Male Tears by Benjamin Myers

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This is an astonishing collection – which has a consistent quality and intensity throughout, a very rare thing, especially as the stories take in such a range of eras and settings. They also range in length, from 60 pages down to The Astronaut which is barely more than a page, and yet nevertheless complete – a whole story not a fragment.

The opener A Thousand Acres of English Soil is perhaps the more horrific, a tragedy in the Greek sense – I was left so deeply affected by it, having read it at the start of a train journey I just had to sit shell shocked for the remainder of the journey.

Ending with Snorri & Frosti, which echoes Chatwin’s On Black Hill, again there was a palpable sense of grief for them – that desire to somehow make the outcome something other than the inevitable.

It is a deep collection, but honest in that, and not playing for cheap emotions but speaking of the authentic harshness of so many lives, the loneliness of so many men.

It is not often that I read anything as good as this.

Introduction to Eastern Christian Liturgies by S. Alexopoulos and M. E. Johnson

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As an Alcuin Club Collection this really needs no introduction – it is, as you expect, an excellent study that opens up the topic to general and scholarly readers alike.

That we increasingly understand that the diversity of the Eastern Liturgies is a token of their long authenticity and not a sign of later corruption or imperfection means they are of deep interest as we seek to understand our own worshipping practice.

The comparative approach here is also really valuable, as the differences between the liturgies throw light on the evolution and motivations. That the liturgies have been dynamic over time was a new insight for me – as was the level of potential liturgical reform that might come to the Eastern Churches in the near future.

Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Audre Lorde

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I think there is a great sadness when you read how insightfully Lorde, writing 40 years ago, speaks to some many contemporary issues – the struggles seem the same, have we really made so little progress?

She writes a lot about the impact of intersectionality, before the term was coined, particularly from the experience of being Black, queer, and female. And about the ways that for example within the feminist movement non-White experience was being rendered invisible, often under the false belief that strength and unity of a movement would be put at risk if diversity was acknowledged.

It is an inspirational collection – you are left with a renewed sense of passion to be active in breaking down the barriers and the structures that hold so many lives back.

Heaven by Paula Gooder

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I read this on flight between Toronto and Calgary while I was really not feeling very well, so maybe I was not receptive to it and therefore judge it a little harshly.

But it feels like a reasonable introduction to the ideas of Heaven for those that have never thought about them at all before – but the fact that the main messages are that “popular” beliefs about Heaven and the afterlife are loosely, at best, related to the Biblical accounts, and those Biblical accounts themselves are complex, multifaceted, and evolve significantly, really didn’t feel like news. As a result it is hard to imagine who the intended reader really is.

Only on the Weekends by Dean Atta

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Following the masterpiece that is The Black Flamingo was always going to be a tough gig – Only on the Weekends is presented in a much more conventional narrative form, and reading it directly after Jay’s Gay Agenda it sits much more closely as a companion to that novel than it does to The Black Flamingo.

We need these stories of queer teen loves, and we should rejoice that they seem to be being published thick and fast at the moment – it is a great blessing to the generation that are living their first loves that these stories reassure them that they are not alone.

Jay’s Gay Agenda by Jason June

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This is an unexceptional coming of age teen romance – and it is brilliant for that very reason – it makes being a gay teenager unexceptional – and for that we should be very grateful to Jason June.

The 6ress – Issue Two – Crooked Jukebox

 I put tabs in

Saturday Night, Central London by Karan Chambers

ode to the women in the bar bathrooms by Amy Kay – which explores the power of single-sex spaces, something that is contested and complex within current discourse

disappointed puffin by Serpico Snelling written from the view point of the puffin