#a little bit country

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]

[stardustandrockets]

Strap in. This is going to be a long one. (CW: religion, Christianity)

As I'm sure you may have seen, there's a group of people on booksta trying to "reclaim" the rainbow from the gays because "Christians had it first" by hosting a bigoted reading challenge. I've seen some fellow gays taking this opportunity to flood their hashtag with queer book recs.

I grew up in church. My family is technically Baptist, but we quit going when I was in college. I never felt like I fit in or understood what I was supposed to be getting out of the experience. I faked it a lot. I followed what those around me were doing even though I didn't get it and was often scolded for asking questions. I always felt like an outsider and was so relieved when I quit going. I know a lot of people get a lot out of that experience, but I didn't. It was just something to do because I grew up in small-town Texas and that's just what you did. You attended church.

Now, all these years later, I have incredibly mixed feelings about organized religion and Christianity in general. Especially those who choose to spread hate instead of the love Jesus says to spread. This isn't the format to get super deep into my feelings, but seeing #JesusJune pop up as a hateful rebuttal to #PrideMonth brought up a lot of feelings. So instead of bashing these people, I'm adding my rainbow recs to their tag. Starting with my queer purple books.

[mortalprojection]

i got this new book today and i’m having a hard time not imagining this is steve and billy….

[bookbaran]

Can you imagine how good the A Little Bit Country audiobook would be if they had composed music for the country songs? I know if would have killed the budget, but it would have sounded so good!

[marshmyers]

Dumplin' meets Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda in this heartfelt and funny contemporary romance inspired by Dollywood, about two boys who fall in love against the backdrop of a country music-themed amusement park, from debut author Brian D. Kennedy. Perfect for fans of Erin Hahn, Phil Stamper, and David Levithan.

Emmett Maguire wants to be country music's biggest gay superstar — a far reach when you're seventeen and living in Illinois. But for now, he's happy to do the next best thing: Stay with his aunt in Jackson Hollow, Tennessee, for the summer and perform at the amusement park owned by his idol, country legend Wanda Jean Stubbs.

Luke Barnes hates country music. As the grandson of Verna Rose, the disgraced singer who had a famous falling out with Wanda Jean, Luke knows how much pain country music has brought his family. But when his mom's medical bills start piling up, he takes a job at the last place he wants: a restaurant at Wanda World.

Neither boy is looking for romance, but sparks fly when they meet--and soon they're inseparable. Until a long-lost secret about Verna and Wanda comes to light, threatening to unravel everything.

Will Emmett and Luke be able get past the truths they discover...or will their relationship go down in history as just another Sad Country Love Song?

PURCHASE THIS TITLE

[o0kawaii0o]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KING 🗣🗣🗣

[myimaginaryradio]

A Little Bit County - A Little Bit Rock And Roll - Donnie And Marie - 1974

[destielblamscilesinfinity]

Wow, A Little Bit Country was so so so good. Emmett and Luke were so cute. If only I was inspired enough to write some fanfic. Because their story could be continued.

[books-to-add-to-your-tbr]

Title: A Little Bit Country

Author: Brian D. Kennedy

Series or standalone: standalone

Publication year: 2022

Genres: fiction, romance, LGBT+, contemporary

Blurb: Emmett Maguire wants to be country music’s biggest gay superstar...a far reach when you’re seventeen and living in Illinois. For now, he’s happy to do the next best thing: stay with his aunt in Jackson Hollow, Tennessee, for the summer and perform at the amusement park owned by his idol, country legend Wanda Jean Stubbs. Luke Barnes hates country music. As the grandson of Verna Rose, the disgraced singer who had a famous falling-out with Wanda Jean, Luke knows how much pain country music has brought his family...but when his mom’s medical bills start piling up, he takes a job at the last place he wants: a restaurant at Wanda World. Neither boy is looking for romance, but sparks fly when they meet, and soon, they’re inseparable...until a long-lost secret about Verna and Wanda comes to light, threatening to unravel everything. Will Emmett and Luke be able to get past the truths they discover, or will their relationship go down in history as just another sad country love song?

[carouselunique]

Meet Twinkleshine, the Smug and Dramatic The Illustrious Illusionist of Swap Six/Side Stars!

Fun Fact: Twinkleshine is an absolute glitter fanatic. She loves glitter so much. Shiny things are her kryptonite give her a glitter snow globe and you can distract her for hours. That's how she picked her name, because she just loves twinkling shiny objects.

