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New episode out now! This week, we’re taking a trip to 1950s Italy as we discuss Patricia Highsmith’s classic thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley and its acclaimed 1999 adaptation directed by Anthony Minghella. Topics of discussion include the novel’s iconic con artist protagonist, the twisty plot, homoerotic subtext, and how Minghella put his own spin on the themes and characters. 

Content Warnings: discussions of antisemitism, racism, murder, violence, homophobia, gaslighting, suicide, and classism.

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live footage of us recording this podcast

Did you watch The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and think to yourself "Wow, I really wish I could listen to a two-hour analysis of the film vs. the book that includes a lengthy discussion of Enlightenment philosophy and also for some reason a passionate defense of Chino from West Side Story (2021)?" Then boy do I have the podcast episode for you!

[neverthetwinsshallmeet]

Did you watch The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and think to yourself "Wow, I really wish I could listen to a two-hour analysis of the film vs. the book that includes a lengthy discussion of Enlightenment philosophy and also for some reason a passionate defense of Chino from West Side Story (2021)?" Then boy do I have the podcast episode for you!

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a struggle

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our next episode will be on the ballad of songbirds and snakes, so here's a little sneak peek of what's in store

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editing podcast audio like

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Happy belated New Year! We return fashionably late with a behemoth of an episode to discuss each of our top 10 books of 2023, a few extra superlatives (scariest book, anyone?), and some reading goals for 2024. Tune in for fantasy fiction, gothic literature, romance novels, unexpected favorites, and only a little bit of human sacrifice. 

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saltburn hater club reporting for duty

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We’re back for our first episode of the summer! In this one, we take a trip to post-Rome Britain to explore our fascination with a time period that is more myth than history. Going full history nerd, we take a look at three books set in Britain after the withdrawal of Roman imperial powers: Dark Earth by Rebecca Stott, Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve, and Sistersong by Lucy Holland. We discuss the possible origin of the King Arthur myth, queer medieval narratives, and the cultural diversity of Britain at this time–as well as wizards, warlords, and murder ballads. 

Content Warnings: discussions of war, death, and body horror

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#QueerYourYear prompt 15: An essay collection

The Groom Will Keep His Name: And Other Vows I’ve Made About Race, Resistance, and Romance by Matt Ortile is a witty, insightful collection of essays by a gay Filipino immigrant about race, sex, power. I honestly don’t remember how this essay collection ended up on my radar, but I’m glad that it did because I really enjoyed it and found it to be a smart, politically engaged, and entertaining collection.

Born in the Philippines, Matt Ortile moved from Manila to Las Vegas at a young age and immediately found himself an outsider. While Ortile realized he was gay pretty early on, it was his identity as a Filipino immigrant that he spent more time grappling with. Throughout the collection, he unpacks his experiences with assimilation, tokenization, and fetishization that he’s faced as a gay, Asian American man. 

What Ortile really excels at in this essay collection is understanding and examining his life within broader world and history. This book really encapsulates “the personal is political” as Ortile explores personal experiences such as dual citizenship or attending a prestigious but predominantly white college, but also manages to examine broader issues like colonization in the Philippines and the model minority myth and explore how his life has been shaped by them.

I tend to read memoirs pretty fast, but I found that reading this collection essay by essay instead of blowing straight through at my usual quick speed was a good change of pace. Ortile’s essays aren’t dense–they’re actually quite conversational and entertaining–but I found that my reading experience was improved by giving myself time to really think over and digest each essay. Ortile is now definitely on my radar as an author to watch and I’ll be keeping an eye out for any of his future works!

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#QueerYourYear prompt 39: A Lambda Award finalist or winner

I had a lot of options to pick out for this prompt, but I ended up going with High Risk Homosexual by Edgar Gomez (any pronouns) because I’ve been getting more into nonfiction lately. Gomez’s writing first came to my attention through his essay “I Dedicated My Book to My Mother, But I Can’t Tell Her I Wrote It” published in Electric Literature. It’s about writing and publishing a deeply personal memoir while keeping that a secret from their family, an honest look at what it means to tell your story while stilling grappling with the complicated familial relationships that have shaped it. 

High Risk Homosexual, the debut memoir that is the topic of Gomez’s essay, is a witty, honest, and heartfelt account of coming-of-age as gay and Latine. Gomez writes about navigating the machismo of her family and the racism they encounter in the gay community in a voice that is equal parts dynamic and poignant, exploring intersections of identity and their journey to find his place in the world. From their first visits to gay clubs to their experience of being prescribed HIV-preventing medication, Gomez’s writing manages to be both frank and funny. (I personally enjoyed the chapter on Gomez’s time in a burlesque troupe a lot as someone who was part of my college’s burlesque troupe.) The chapter on Pulse is probably the stand-out of the memoir as Gomez writes with real vulnerability and grief about the Pulse shooting, contemplating both his relationship to the nightclub and the painful similarities between her life and that of the shooter’s.

