fun and thoughtful expansion on the podcast. i’ve been saying it for years but bad gays is excellent public history!!! histories of sexuality are discussed so differently in academia than they are in like, regular queer life (and imo this is a good & valuable thing!) & bad gays is really great at bringing that academic way of thinking about sex & sexuality to a non-academic audience. 

however: not to be a cunt but this book needed another editing pass before going to print though. many typos and some structural/syntax quirks that didn’t help flow & comprehension. it was totally fine! but present enough that i noticed & commented. cmon verso!

beautiful flowing prose (& great translation) - i dislike reading aloud but i read some of this to my partner & it was really enjoyable to speak the words on the page/hear it spoken. so evocative of time & place & especially collective mindset in a way that was fascinating and very recognizable to me. the way events happen & you feel yourself experiencing them with others, experiencing events the same way at the same time with others like you - the way certain elections and protests are described here draws up moments i’ve experienced in this collective way, the panic surrounding the 2016 us elections, excitement & possibility around police brutality protests during covid lockdown, horror watching the siege on gaza from afar… idk. one of those pieces of art that conveys its highly specific thing so well and so clearly that it gives you sense of shared human experience, rather than that of an outsider looking in. 

lovely lovely writing

the scat really took me by surprise to be honest but i dug this. utterly manic & deeply bleak

true crime author questions his genre. teens discover installation art. devastating!!

totally fun grimdark science fantasy. i forget how fun it is to be invested in a series that makes you want to guess and hope at how things will turn out. 

at times excruciatingly boring. early to middle of the book are very “cis person discovers gender exists and it’s hot!” but I ended up feeling much warmer on this book than I thought I would. the relationships & dynamics between the characters were interesting, I enjoyed the sort of challenging conversations playing out and developing the themes & thoughts of Eve, imo the strongest parts of the book are scenes between Eve and Fatima and Eve/Olivia/Nathan. 

writing style was a little too bare to do it for me. sometimes so similar story-to-story that they could have been disjointed scenes from a single novel. I always wanted the weird/magical/surreal elements to go a little further than they did. overall ok but unsatisfying. 

nice prose. captures crushing 18 y/o social anxiety and unsureness-of-self well. lost me toward the middle once the relationship was established but i enjoyed things coming to a head near the end. I can’t figure out what fucking street Nora’s supposed to live on though other than it’s near High Park/Roncesvalles!!!

deranged! i love femmes