I don't understand the hype around this book. Maybe I'm just not into exposés. Maybe in the political climate we live in, stories about the trials and tribulations of rich people don't engage me. Maybe, as a queer person myself, reading straight women writing about these creepily inauthentic, sanitized versions of us, doesn't sit right. 

Nobody ever said "bi". Nobody ever said "queer". It was always "bisexual", "LGBTQ+", as though the author was afraid to misstep and call the queers something that wasn't socially appropriate. It's clear to me that she's writing us as an outsider, and that makes it so boring and bland to read. I don't care what you have to say, you're not one of us, how can you capture us on a page? I'm assuming a lot of the audience is straight as well. No matter how much research the author did, it felt fake to me, but if you've never experienced the real thing - you'd see no issue with this because you haven't read any better. Every time someone opens their mouth to discuss LGBT issues in the book, it honest-to-god reads like a middle schooler's history report. 

I'm white, so I have no perspective on this, but reviewers of colour have also said that this book's depictions of Evelyn as a Latina woman and Monique as a biracial woman are... not great. Monique feels like little more than a prop for some kind of social commentary (the writing isn't good enough for me to figure out what the comment is, though). There is better rep out there, you guys, please go read it. And please listen to reviewers of colour when they tell you that this white author has a lot of work to do in how she portrays the characters in her books that aren't white.

There were parts of the book I liked; I love a flawed protagonist that isn't looking for sympathy, and we absolutely get that with Evelyn. I enjoyed the use of news stories/the media to move the story along. The twist at the end was... engaging (even if the leadup to it was filled with cliché lines like "I didn't know yet how much I was going to hate her"). But all in all, this book just... fell short, for me, in every way possible. 

I re-read Nimona in time for the film (which I went to an early screening of). I forgot how raw this book could be at times! 

I'm not going to compare the two - Nimona the film is coming to us at a much-different time, a time when queer people need more uplifting, hopeful stories from mainstream, non-indie sources, even if they are a tad toned down as a result. Nimona the comic book was made by a closeted young adult, started out completely indie, and echoes the side of our collective queerness that is tired of being hurt. It's wacky! It's fun! It's heartbreaking???

Holy shit, this book. This protagonist. What a fresh post-apocalyptic story. It might not be entirely scientific sci-fi, but once you suspend your disbelief, it really grows on you (like a mould). 

Tetley is brilliant, and optimistic, and utterly mad. I love her characterisation, I love the self-admitted unreliable narration, I love how she takes everything in stride (even the worst things). I've only ever read solarpunk sci-fi with hopeful protagonists, or dystopian sci-fi with downtrodden cynical protagonists. This is a dystopian setting with the most hopeful, lovely narrator at its center, and it really hit me in the feels.

The audiobook narrator's accent was way too strong and put-on though. I had to relisten to parts because it was so distracting. 

This is a strange one. I don't really know what to say about it. I picked it up for a reading challenge (the prompt was "self published"). The audience for this work is... very small. 

Maybe body horror trash fiction just isn't my cup of tea. The body horror itself was written exceptionally - I would get lost in the lyrical prose and it would hit me halfway through a paragraph that someone had just been disemboweled, or maimed, or killed. It didn't feel tacky or cliché, surprisingly. It felt like the book was trying to shock me, but also comfort me into this false sense of security at the same time. VERY nsfw, in every imaginable way.

I didn't so much enjoy it as I quickly devoured it, and then had to sit with the aftermath. I'm still here, sitting with it.

Oh my god, this book has everything. Worldbuilding you can really sink your teeth into, including linguistics. Drama! Intrigue! Blackmail! Opulence! Angst! Csevet Aisava! And of course, at the heart of it all, a pure cinnamon roll of a protagonist who is not at all prepared for what is about to go down.

It's a hefty book, for sure. Between the similar-sounding names, the overcomplicated titles, plot that moves at a snail's pace through slow, formal imperial proceedings, it can get tedious. Somehow, though, Maia's kind, wholesome POV kept me hooked from start to finish, even if I usually crave tangible conflict and action. Nothing was rushed, no detail glossed over. I enjoyed this book a lot, and it's probably one of my favourites this year.

When I was a kid (maybe 13), I was very upset at my friend when we decided to make up a secret language, because she didn't know what declensions/conjugations were, and had no interest in me explaining them to her. THIS IS A BOOK FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME.

I always give memoirs, especially graphic novel memoirs, 4 stars or higher. This is because I don't feel like I have the right to assign a score to someone's personal truth, based on things like how engaging I found it, or whether it impressed me. And in a graphic novel, where the way language is used doesn't even necessarily play into the overall quality of the narrative, a score feels especially redundant. 

I read this book for a PopSugar prompt - "a book that has been banned or challenged in any state in 2022". Originally I'm from Russia, and my life experiences have shaped me into a person who is staunchly against censorship (it's a practice that only backward governments will implement, you can't change my mind!) - if a book is banned somewhere, it's going to the top of my reading list. But all in all... I almost found this one underwhelming?

