This was quite good as far as celebrity memoirs go! I think it worked really well for the book to alternate between Kate and Leisha's perspectives (narrated by them in the audiobook of course). There were a lot of fun details about the original L Word, particularly about the friendships the actors had behind the scenes and Kate's coming out story. Kate really didn't hold back about how dirty they did Shane in the reboot. I agree!

Somehow during a post-apocalyptic flood:

"Their cat Smarty Pants ... was bone-dry as God's sense of humour."

?

Oooh this is so nostalgic!! The L Word was such a big part of my queer coming of age in the early 2000s. Also, I can't believe Leisha Hailey first auditioned for Shane and then initially turned down the role of Alice! 👭🏳️‍🌈

This is one of the best queer historical romances I've ever read, definitely the best trans historical romance I've come across. For all you queer history nerds who like real historical details and a strong sense of the time period but also adorable queer love and a wonderfully drawn trans man and cis woman character, this is for you. Those sex scenes!! 🔥🔥🔥 Plus, late 19th century bicycles, botany, and painting! Just lovely lovely lovely. 😍

#BookBracket2025 was very hard for July! I read six 5-star books, including two audio adaptations of all-time favourites, Anne of Green Gables and Dykes to Watch Out For, plus TJR's 1980s lesbian astronaut book and Alison Bechdel's brand new graphic novel. I decided Martyr! was the winner because it's so beautiful/complex, but I had to sneak in DTWOF as a wild card because it was so well done. It was so fun seeing my old comic friends in new form!

You know, I was expecting heart-wrenching space adventures and lesbian love in the 80s, but the queer parenthood angle hit me totally unprepared. 😭😭😭 Made me cry a few times. Just as good and beautifully gay as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I want an epilogue though!!

Okay that trip out to look at the stars, learn the constellations, eat chicken salad sandwiches, and drink beers was like the perfect first date ever right? Too bad Joan didn't know it was a date, but I think Vanessa was wondering...

Don't know how to describe this except as a masterpiece, one of the best books I've ever read. It's got the most beautiful, insightful, poetic writing and deep feeling for its characters and their crises (material, spiritual, existential, relational). Reading this only once feels like just scratching the surface of its meaning and beauty. Also: queer love!!

"Love was a room that appeared when you stepped into it. Cyrus...stepped."

"Ugh, the pain of being ordinarily terrible," writes Febos, insightful and thoughtful as always. I love her writing and ability to look critically at herself. The subtitle is false advertising, though, this book mostly about why Febos needed to be celibate, ie about her history of toxic and otherwise harmful relationships, not about other types of pleasure she discovered while celibate. Missed opportunity to discuss asexuality/aromanticism too.

A delightful work of autofiction! I read an interview with Bechdel where she said her original idea for this book was a straightforward memoir about her relationship with money but that she decided a graphic novel about her trying to write that book was more fun. Indeed! I love how she skewers and adores leftist communities and the inclusion of the cast of the Dykes to Watch Out comics. Also: Bisexual polyamory! Trans activist work! Goat farming!

Really enjoyed this collection of poetry, although a few poems were a bit too academic for my taste. These Indigiqueer poems are about grief, trans and Indigenous identity, desirability, myths, hunger. Unusual and interesting play with form, format, and spacing. "Let's not lie to one another; / i have come to quench my thirst / & you look oh so refreshing, / a decision i would sooner like to regret / but here i am, parched & petty"

One of the smartest, sharpest books I've ever read. I can't say I enjoyed it, but it's not meant to be. It's a vicious satire of corporate DEI discourse and the edutech industry. Its protagonist, Osman, is a self-loathing failed academic working for an edutech company bent on evsicerating in-person higher ed. The antagonist is a white woman who disguises her self-interest as progressive politics. Incredibly well done, appropriately depressing.

I'm gobbling up a few Audible originals before my free trial ends (I refuse to give Amazon money!) and this adaptation was delightful. Great Canadian casting choices, especially Catherine O'Hara who is absolutely perfect as Marilla. This is more of a radio play than an audiobook, as material has been cut / moved around, but there is still a nice narrator aka Sandra Oh. Does anyone else have any #Audible originals / only from Audible to recommend?

This audiobook adaptation of the early DTWOF comics is perfect, except that it's only available from Audible aka evil Amazon. Mo would NOT approve! That said, I'm glad their money went to a bunch of excellent queer actors (Jane Lynch! Carrie Brownstein! Roberta Colindrez! Roxane Gay!) who did such a great job bringing these 1980s sapphists to life. A great piece of lesbian herstory and a hilarious, politically smart, and heartfelt story. No notes.

