Welcome back to Book Break! Today's video might be a long one, I have got a
lot of book recommendations for you. I am going to try and recommend an
LGBTQIA+ book from every genre. So let's get straight into it. Starting
with literary fiction, let's kick off with a recently Booker
long-listed book. This is Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. So this
book is set in 1980s Glasgow, and we follow a young gay boy called Shuggie
who lives with his alcoholic mother Agnes who he loves very much
and has to take care of. So it's this really sad story but with really
beautifully written characters who are so real,
and so lovable, even if they are so damaged.
And we follow Shuggie from the ages of 6 up to 17,
so get ready to cry your way through that one. And then for another literary
novel, My Education by Susan Choi. So this is about a 21 year old woman
called Regina who is just starting as a grad student at this really prestigious
university where she has been warned about one of the professors who has a
reputation for getting a bit too close to his students.
But she hasn't been warned about his beautiful charismatic
wife. So we get to see that story and then we also check in with her
14 years later and see how she's still affected by that time in her life.
And then for a genre bending one, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by
Andrea Lawlor is a literary novel with slight fantasy
elements. Our main character Paul is a shape-shifter, and he can change his body
and his gender at will. This is such a fun book. It's basically a
tour of so many different 90s queer
subcultures that Paul can get access to through
the different ways he can present himself and his body. It's very sexy, this
book takes a really joyful unabashed approach to sex, and
it's a lot of fun to read. It will make you question
everything we think we know about sex and gender.
And then into full fantasy. There is Juniper Leaves by Jazz Joyner,
with the subtitle "the otherworldly tale of a lonesome magic girl". So this is
about a 15 year old girl called Juniper who discovers she has these magical
powers she didn't know anything about, that she inherited from her late
grandmother. So together with her cousin, they enter
this whole new magical realm, which it turns out is
under threat, and it's down to them to save it.
And along the way she gets her first ever crush on this other girl, so you get
a really cute romance story there. And then for a much darker fantasy,
there's Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan.
So this is set in a fantasy world where there are three castes:
paper, steel and moon. And paper is at the bottom.
And every year the king selects eight paper girls to come and be his
concubines. And our main character Lei is one of the
girls chosen. So she's absolutely terrified,
but also holding on to hope that she might be able to find her mother
who was chosen years before. And this book borrows a lot of elements from
Malaysian mythology, and we end up with this very dark fantasy
with a female female romance at its heart. And then for a sci-fi book,
I'm going to recommend A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.
So this one is set in the very distant future, after humanity has spread out
among the stars and started a whole new empire. Our main character Mahit is
summoned to the capital to become the new ambassador, and
discovers when she gets there that her predecessor
mysteriously died, so she has to solve this mystery.
So the book is very much about the politics of this new world and all the
parallels we can draw to our own world. And romance isn't central to the
storyline but we do get a few romance threads
with a few gay and pansexual characters. And then another sci-fi book,
the new book from sci-fi legend Adrian Tchaikovsky is called Doors of Eden.
And this book starts when a woman called Lee gets a phone call from her
ex-girlfriend Mal who went missing mysteriously four years
earlier. And as the book goes on it just turns into this epic
story with parallel worlds and timelines and one particularly good quote
I wanted to read to you from the woman who went missing:
"it's a million to one long shot, and these two desperate lesbians can save
the world: perfect action movie material". And then
let's blur those genres once again, this is where sci-fi
meets murder mystery: The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas.
So in 1967 four female scientists invent a time machine, but one of the
women suffers a breakdown because of the effects of time travelling too much.
In 2017 we catch up with this woman, as she's now a grandmother
and has just received a mysterious note from the future
warning her of an unknown woman's death. And then in 2018
we watch the aftermath of this murder. And it turns into this
super complex murder mystery that can only be solved by piecing together
all the different parts of the puzzle and different timelines.
It's so much fun, and it also takes quite a dark look at
corruption within this company that sprung up as the centre for
time travel, and you get a few different love stories along the way
with a few different queer characters, including particularly a love story
between two women at the centre. And then for a straight up murder
mystery that doesn't involve any time travel,
there's Miss Timmins' School for Girls by Nayana Currimbhoy.
This one is set in the 1970s when a young school teacher called Charu,
she's not even 21 years old, arrives to teach at an all girls boarding school in
India. And there, she meets another female
teacher and has a sort of sexual awakening.
But then one night a body is found and Charu is implicated in the murder,
and three of the schoolgirls take it upon themselves to solve it.
And then from crime, we move into horror, but still set at a boarding school.
This is Wilder Girls by Rory Power. So this is about these girls at a boarding
school on this remote island that has become
infected with the Tox, which is an illness that's affecting
their bodies in strange ways. It's also affecting the wildlife around
them, so they are essentially trapped, relying fully on the rations
that are delivered to the islands that they have to fight out between them. But
then one of the girls goes missing and it's up to her friends to find her.