Make no mistake, I related to parts of "Genderqueer" on a deep and personal level. I, too, am nonbinary, and have gone through many of the same revelations about my gender identity as Kobabe. But even at eir most vulnerable and raw, e sounds... borderline clinical. To think that someone would read this book and think it profane enough to ban is absurd to me. A few scenes feature sexual content, but so do many other memoirs. So do many fictional works I had to read in high school! Truly, in contrast to what the Facebook mommies will have you believe, it's really not anything world-shattering, which isn't a bad thing. Maybe that's because it's a story with which I'm painfully familiar. Reading it, I felt, more than anything, understood. 

The ending was abrupt, which makes sense to me since it isn't really an end. How does one, after all, end a description of one's ongoing experience of transness? Overall, this was an immensely relatable journey through Kobabe's discovery of eir gender identity and sexuality. It's not always profound, and it doesn't have to be. It feels very similar in tone to two other graphic memoirs I've read this year, "Blankets" by Craig Thompson and "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" by Alison Bechdel. The speculative tone, the back-and-forth timeline, the meandering pacing, the open-ended conclusion. I liked it a lot. 

Maybe if enough trans people write deeply personal explorations of coming to terms with their gender identity, revealing painful truths about themselves and really digging around in their past, society will start realising that we're people too! I love literature that humanizes me in the public eye :)

Read banned books, y'all.

As I was reading Trans Girl Suicide Museum, I would catch myself thinking various things I'd put in a review, once I was done, various things I would say when discussing this book, or recommending it to friends. So I stared a document and jotted these things down, and here they are in no particular order. I'm AFAB, nonbinary, white, and a first generation immigrant whose first language isn't English and who doesn't come from a Western country originally, so these takes are probably at least somewhat a product of all of that. The review is long but this book makes you think long-windedly for a bit. 

1. When confronted by bigots asking me for scientific evidence of something LGBT-related that hasn't been studied in depth (asking me to dissect myself for their amusement) I find myself bringing up the burning of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft during the Holocaust. We lost a lot of research then, and have been too busy surviving to conduct much since. There isn't adequate funding, and there isn't adequate need, according to conservative institutions, since we are collectively a scam made up by the far left. 

This is why books like this are important. Trans people don't often get to sit and think and write about the human condition - we are too busy working paycheck to paycheck with no familial support, dodging attacks on our identity, and trying to engage in activism and education when all we really want to do is lay down. 

Baer's use of her privilege to write and publish a set of what I'd call (albeit unconventional) philosophical essays on transness deserves to be celebrated. Philosophy is a field largely dominated by cis white men, and this book is a refreshing (and much needed) reminder that there are marginalised people out there capable of the same, and that their understanding of being human is just as worthy of analysis and discussion, even if they haven't had an expensive education, or the means to go on spiritual retreats, or the support of institutions to do their thing. 

2. Though Baer knows that she writes from a position of privilege (being a white rich trans girl with relative familial support), and is largely open about this in her writing, I think the one area she doesn't really realise or acknowledge it is her romanticization of ketamine. I speak as a white trans person too, but also as a first generation immigrant: committing a crime, for me, could mean deportation. Not just arrest, or a fine; my whole future in the country I live in could be over. To throw around phrases like "ketamine made me more trans", thanking the drug, borderline exalting it, feels to me almost irresponsible, an act of this strange pseudo-peer pressure, even if it isn't intended in that way. 

It can be hard, from what I've noticed here in Canada, for Western trans people who aren't immigrants, or poor, or marginalised in other ways, to imagine a life that doesn't contain any recreational drug use or other petty criminal activity, so they talk about it like it's factual, because they and their friends all do drugs. The idea that one could get high every day, as Baer claims she was doing, is impossible to envision for me: I work a 9-5 in a field I do actually care about (and again, losing my job on a work visa could mean deportation in the long run). There's something to be said about finding oneself on the fringes of society and turning to drugs - not because you grew up around them or because you went down a bad path as a kid but because you felt like making that active choice one day, to get drugs - and forgetting that there are further fringes, who can't just go and do that.

I don't know where I was going, with that. The ketamine romanticization threw me off and I feel that it needed to be said, because this book is written with a specific niche of people in mind and it's so weird to me that one can be incredibly versed in the fact that transition doesn't look the same for everyone, and talk about people's different transness experiences so eloquently, and then just forget that not all of us would do drugs. I've seen trans people in queer circles online, in their 20s, call other trans people "losers" for never trying drugs, unironically. It's strange how much less Western white queers are penalised (by institutions and by society) for not having their shit together, for having messy apartments and messy lives and being able to talk about it, not even as a brag, but matter-of-factly. Maybe a part of me is a little jealous of that.

