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This is such a great collection with a mix of poems, short stories, and non-fiction pieces.
I tagged
My Name is Frida by Rosy Adams
Queer Love by Julia Bell
Dancing Men by Manish Chauhan
The Glass Hammer by Leon Craig
Autumn is the Queerest Season by Serge Ψ Neptune
Going West by Harry F. Rey
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You should already know that I am a big fan of Fourteen Poems, but the anthologies they are making happen just make me love them more and more – and this is such a great example of light shining in the darkness.
Bringing together Queer voices from across Latin American, and in translation bringing them to an English language audience, is pushing back against so many of the things that are toxic in the world right now.
And the poems are brilliant!!
I put tags in…
Selfie by Pablo Romero
Poetas enamoradas (Female Poets in Love) by V. Andino Diaz
Cristo Es Una Mujer (Christ is a Woman) by Ingrid Bringas
A ella (Que tambien soy yo) (To Her (Who is Also Me) by Daniel Nizcub
Mantenimiento y reparacion (Maintenance and Repair) by Edu Barreto
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Subtitled ‘An Anthology of Memory & Lament’ but this is more than an anthology, Richard Holloway sets the poems he offers us within a commentary that really opens them up.
Memory and Lament might feel like fairly depressing themes, but I found this full of hope – even when we are facing the pain of loss, it is painful because of the joy and the love that have gone before.
I think this will be a book to return to from time to time...
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Having found Tom Allen’s first book, No Shame, so powerful it was always going to be a challenge to live up to that. Just because Too Much didn’t make me cry doesn’t mean it a lesser book.
This book centres more on Tom’s family, and it reminded me a lot of Tom Cox’s writing about his Dad – how their Dads are such rich characters in their lives.
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I feel sure that I have read Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, but as I don’t seem to have blogged about it I now doubt myself.
This was a thoughtful gift, a holiday read set in Ibiza when I was heading to Ibiza on holiday.
It speaks to the possibility, and risk, of remaking your life in later life. When you are stuck in a rut and yet the rut, like old slippers, is comfortable.
I am not a big fan of fantasy – I generally find the “real” more surprising that the imagined.
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Once again Dean Atta brings us excellent work, they show the complicity of young queer lives with such skill. The characters are rounded, no cardboard cut outs, they change and grow.
This is a love story and a coming out story, and the two dance around each other.
How Kai and Matt learn to express themselves, their authentic selves, feels real – this is not a linear journey – and questions about how you are true to yourself and true to your friend / more than friend are challenging.
When is it right to compromise for the sake of another, when is it right to put self first.
Powerful and important.
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I got this from the library because I wanted to know what the fuss about Red, White & Royal Blue was all about, but they didn’t have a copy of that.
This is a story about the “Europe” I think Americans imagine – the context is this food and wine coach tour which takes you to the best artisan bakery, the little family run winery, the cheese shop that has been in the family for 14 generations – where everyone has a creative flair. It is a tour that would cost ten probably twenty thousand pounds plus – and maybe because Theo and Kit both come from very wealthy backgrounds maybe they would have booked this tour when anyone else in their early twenties would be Inter-Railing on a 50 Euros a day budget…
At some point in each chapter the story diverts from the descriptions of the fine wines to descriptions very fine sex, I am a sex positive person and maybe if I hadn’t been reading it on a plane then turning a page and finding myself emerges scenes of pegging would not have got me flustered.
It is a turn pager, but it didn’t click for me.