[originalaccountname]

I'm sure everyone has an old dead author/poet/playwriter/etc. that they have personal, probably unreasonable, debatably irrational beef with because of their life/writing/etc. or because schoolwork made them hate the author by association.

What's the author that, should a character based on them appear in BSD, would have you hissing and biting and scratching the walls (derogatory)? What caused this personal grudge? Did it already happen to you and your dreaded author freely walks the BSD world?

I'll start: I have beef with early 1900s French novelist Émile Zola because he came up with naturalism, which is fiction with the pretense of being "scientific" through "objective" observation of the human nature (ignoring that the author has the power of god over their story). If a character based on him showed up in BSD I'd drop-kick them on the spot.

[stardustandrockets]

Books to read by the pool

Or during summer in general...

Here are some of my favorite summer reads. Some are actually set in the summer, some give me summer vibes, and others remind me of the summer because that's when I originally read them.

Slide 2:

• Never Been Kissed by Timothy Janovsky (adult)

• The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun (adult)

• Well Met (and the rest of the Willow Creek Ren Faire series) by Jen DeLuca (adult)

Slide 3

• A Little Bit Country by Brian D. Kennedy (young adult)

• Heartstopper by Alice Oseman

• Bookish and the Beast (and the rest of the Once Upon a Con series) by Ashley Poston (young adult)

Slide 4

• Beach Read by Emily Henry (adult)

• A Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara Barnard (young adult)

• Foolish Hearts by Emma Mills (young adult)

What's your favorite summertime read?

[the-final-sif]

There's a post from someone outside of the US about how people in the US don't put their country down and just put down their state and something about US people being US centric, and part of it has always kind of bothered me because I think that people outside of the US don't really understand how states work for us or why people think their state should be enough. Some of it is being US centric for sure, but I honestly don't think that's the main reason.

It's because the US is a bunch of countries in a trench coat. I've compared it before to the EU, and I really do think that's accurate. It's literally a union of states. Each state has it's own government and laws and we have the federal government too but day to day a lot more of your life comes down to the state laws. Your driver's license, license plate, wage and a lot of employment protect (and enforcement), vast majority of court experiences, etc all go through the state. Moving to different states can mean being subject to wildly different laws, tax rates/methods, and forms of discrimination (ie florida trying to ban queer people while other states are explicitly adding protections for them).

Like, you'll notice that streamers often tend to be clustered in certain states in the US, and a lot of that has to do with certain states not having an income tax. Depending on what state they're registered in, companies can be subject to wildly different laws. Hence why Delaware is so popular for businesses. Bankruptcy law works differently in every state.

Lawyers are licensed to practice by state, and while they can move to different states, it's difficult and depending on their area of law they may be totally out of their field. Even small states like Delaware have totally different laws from a place 15 minutes to the left like New Jersey.

The largest single state by population is California which has nearly 40 million people. That is more than the entire population of Canada. It's roughly on par with Poland. Give or take a million people.

Ohio has about 11 million people, about 1 million more than Sweden. Florida has 22 million, over double Greece's population. New York and Romania both come out to about 19 million each.

Our smallest state by population, Wyoming, which has about 500k people, still has about 200k more people than Iceland.

Fucking Russia literally does not have half the population of the US. It sits at 144 million while we're at 333 million.

To give a sense of landmass/scale, France is the largest EU state by landmass with 630k square km. Texas alone is 695k. Alaska is 1.7 million square km. The US in total is 11.3 million square km. The entire EU has 4.2 million square km.

The US is 1) fucking huge and 2) so much less cohesive than a lot of non-Americans assume.

So why would someone from the US just put down their state? For the same reason that most people from the EU don't write down "Germany in the EU". Your state is where you're actually from, the USA is the weird umbrella you live under.

[bookbaran]

I listened to A Little Bit Country and I ended up enjoying it. Every time the characters were about to make a stupid choice that would annoy me, they decided to not do that, so for me, personally, I liked them.

My one criticism was at the end when (spoilers)...

When Luke was crying and about to come out to his mother and it was going to be this huge emotional payoff for all the build up over the course of the entire book.

And then it just switched scenes to keep the reader in suspense for a few more pages. Which that happened a lot over the course of the book and in some places it was better than others, but it was absolutely not a good choice for the end of the book! It totally robbed the readers of the payoff and almost ruined the whole book for me!

[kokoasci]

average day at the armed detective agency

[ryllen]

Look what came through the mail today! The letters & ( •̀ω•́ )σ 3 little gremlins from letterstoear.

Just wanna say i adore the flower stickers on the letters too much, they are that much worth mentioning.