3. The Transness-As-A-Decision narrative isn't popular in modern queer circles, but it's one I feel like more trans people need to critically engage with. Really sit with it. Discomfort is part of growth sometimes, and maybe more of us need to talk to each other about the varied ways in which we experience our transness, and engage with those discussions rather than shutting them down or going to sit in a corner because it made us uncomfortable or dysphoric. The cisheteronormative world already puts pressure on us to conform, and we don't need to be doing that to each other (or ourselves) too. What we all need to do is read some queer theory together. 

4. It's really funny to me how I'm reading other reviews for this book and all of them are sounding a bit like Baer: that stream-of-consciousness, descriptive style that's run-on and yet oddly eloquent. She's transforming our writing a little, y'all. I think that's neat. 

5. There's that meme where on one side it's "discussing gender with trans people" and there's a picture of two Greek philosophers, and then on the other side it's "discussing gender with cis people" and there's a picture of a woman and a baby playing with building blocks. That's what this book felt like, in part.

6. I still don't think I truly understand what the museum is. I have this little mean joke with myself that I'm "too busy for suicidal ideation" - which isn't true, in practice, but it's something I used to say when people asked me how I managed to graduate with honours while working two jobs (so I had money for rent and groceries) on top of my full-time degree. Maybe that's why I don't get it. Or maybe it's because I'm one of the "cis-passing non-bi-
nary people with septum piercings and asymmetrical haircuts" Baer is seemingly frustrated by in parts of the book (though the haircut is more symmetrical than it had been in my teens, and I've had top surgery and been on hormones - see, even now I'm trying to assimilate, albeit with the trans community as opposed to cis people, othering myself from the "shrill" genderqueer people Baer mentions). Maybe that's my suicide museum. What I'm trying to say is that this book is raw in a very distinct and honest way, and it's made me consider the way I approach my own gender identity and the way I present it to others, as well as the way binary trans people look at me, what they think. How much of it is a product of hyperindividualism in a consumerist society. 

TL; DR: go read Trans Girl Suicide Museum. It might make you uncomfortable. That's ok. 

In one of my reading challenges (the PopSugar 2023 list maybe?), there was a prompt along the lines of "read a book you should have read in high school". In high school I was very depressed, so I never did a lot of my assignments: many books on compulsory reading lists fell to the wayside. Despite being familiar with Orwell's work through 1984, which I liked, I somehow never got to Animal Farm (and it's often the case for neurodivergent folks that the more something gets touted as a "must read", the guiltier we feel about not reading it, and the more we avoid it as a result). But, I bit the bullet and read it in one sitting this afternoon.

If I'd read it aged 13 when I should have, I would have become radicalized a lot sooner, I think. As a satire, it works phenomenally, the unreliable narration is introduced in a way that's approachable for younger readers to grasp, and the anti-Soviet (I hesitate to say "anti-communist" because Stalinist Russia was never communism in practice, even if it was on paper) commentary draws from historical events with great fluency. I've said this about other recent reads but it stands here too: this is a classic for a reason.

I feel like American schools are going  to start removing this one from the curriculum, if they aren't already. I know it deals explicitly with Soviet Russia, but sooooomething tells me that themes like the spread of disinformation, the suppression of personal liberty, and the makings of a police state aren't something unique to the USSR, and are, in fact, already becoming a part of today's USA. (Sincerely, a Russian-born trans person watching you all from Canada)

I'm trying to finish the PopSugar 2023 reading challenge, and one of the prompts is "a book based on a popular movie" - so, a novelization. There aren't many of those (usually, it's the other way around, films are based on books), but the Star Wars franchise is responsible for a lot of the novelizations I do know of. I looked up which Star Wars novelization people online liked best, and picked this book up on a whim. I'd watched Rogue One back in 2016, but didn't remember much.

This novelization exceeded my expectations. I would say it's better than the film. The way it's written, and the way the audiobook is read, kept me engaged throughout; even when I'd forgotten who characters in the franchise were and didn't have any prior attachment, this book made me care and root for them. It feels like your typical sci-fi space opera, and I enjoyed the additional characterization that a book can provide through POVs and internal monologue (that a film cannot). The changing points of view make the final victory feel truly like a team effort, and I liked that this book captured the classic Star Wars slightly-corny-slightly-epic feel that recent films have lacked. 

The writing is beautiful, and the story itself is profound, I'm just not sure if it's for me. I found myself swept along by it for sure, but not necessarily engaging with it in a way I do with books I take a more avid interest in. 

The flashbacks added a great deal to the story, but I also felt confused by them: with little distinction between the past and present, it was hard to keep track of characters' ages, whereabouts, etc - especially when often, the characters didn't necessarily act their age (the way they spoke, their mannerisms, indicative of someone much younger than 70, or 40).

The book is very nsfw at times, as other reviewers have said, but I think it handles sex and the human body in a way that doesn't feel exhibitionist or pornographic, just true to life. Let 40y/o women have hot sex. 

Acevedo explores sisterhood, familial obligations, love, grief, and the long-term effects of spousal emotional abuse in one sweeping, beautiful brushstroke. All in all it was a strange, slow read, but one that hit me in the feels in a way I didn't entirely expect.