Okay I'm currently reading five (!) other books right now, but I just can't help myself because my hold for the new Alison Bechdel book came!! I heard this one features her characters from her original comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. (I finally signed up for a free trial at Audible so I could listen to the audiobook adaptation of DTWOF and revisit the characters). It is really incredible, but especially Roberta Colindrez as Lois. *swoon*

Reading this book kind of makes me feel drunk? In a good way.

"are we just the consequences
of mispronounced love?
(i mean, am i a body or am i a human lost
in an ocean of hungry grey squares stark
raving mad to carve my flesh from my
bone?)"

Ooh two choices this time in #BookBracket2025, both were tough!! In the end, I went with Time's Agent as the winner twice. It's a super unique queer science fiction novel about "pocket worlds," aka small alternative universes, wherein time is either slowed down or sped up. It's a beautiful and smart meditation on motherhood, climate collapse, grief, capitalism, colonization, and the nature of time itself. And a great ending!

Seems fitting to start this book while breastfeeding my snotty 16-month-old to sleep...

Uzma Jalaluddin has outdone herself: fascinating characters, excellent mystery plot w/ many threads, and a lovingly rendered setting. An aunty returns to Toronto when her daughter's landlord has been found murdered in her store. Gentrification, police incompetence/bias/immorality, grief, marriage/divorce in Muslim communities, friendship, family. I absolutely loved this, as thoughtful as it is page-turning. Standout #audiobook performance!

Such an amazing book! It's set in the Dominican Republic in a science fiction universe where "pocket worlds" aka small alternative universes have been discovered. Time is either slowed down or sped up in these PWs. An archeologist and her biologist wife explore them with enthusiasm, until one day things go horribly wrong. A beautiful and smart meditation on motherhood, climate collapse, grief, capitalism, and the nature of time itself. #QueerBooks

I just started this book yesterday, after it sat on my shelf for more than a year. I'm sorry I didn't pick it up sooner, it's fantastic! As the blurb on the front cover says, "all at once a meditation on motherhood, grief, war, environmental collapse, and the nature of memory and time". Set in the Dominican Republic, a science fiction universe where "pocket worlds" aka small alternate universes have been discovered, lesbian protagonist. So good!

That was fucking weird (complimentary). BUT NOT TOO BOLD is sapphic monster mystery romance with a strong Gothic undercurrent. Normally I find the "all vibes" for hundreds of pages of gothic fiction tedious, so this novella length was perfect for me. Do not read if you're afraid of spiders, or, conversely, if you love them so much you'd be distraught to hear of them being deep-fried and eaten. #QueerBooks #LGBTQ

I had great fun with this queer science fiction cozy mystery, although it felt like it went by too quickly! A vividly realized detective character, unique world-building, and a twisty puzzle: what else could you want? How and why does someone commit murder, when humans have been living in a spaceship for centuries, immortal due to their minds being saved in 'books' in the library until it's time to put them back in a new body, memories intact?

Really excellent, especially Evaristo's seemingly effortless ability to convey different voices and experiences. Complex, fascinating characters who undergo some heartbreaking stuff (pregancy/infant loss, intimate partner violence / abusive relationships, sexual assault, among others) all presented so straightforwardly but compassionately. What a wonderful ending. And very queer! Great as an #audiobook!

Lots of things were done so well in this novel -- the understated but powerful prose; the insights about gender, class, mental health, books; the kernel of the relationship and connection between Marianne and Connell -- but the depiction of BDSM, and abuse/trauma struck me as one by someone who doesn't understand the complexities, or is ignoring them for the sake of using BDSM as a literary vehicle. I loved the first third though and the ending!

This incredible collection of #queer #poetry is my May pick for #Bracket2025!

"Oh girlhood. i cut crop tops out of sunsets / made scrapbooks of bleached hair & pretty scars / all to please you. / Please, stay a little longer."

"If we grow up to be boring , love me / back into wildness"

"sometimes i think about marrying a woman just to piss off my mother / i'll wear a scarlet leather dress & let vengeance trail my back like a veil"

#LGBTQ

"Generally I find men are more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves...I mean, when you look at the lives men are really living, it's sad...They control the whole social system and this is the best they can come up with for themselves? They're not even having fun."

Fascinating characters explored through a tell-it-like-it-is non judgmental narrative voice! I can't wait to see how other characters who have been described by their family/friends describe themselves differently.

"Being alone with her is like opening a door away from normal life and then closing it behind him."

