A beautiful fairy-tale like story of a trans runaway finding friends, enemies, and strange magic in a big city. She leaves her hometown, her younger sister, and her strict Chinese immigrant parents behind on the day the mermaids beach themselves on the shore and fade away. She finds herself on the Street of Miracles and in the fabulous but fractured community of trans women for the first time. Then a trans woman is murdered, and the others must decide how they want to respond: activism or violence? Infused with ghosts, spells, fights, and forgiveness, this short novel hits hard. I was reminded of Kelly Link's stories, and the Bordertown books by Will Shetterly and Emma Bull. I definitely want to read more from Kai Cheng Thom, who I've heard interviewed on Gender Reveal (episode 81) as well as other podcasts.

Tamar Herman is a well respected pop culture journalist who has been covering kpop for nearly a decade, writing for Forbes, Billboard, MTV, Teen Vogue, South China Morning Post and more. I know that she is a long-time fan of BTS. This book, however, is written with a strong degree of journalist distance and seems aimed at an audience unfamiliar, at least less familiar, with BTS. I picked it up hoping for something a little more personal, more emotional, written for ARMY. Instead I got a very competent and solid overview of the timeline of BTS's career and summaries of every song in their entire discography through MOTS:7. This was helpful for me when I was working on a personal project of listening to every BTS song in chronological order to make my ultimate playlist of favorite songs. But there were some chapters of this book which felt like reading a long Wikipedia entry. One highlight was an interview with Dr. Murray Stein, author of Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction which was one of the inspirations for the MOTS albums. I do wish that Herman had included some of her own experiences or memories from interviewing BTS and watching their concerts, but I suppose I will have to find that type of content in a different book.

A well-researched and thoughtful exploration of the lives of queer heroes who are often overlooked. These people fought for the freedoms we have today, and lived unapologetic lives against the odds. Criswell weaves together personal thoughts and observations from the modern day with these ten illustrated biographies.

I learned some facts about chocolate but overall I wasn't super impressed by this.

A dating advice book specifically for queers. I don't know how many people will sit down to read this front to back, but it's a very fun book to flip through and read in bits and pieces. Written in an advice-column style (the questions are real ones sent in by readers) with very nice illustrations.