Playing catch-up on #Pantone2023 😁
@Clwojick
Clwojick Well done! 12mo
Cinfhen Hi Ana! Feel like I haven‘t “seen” you around in a while😔Hope all is well xx 12mo
22 likes2 comments
House of Impossible Beauties | 
Playing catch-up on #Pantone2023 😁
@Clwojick
so-soFilmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, the documentary "Paris is Burning" chronicled the New York City Ballroom culture of the time, introducing us to its drag queen-organized pageants, and to a small cast of its iconic participants, among them performers such as Dorian Corey (who made headlines posthumously when a mummified body was found in her closet) and Pepper LaBeija, as well as Angie and Venus Xtravaganza.
Review & CW/TW cont'd in comments ⬇️
so-soI didn‘t realize until halfway through that many of the characters in this fictionalized story were real. Sparked from the documentary Paris is Burning, which I definitely want to watch now, this started out by pulling me in. But the middle 200 pages were slow going. This is the last story I expected to get bored with. The last third really picked up, though it was heartbreaking as well. #CoverLove #Booked2022 about the AIDS epidemic.
I was cooking dinner listening to this on audiobook and caught myself softly smiling. Tragic and beautiful - this is one of those books I‘m so glad I have on audio. Love the narrator Christian Barillas.
pickI had watched Paris Is Burning and knew what happened but it still couldn‘t save me from being gutted after reading this book.😭 This is about a group of mostly Puerto Rican, trans and gay, discarded youths who become family against the backdrop of drag culture in 1980‘s NYC and AIDS. The writing was pitch perfect with all of its sass, shade, love, and loss. Pick.
Thomas was the name of Venus before she became Venus.
She cried when that Grizabella kitty sang her memory song. Who knew that an old cat‘s sadness would cause waterworks?
[Not ashamed to admit I also cried during that song when I saw Cats live. She reminded me of my kitty who had passed a few years earlier 💜]
Yes please, I would definitely like to read historical fiction (which now apparently includes my childhood years because I‘m OLD) about the first all-Latinx underground Harlem ball scene house, thank you
💋🏳️🌈💃🏻 #nowreading
pickThis book gutted me. Less about the House of Xtravaganza and more about how this group of black and brown and gay and transgender and queer people found one another and formed a family. I had to set it aside for several weeks because it is HEAVY with racism, discrimination, homophobia, addiction, etc. but I ultimately found its message beautiful. 4⭐️.
TRUTH!
pickThis book is full of heart: life, love, tenderness, tragedy. As a debut, it does tend to ramble a bit at times, but these queens are fierce and vulnerable and strong and honest. #queerbooks #hispanicheritagemonth
pickThe writing takes a bit to get into, felt very ‘choppy‘ , lots of POVs and timelines. But worth it for the story which was good and sad 😢
Last book of September, squeezed in.
With permission I opened last nights wrapped books - look at these!! 😁😁
Thank you Cindy - I‘m soooo looking forward to these!! 😘♥️ ♥️#litsyfriendships
pickIt‘s taken me several months to get through this, even though it‘s compelling, mostly because I read the entire chunkster on my phone. Chosen family provides nurture and support for queer Latinx aspiring to be their truest selves in 1980s NYC. If you love tragic character-based fiction like A Little Life, this is for you. #LGBTQ
pickI loved this moving fictionalized account of the House of Xtravaganza, the first all-Latino House in the NY ballroom scene in the 80s. The novel switches POVs between several characters from a few generations, and Cassara gives them all district voices, hopes, and dreams along with showing the various traumas they've endured as LGBTQ individuals of the period. He also has a wonderful flare for dialog and I look forward to more from him!
Now they were both crying, but she knew they were crying for different things. She couldn‘t ever say why another person was crying at any given time, because she couldn‘t read minds. That seemed to her one of the most heartbreaking things about being human.
pickPoignant and powerful history of queer lives in the 1980s New York during the early days of the AIDS crisis.