And along the way, two of these girls discover a deeper relationship
between them. This book is very weird and wonderful,
lots of body horror, there's been a lot of hype about this one and very much
deserved. And then if you want to go further into the body horror
side of things, there is a short story collection called Her Body and Other
Parties by Carmen Maria Machado. So all of the stories in this collection
are linked by the theme of female bodies,, about the violence that is inflicted on
women's bodies, but also about female sexuality.
There's lots of sex in this book, including lots of sex between women.
Right, now let's move to historical fiction, and I'm going to really quickly
mention a book that isn't coming out until next year, but that is going to be
City of Vengeance by D.V. Bishop. This is going to be the first
in a crime series set in 1530s Florence, against the backdrop of the Medici
dynasty. And it's really rare that we find LGBT
stories in that kind of time period, so excited
for that one, but we do have a while to wait.
So a book you can get your hands on right now is The Pull of the Stars by
Emma Donoghue. This is set in a pandemic, a hundred
years before the one we're currently in. This is set in the great flu in 1918, in
an Irish hospital, on a maternity ward, where three women, a doctor, a nurse and a
volunteer, drastically change each other's lives,
with a romance being just one part of that. And as well as the pandemic itself
being so terrifying, this is a particularly fascinating
perspective focused on the aversion to contraception in Ireland
at that time, so the maternity ward is this particularly
tragic and difficult place to be. So it is a very sad story but it's also a very
hopeful story. Next, a very important subsection of
queer literature: the coming of age story. So let's start with a classic book from
the 1980s: A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White.
This book traces the coming of age of our unnamed narrator, but it is largely
autobiographical. This is actually the first in a trilogy
of books about Edmund White's life. And it was a pretty pioneering portrayal
of homosexuality for the time it was published.
But then jumping forward, these kind of coming-of-age stories are still
so important. So Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom
is a coming of age story about a trans girl. It's a memoir that is billed as
sort of true. So in this book our main character runs away from her parents'
abusive home and finds a new found family with a
group of trans women who help support her on her journey to
transitioning. But then one of the women is murdered,
and the book takes a really hard look at the violence perpetuated against
trans women, with all of our main characters coming together to fight for
justice. Then of course there's romance, a very
key genre, so if you're a romance fan why not pick up
Meet Cute Club by Jack Harbon. This is about a guy called Jordan
who runs the meet cute club, which is a romance book club
that he's worried is losing steam a little bit. But then the rude new
employee from his local bookshop asks to join the
same employee who is always making fun of Jordan's book taste.
Together these two men team up to bring the book club back from the ashes, and
maybe along the way discover they don't hate each other so much after all. And
then a rather different romance book is At Her Feet by Rebekah
Weatherspoon. This is a BDSM romance between two women
who meet on a dating app. And you do get to see a lot of both
sides of their relationship in this book, you get to see them acting out their
dominant submissive roles, but you also get to see a lot more of the vanilla
aspect of their relationship as well. And then for some non-fiction
books. So starting with a non-fiction written by a journalist.
Queer intentions by Amelia Abraham is absolutely brilliant.
In this book, Amelia Abraham takes us on a journey through
LGBTQIA+ culture interviewing loads of people from different walks of life.
And the book does a really good job of combining her own personal experience
with a much bigger picture, showing the range of experiences within the LGBTQIA+
community. Or for a bit of history, you could read How to Survive a Plague
by David France, who is the creator of the How to Survive
a Plague Documentary. This is the definitive history of the
battle to halt the AIDS epidemic, and it's a really powerful story of the
activists who fought to have this epidemic
taken seriously, and how they became involved themselves
in the research towards developing treatment. For a memoir, I recommend
Me by Elton John. This is Elton John in his own words
for the first time. We get to follow his extraordinary life
with so many completely outrageous stories that you never would have heard
before. We get to hear everything from his rock
and roll lifestyle, to his setting up his AIDS foundation,
his friendships with Freddie Mercury and George Michael,
to his marriage to David Furnish and becoming a father. And then one more
memoir: Redefining Realness by Janet Mock. So
Janet Mock is a trans writer and activist, and this is her story of the
path to transitioning, and how it doesn't always fit all of the
accepted norms. Stereotypes like "she always knew she was
a woman", she doesn't feel necessarily apply to her. So this book really
challenges a lot of our perceptions of what it means to be trans.
And then finally, my last recommendation, if you're in the mood for a classic
I recommend Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. So this book was written in 1956
and it's about an American man living in Paris and starting a relationship with
an Italian man called Giovanni, who he meets at a Parisian gay bar.
And this is very much set in a society that is not accepting of homosexuality,
and James Baldwin himself knew a lot about what it felt like to be othered by
society. He actually also, like this character,
left the US for Paris because of the racism that he
faced in the US, and when he did then return to the
states years later, to take a really prominent part in the Civil Rights
movement, he found within the movement a lot of
hostility to homosexuality. But Giovanni's Room remains a staple of
LGBTQIA+ literature, so definitely one for your must read list.
So are there any genres that I've missed? Do leave a comment if there were any
particular genres you were hoping to get recommendations for, and I will do my
best to find you the perfect book. I will also leave the link here to a
video we made on LGBTQIA+ stories with happy endings, if you want
to read something that is guaranteed to make you smile. See you
next time!