know it for myself. My heart… It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it’s trying to escape because it doesn’t belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I’d wish for nothing in exchange - no gifts. No goods. No demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine.