netgirl_y2k (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
netgirl_y2k) wrote2025-05-17 02:27 pm
netgirl_y2k) wrote2025-05-17 02:27 pm
Books! Some Books!
The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo - So this is a horror-ish novella set in 1920s Appalachia where a trans man (not the language used, obvs) working as a sort of roaming nurse comes to a small town that's suffering a fit of religious mania that's manifesting both as hostility to outsiders and the town collectively trying to take their local gender nonconforming teenager in hand. And it was working for me as a tale of 'we have always been here/some places can be basically safe to be a weird kid in right up until they aren't.'
Then it took a turn towards rape revenge fantasy that I wasn't wholly onboard with, then a sharp right turn towards graphic monsterfucking.
So, uh, that was a bit weird.
Hot Summer by Elle Everhart - I don't like reality television. I don't think it's bad, I don't think liking it is some kind moral failing, it's just by and large not my cup of tea. That said, there is one reality show that I do think should not exist and no one should watch, and that's Love Island, a show that has a death toll.
So if you can forget that this is a lightly fictionalised version of Love Island (something I only could intermittently) and if you are lucky enough to have never seen the show and so not get hungup on 'Hang on, there's no way there would ever be a queer love story on Heterosexuality: The Show' then this is a cute enough contemporary f/f romance.
A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling - Obviously I read this because of the title, and the actual book doesn't quite live up to it, but this tale of a bunch of libertarians who move to a small town to prove that their ideas can work, and run smack bang into that fact that, like most things government does, there were bear control laws in place for a reason was pretty compelling, especially now that *gestures at everything*
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky - Hostile Alien Planets and Why You Should Not Get Trapped On Them. My new favourite Tchaikovsky; yes, more than the spider planet one, yes, more than the one narrated by the Good Boy. It's just that good.
I got outbid on some fancy Tchaikovsky special editions in the genre creators for trans rights auction, which was fine, good cause and all. But I saw Tchaikovsky talking about the auction on bluesky, and he said something like if you'd read his work he hoped you'd already know he was a a supporter of trans rights, and, like, it's always good to get confirmation that someone you're a fan of is a good egg, but I have read thousands of pages of that man's work and all I could have said about him with any certainty is 'I think that man likes bugs.'
Private Rites by Julia Armfield - 'King Lear and his dyke daughters.' I'm not paraphrasing, that's a line in the book. I really enjoyed Armfield's novella Our Wives Under the Sea, and her first full length novel has a lot of the same themes, to whit, queer women being sad while soaking wet. It is longer, so, um, there's that.
Then it took a turn towards rape revenge fantasy that I wasn't wholly onboard with, then a sharp right turn towards graphic monsterfucking.
So, uh, that was a bit weird.
Hot Summer by Elle Everhart - I don't like reality television. I don't think it's bad, I don't think liking it is some kind moral failing, it's just by and large not my cup of tea. That said, there is one reality show that I do think should not exist and no one should watch, and that's Love Island, a show that has a death toll.
So if you can forget that this is a lightly fictionalised version of Love Island (something I only could intermittently) and if you are lucky enough to have never seen the show and so not get hungup on 'Hang on, there's no way there would ever be a queer love story on Heterosexuality: The Show' then this is a cute enough contemporary f/f romance.
A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling - Obviously I read this because of the title, and the actual book doesn't quite live up to it, but this tale of a bunch of libertarians who move to a small town to prove that their ideas can work, and run smack bang into that fact that, like most things government does, there were bear control laws in place for a reason was pretty compelling, especially now that *gestures at everything*
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky - Hostile Alien Planets and Why You Should Not Get Trapped On Them. My new favourite Tchaikovsky; yes, more than the spider planet one, yes, more than the one narrated by the Good Boy. It's just that good.
I got outbid on some fancy Tchaikovsky special editions in the genre creators for trans rights auction, which was fine, good cause and all. But I saw Tchaikovsky talking about the auction on bluesky, and he said something like if you'd read his work he hoped you'd already know he was a a supporter of trans rights, and, like, it's always good to get confirmation that someone you're a fan of is a good egg, but I have read thousands of pages of that man's work and all I could have said about him with any certainty is 'I think that man likes bugs.'
Private Rites by Julia Armfield - 'King Lear and his dyke daughters.' I'm not paraphrasing, that's a line in the book. I really enjoyed Armfield's novella Our Wives Under the Sea, and her first full length novel has a lot of the same themes, to whit, queer women being sad while soaking wet. It is longer, so, um, there's that.
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