Heartbreaking beautiful book that will stay with me for a long time.
#goodreads #favourites #lgbtq #debut #historicalfiction
“The ironic thing is this,” Venus said. “She says she doesn‘t want anyone dressed in drag [at the funeral]. But if she asks me to dress like a man, it‘s basically like she is asking me to show up in drag. I don‘t even know how to act like a man.”
(Internet photo)
Wonderful reading week with two 5 stars brilliant books: The House of Impossible Beauties and Bad Blood.
Life isn‘t about the Cinderella bullshit and I wasn‘t there to give her a set of glass heels and send her on her way. Hell no. I taught her the practical things. How to sew, how to select fabrics and make a gown, how to suck a cock so that you‘ll never starve.
Another snowy morning in Edmonton. I‘m going to stay inside, compiling my April reading stats. ❄️😐
“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
—James Baldwin, Giovanni‘s Room
The theme of this year‘s poetry festival was ‘home,‘ so it resonates even more deeply as I read the word in Baldwin‘s quote this morning, which is an epigraph in the tagged novel that I have just begun.
I‘m writing a Thing. My first published fandom piece since 2016. It feels really good to be writing again; let‘s see if I can keep it up.
bailed1/5⭐ This book started out so well, and then it just...flatlined. The narrative bounced around a bunch of characters and became confusing. Nothing happened, either plot- or character-wise. A story basically retelling the real-life 1980s NYC drag scene should never be described as boring, but that's what happened. #projectnew
Stocking up on queer reads for 2019 and drinking genmaicha 🍵
@PomegranateMuse
Thank you so so much for everything!! I love it all, so excited to read these and I can‘t wait to use the wax tarts (my first book scented wax 😍) yay!!! I love having signed books, thank you so much, so awesome of you!! I hope you like yours as well!
#MyFavoriteBookSwap #MFBS
I‘m visiting my family right now and I never get any reading done on these visits! Still slowly working my way through this one.
I‘ve been SO into the new show Pose on FX and I wanted to find a readalike book with a similarly diverse cast. THIS IS THAT BOOK 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽 Same locale and time period, same community!! I‘m only 25 pages in but I‘m so excited! Hence all the exclamation points 😂
so-soI wanted to love this book, but I didn't quite. I did love the characters (based off real people profiled in the doc "Paris is Burning"), especially the fierce Angel. But I don't feel the shifting perspectives or the detachment caused by finding out about major events after the fact via time jumps helped the story. But it's still definitely worth a read.
Be warned: it's especially brutal toward the end.
Picked up a few more #LGBTQ books from the library 📚 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜📚
#pridereads
Finished up this book last night for @Samplergal #13inthree. Didn‘t quite make the 13 but got to about 10. I did finish up three books that I have been waiting to finish for quite some time! Goal accomplished!
#TBRtemptation post 3! Released this year. In 1980s NYC, 17-year-old Angel comes into her own in the Harlem ball scene and drag world. She falls in love with Hector and they form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the circuit. When he dies of AIDS, she must continue alone. To help, she recruits Venus, a daydreaming trans girl; Juanito, a quiet boy who loves fabrics; & Daniel, a butch queen. #blameLitsy #blameMrBook 😎
so-soSet in a drag house in the 80s during the height of the AIDS crisis in New York City, the book follows four main characters in the House of Xtravaganza. The book is incredibly sad, especially at the end, to the point of feeling overdone. There were very graphic sexual encounters through much of the book, and though I don‘t mind explicit sex in books, the characters are 13-15 at the time, making it a little harder to stomach.
A bunch of great deals on Kindle eBooks today. #ebookdeals
pickThis is one of the hardest reviews I've tried to write in recent memory, let alone keep it succinct enough to comply with Litsy's standards. I went into this book with a love for Rupaul's Drag Race, but no knowledge whatsoever about the Harlem ball circuit of the 1980s. I was excited to discover this important era of LGBT history that so influenced of my favorite shows. However, by halfway through the book I realized I was still clueless about 👇
