#london booksellers

[theselkiesea]

My first trip to London

A beautiful visit to Daunt Books

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Characters, book, and author names under the cut

August Landry/Jane Su - One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

Susan Arkshaw/Merlin St. Jacques - The Left Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix

Jude/Pixie - Stake Sauce Arc 1: The Secret Ingredient is Love (No, Really) by RoAnna Sylver 

Paul Fleischer/Julian Fromme - These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever

[evenaturtleduck]

I know I gripe about a lot of the new YA fantasy novels (cue old lady grumbling about how back in my day we didn't have multiple love interests in a toxic death match for the protag's affection or a zillion glamorous ball gowns, reading uphill both ways, blah blah blah don't mind me) but I do really appreciate the authors who are taking the mythology and imagery from some of my middle school favorites, like the Dark is Rising sequence or the Chronicles of Prydain and saying yeah, these are cool, but what if instead of defining The Defenders of Britain Against The Forces Of Evil as pastoral, straight, and white, we made them urban, queer, and non-white?

[libraryleopard]

Young adult urban fantasy novel set in 80s London

While looking for the father's she's never met, art student Susan Arkshaw stumbles into a hidden magical world in which a secret order of booksellers are trained to protect humans from the legendary creatures of the mythical Old World

With the help of Merlin, a charismatic bookseller on a quest to avenge the murder of his mother, Susan's search for her father becomes more dangerous and magical than she ever could have expected

Genderfluid love interest

[lindensea]

Started on The Left-Handed Booksellers of London and it's silly & goofy so far! It's giving Doctor Who vibes, if the writers of doctor who cared more about clothing brands. There are a lot of details about clothing, actually

[timid-booklover-in-a-corner]

Random ask: what is the latest book that just wowed you and you would most definitely recommend to others (asking for me, I need book recommendations 😄)

I haven't been reading much recommendable fare recently lol. But the most recent good book I read was Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries. It's just a cute, whimsical little book and the main characters are amazing. It's like a cross between Howl's Moving Castle and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (if you haven't read JSAMN or HMC, I'd recommend both those books as well, although JSAMN is quite long).

I'd also recommend The Left-handed Booksellers of London, which is a bit older (it's about vaguely shape-shiftery booksellers that deal with supernatural incidents in London and the rest of England). There's a sequel to that as well (it's called The Sinister Booksellers of Bath), but I haven't had time to read it yet.

[reading-cat]

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

This was so cute oh my god???

It does suffer from the usual YA problems like underdeveloped characters and a predictable plot, but otherwise it’s unexpectedly good.

Yes, Susan, the MC, is very much the "chosen one" with special powers and special parentage but it’s not annoying and they don’t make her overpowered. And she’s punk!

Merlin is a delightful love interest. Loved the approach to his gender and how the fact that he’s questioning it doesn’t make him any less attractive, flirty and self-assured. Again, I would have loved a bit more elaboration on this topic, but maybe we’ll get it in the next book.

I thought at first that the constant clothes descriptions would annoy me, but they ended up being a really fun detail.

The worldbuilding is interesting but sparse. Not developed enough.

Overall, very easy and light read.

[winter2468]

I really like what Garth Nix did with Merlin's gender.

In Left-Handed Booksellers, Merlin is explicit about the fact that he's thinking about changing his gender. It's an option he's thinking of taking. Throughout the book he wears both masculine and feminine clothing, and is equally comfortable in both.

And he still gets to be attractive and confident - and a love interest. It's so rare in fiction for a person to be explicitly questioning their gender, but they're still portrayed as attractive, confident and desirable.

In Sinister Booksellers, it's revealed that Merlin doesn't want to transition - between the first book and the second, he's figured himself out. But he still enjoys wearing all kinds of clothes, he still rocks a dress just as well as he rocks a suit, and he's still socially gender-nonconforming (referring to himself as both a master and mistress of disguise).

I really like how we have this attractive, confident love interest who

Questions his gender

Figures it out - he doesn't want to transition

Decides that he still wants to wear any type of clothing, not just 'men's' clothing, and then goes on to wear a fancy, pretty dress with his family and girlfriend not even questioning it.

[the-dust-jacket]

Authorized to kill…and sell books.

[gollancz]

If you're on Instagram, be sure to follow us there too - Garth Nix fans will be in for a treat this week as we run him up and down the country to various events! Send good wishes and energy to our incredible publicity team.

[nyx-b-log]

it's saturday so time for an update!

would you believe i actually finished children of time oh my god it took so long to read asdfghjkl but! i enjoyed it. i maintain that the spider sections are far and away the best part - the human drama wasn't compelling to me until maybe the last 100 pages or so, and the relationship between holsten and lain is paper-thin and dull (imo). the world-building tho (evolution-building? ig) is fantastic and only gets better as the book goes on. like, ant supercomputers!! what!!! i've honestly only come to appreciate the book more as it gets more time to breathe in my head. i was a bit on the fence on whether i would continue the series, but i'm looking forward to it now!

also finished the martian, which had some bonus material at the end i'd never read before, which was an unexpected delight. was a bit of a strange experience finishing it and then almost immediately the news on titan coming out. ofc the two situations aren't entirely comparable, but i couldn't help thinking about it.

haven't started a new physical book yet, but my next audiobook is the left-handed book sellers of london by garth nix, a young adult fantasy set in an alternate 1980s london. characters are ehhh and plot is glacial but the world-building is clearly where all the passion is. could be a bit info-dumpy for some people, but i'm enjoying it. also the clothes descriptions, the clothes oh my god. surprised it doesn't have a queer tag on goodreads, main character susan is very much bisexual (and punky af, at least aesthetically) while merlin's approach to gender is incredibly loose (and affirmed throughout). i'm roughly halfway through, should have finished it by next week i think.

that's all for now! see you again next week!

[bibliophilecats]

Currently reading: The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix

[best-childhood-book]

Ohhh me too me too me too

I love you, op.

That being said, could you add the works below to the list, please ? :

The Supernaturalist (Eoin Colfer)

Skylark (Meagan Spooner)

The Once and Future King (T.H. White)

Once & Future (Kieron Gillen)

The Checquy Files (Daniel O'Malley)

Circe (Madeline Miller)

Monk & Robot (Becky Chambers)

Legacy of Orisha (Tomi Adeyemi)

Villains (V.E. Schwab)

Falling Kingdoms (Morgan Rhodes)

Chivalry (Neil Gaiman)

The Sleeper and the Spindle (Neil Gaiman)

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr (Ram V)

The Unwritten (Mike Carey)

The Left-Handed Book Sellers of London (Garth Nyx)

Die (Kieron Gillen)

The Wicked + the Divine (Kieron Gillen)

I added most of these, but like some other Neil Gaiman titles, Chivalry and The Sleeper and the Spindle are short stories, not technically novels (even in graphic format)

[ghosts-of-love]

anyone have any magic book recs? i'm really enjoying reading books that have some kind of magic in and seeing the different world building that takes place and how different authors interpret magic/witchcraft/powers and stuff

[7-11thuniverse]