Overall, High Risk Homosexual is a vivid, moving, and candid memoir that’s put Edgar Gomez on my list of authors to watch. 

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#QueerYourYear prompt 14: A book set on a continent you don’t live on

In another example of reading a book and retroactively realizing it also works for QYY, I picked If You Still Recognise Me by Cynthia So, a young adult novel set in England. Elsie Lo is a Chinese British teenager in her final summer before university who has been nursing a crush on her long-distance American internet friend, Ada. Elsie is determined to finally confess her feelings to Elsie this summer through the grand romantic gesture of tracking down Ada’s grandmother’s British childhood friend (and possible secret love). Things are complicated further, however, when Elsie’s childhood friend Joan moves back to England for university and reconnects with Elsie. Over the course of one life-changing summer, Elsie finds herself navigating a complex web of family, friendship, and first love while trying to figure out who she is and what she wants.

I loved this novel! I’d been reading a lot of gothic literature this year and was in the mood for something less gloomy/sinister and Cynthia So’s novel absolutely hit the spot. Elsie is a well-rounded main character who’s very easy to root for (despite her convoluted plan to woo Ada) and I really enjoyed how flesh-out all the relationships in her life felt, from the different generations and types of queer people she interacts with over the course of the novel to her tangle of romance/friendship to her complex relationship with her family, who doesn’t know she’s bisexual. So’s writing is a perfect mix of engaging and thoughtful, balancing Elsie’s search for Ada’s grandmother’s lost left with character growth and insights into identity. 

If You Still Recognise Me has recently been published in the US (with a new cover and an Americanized spelling of the title) and I hope the new edition will find it’s deserving fans here. I’d especially recommend it to fans of Alice Oseman or Malinda Lo and I look forward to seeing what else Cynthia So writes next!

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#QueerYourYear prompt 44: A book published by Arsenal Pulp Press

I’m not super familiar with Arsenal Pulp Press’s catalogue, so I picked up Kimiko Does Cancer by Kimiko Tobimatsu and Keet Geniza largely because it was available at my local library and I enjoy works of graphic nonfiction. Written by Tobimatsu and illustrated by Geniza, it’s a memoir charting Kimiko’s experience with breast cancer after being diagnosed at age 25. 

Medical memoirs aren’t an area I’ve particularly read in and I genuinely think the last cancer-focused work I read might have been The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (now THAT’S a throwback), so I came into this memoir without a ton of background in cancer narratives. Kimiko Does Cancer follows the author’s experience through her initial diagnosis, treatment, and the aftermath as she negotiates how cancer has altered her body and interpersonal relationships.

Tobimatsu intentionally sets her memoir apart from other cancer stories and their relentless focus on positivity and healing. Instead, she’s candid about the toll that treatment took on her body and her relationships, especially the side effects she’s left dealing with even after her treatment ends. Tobimatsu, who is also a masculine-present Japanese Canadian lesbian, also didn’t see herself in mainstream cancer stories and found herself alienated as a queer, mixed-race person navigating her diagnosis, doctors’s assumptions, and cancer support groups. Geniza’s art is a good match to the story, the muted color palate palate and expressive figures that compliment Tobimatsu’s writing.

Kimiko Does Cancer is quite a short graphic memoir (106 pages), but it packs a lot into those pages, as Tobimatsu is frank and reflective on her experience with cancer. While I likely wouldn’t have picked this graphic memoir up without QYY to encourage me, I found it a thoughtful and worthwhile read.

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#QueerYourYear prompt 30: A middle grade book featuring a queer family

It makes me happy to see more queer books for middle schoolers being published lately (there weren’t a ton when I was that age even though I knew people who were looking for that kind of representation in media), so I was happy to see this prompt in QYY! 

Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston by Esme Symes-Smith is a middle grade fantasy novel (the first in a series) starring twelve-year-old nonbinary aspiring knight. Callie dreams of being a knight like their father despite being told they should focus on training their magic like a girl, so when their father is summoned to the royal capital to train the shy young prince, they accompany him with hopes of proving themself a worthy knight-in-training. In Helston, Callie finds themself facing strict gender roles, political scheming, and the threat of dangerous magic.

Sir Callie reminded me a lot of Tamora Pierce’s books (anyone else read books like the Song of the Lioness and Protector of the Small when they were younger?), but with a nonbinary narrator. Callie knows they don’t feel like a girl or a boy and want to become a knight, but the strict gender roles of their world dictate they should train in magic instead. Symes-Smith’s novel is a good example of how fantasy literature isn’t the same thing as escapist literature, as the villains Callie faces are just as much thee face of abuse, transphobia, and gender roles as much as magical foes. Still, it’s a story of growth and empowerment, as Callie is sure of their identity and refuses to bow to those who tell them who they should be. Callie also has the support sister of their two loving fathers (who also have their own distinct personalities and character arcs, which I loved). 

For a middle grade novel, it is definitely on the long side (almost four hundred pages) and not quite as action-packed as the cover might indicate, so I’m not sure if younger readers would find it a bit on the slow side or not. Still, it’s really lovely to know that young readers have a hero like Callie to look up to and that there will be more of their adventures to come. 

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#QueerYourYear prompt 33. Weird Queer!

I was tossing around a few titles for this prompt when I read Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante and I realized it could fit well. Plante’s novel is told in the form of a fake encyclopedia for a TV show that doesn’t exist, which is a weird enough format that I figured it could work for this broad prompt. 

LBEFV follows a queer trans woman mourning her best friend and secret love, a straight trans woman (the titular Vivian), who decides to compile an encyclopedia based on the cult-class TV show Little Blue to work through her grief. Plante weaves together story-within-a-story of Little Blue, an obscure show about the quirky inhabitants of a small Canadian island, and the narrator’s  memories of Vivian as she mourns her best friend. 

Clocking in at 200 pages, LBEFV is a short novel, but I was blown away by the depth and complexity of emotion Plante packed into it. There’s the love and grief the narrator feels for Vivian and the joy they both received from watching Little Blue, but also the more tense, complicated aspects, like Vivian’s flaws as a friend and the troubled production behind Little Blue. 

LBEFV is many things–a love letter to pop culture and trans communities, an elegy for lost love, a quirky portrait of fandoms, and, above all, a novel that I won’t forget about soon. 

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#QueerYourYear prompt 34: A historical novel with a trans protagonist

Sometimes when my sister (and podcast co-host) is describing a piece of media that’s particularly well-crafted and emotionally devastating, she’ll use a very academic and eloquent metaphor that it made her brain “feel like scrambled eggs.” This is a compliment of the highest order from her and I’m going to borrow it to open my review of She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan to say that this book MADE MY BRAIN FEEL LIKE SCRAMBLED EGGS.

To describe this book in the most basic terms, I’d say that it’s a fantasy-tinged epic set in 13th-century China and inspired by the life of the real-life founder of the Ming Dynasty, but that doesn’t really do it justice.

Parker-Chan’s novel opens with a pair of siblings–a nameless girl and a boy, Zhu Chongba–in a famine-ridden peasant village. When a fortune-teller reads the siblings’s fortunes, he predicts greatness for the boy–and nothing for his sister. The girl is desperate to claw herself into a better fate, though, and when her father is murdered by bandits and her brother dies of grief, she takes the opportunity to seize her brother’s identity and his fate. Driven forward by a desperate ambition, Zhu becomes first a Buddhist monk, then the commander of a rebel force rising up against the Mongol overloads, clashing against the ruthless General Ouyang and his own machinations.

Listen, this book is…just SO good. It's about ambition and fate, vengeance and repression. It's about defying destiny and the cruel sacrifices made for power. Zhu and Ouyang are *incredibly* written narrative foils, each driven forward by single-minded determination and their own personal demons. 

It's a little difficult to talk about the queer representation in this book in modern times because characters's understandings of their identities are so tied to cultural and historical contexts. Zhu lives her early life as a downtrodden girl, then steals her brother's identity, and comes to understand herself as someone who claims both masculinity femininity and finds love with an open-hearted woman. I don't even have enough space here to describe Ouyang's deal. 

Anyway, read this book!

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#QueerYourYear prompt 32: A book of nature or science writing

The best thing about this reading challenge is being introduced to works of literature I might not have otherwise heard of and How Far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler is one such book! It’s an interesting hybrid book, part memoir and part science writing Imbler explores aspects of their life and identity through the lens marine life, from sperm whales to octopi. Imbler’s work is like nothing I’ve read before, a vulnerable and passionate book that intertwines their life as a queer, mixed race writer with pretty fascinating insights into aquatic animals. It’s about wild goldfish and queer bars, whale autopsies and painful break-ups, biracial identity and cuttlefish, beaches and body image. It’s the kind of book that I read bit by bit, giving myself time to digest each essay fully before diving into the next one. “We Swarm,” an essay about salpas, gelatinous zooplankton, and the queer community and joy that Imbler finds at Jacob Riis Park in New York, was my favorite of all the essays, but they also work well as a whole collection that charts Imbler’s life and understanding of their identity through the natural world. Plus, I learned that wild goldfish can grow to be the side of cantaloupes and that was just wild.