Stunning debut poetry collection! Striking images, inventive play with language, wise investigation of themes like queerness, youth, religion, death, girlhood, and the Korean diaspora. These poems were written when Lee was only a teenager!

"If we grow up to be boring, love me / back into wildness"

"Oh girlhood. i cut crop tops out of sunsets / made scrapbooks of bleached hair & pretty scars / all to please you. / Please, stay a little longer"

About to start my first Sally Rooney! This was a present from my brother in law for Christmas a few years back. I hope I like it. Wish me luck!

Rooney fans, is this a good one to start with?

"To be human is to forgive most beautiful things."

"sometimes i think about marrying a woman just to piss off my mother/i'll wear a scarlet leather dress & let vengeance trail my back like a veil"

"i hope death is not a cold thing"

"This life is too wild to be translated."

"I hope the world ends / with both a bang & a whimper. / We were a worthwhile disaster."

Kyo Lee was only 16 when she wrote these poems!!

Very unique: an apocalyptic story where everyone's bodies lose the abiltiy to create hormones, a dark teen romance w/ a trans girl before she's out and a cis boy, a "tall tale" in an alternate world at a logging camp, and a story about lack of sisterhood between trans femme people. Weird, thoughtful, and not afraid to tread into the murky waters of transgender/genre conventions. Uninterested in easy answers or well-behaved characters. I love it!

Page-turning! Two people, a newly divorced 40-year-old straight guy (Gibson), and a 30-something lesbian (Shelby), whose wife has died recently and unexpectedly, get drawn in by a charismatic pathological liar and only figure it out after they meet. Femme dyke, anxiety, and grief representation with Shelby are extremely well done. I love Whittall's #queer characters, because they feel so much like the queer people I know IRL. Great #audiobook!

I thought I might like this sapphic story more than the straight romance by Guillory I'd read, which was her first book, but I have to conclude she is not for me. I find her writing and characterization very bland and basic.

Wasn't too into the #audiobook for this one either. If there are dual POVs I really think there should be two voice actors, not just one.

Oof I forgot how real Zoe Whittall's descriptions of anxiety are, so real it is hard to read sometimes as someone with anxiety. You can tell she is so familiar with it.

A bath, a book, and some wine!

My first Jackie Lau book, but it certainly won't be my last! Such a lovely contemporary romance with a time loop twist: straight-laced engineer Noelle ends up reliving June 20th for 100+ days after eating dumplings at a night market sold by a mysterious older woman. In the process, she learns to take risks, make a good friend, be a better sister and put herself out there to find love. Very Toronto, and full of delicious food and drinks! 😋

How is she going to get out of the time loop?? Will Cam ever remember her??

I paused this book in January to focus on reading the titles on the list for a literary award I was on a judges panel for, and I'm not sure if I want to finish it, even though I'm 279 pages in. It's so long that I'm only a third of the way through. Should I keep at it??

"I might as well have never learned a single English word for all that were available to me. How do you beg when you don't even know the words to beg with?"

#LGBTQ #TransBooks

Cindy Kay is becoming one of my favourite #audiobook voice actors! She performs this contemporary time loop romance set in Toronto, the Singing Hills Cycle fantasy series by Nghi Vo, and Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani, a queer thriller translated from Japanese, all of them terrific. What a range!

Interesting fantasy murder premise, killed by tree erupting from a body! The first half is a little slow, but once I got invested in the mystery and characters I really enjoyed this. I loved Din's romance with Strovey but wished it had more page time. But I loved the plot and its twists, the unique world-building, and Ana and Din as a Sherlock and Holmes team. If you're looking for a smart queernormative fantasy mystery, this is a great choice!

Had a couple hours to myself yesterday while my mom watched the kids, and I read the first story in this book at a bar while I had a whiskey sour and calamari. Nice mother's day present! *chef's kiss*

A bit late, but my favourite book from April was The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo, the latest fantasy novella about a nonbinary, story-collectimg monk who travels to an ancient estate for a wedding. There are shades of Bluebeard here, but not all is as it seems! I loved this horror-tinged story, but I think We Are Okay by Nina LaCour was more emotionally resonant for me, so that's the winner in that bracket. #ReadingBracket2025

A late 20s coming of age with a romance subplot. Emily is figuring out her "dream job", where she wants to live, and adult friendship. I loved how Canadian this was, until Emily got accepted as an NYU grad student and intern at the Met. I'm usually quite generous in suspending my disbelief, but ... Anyway A+ on small town PEI vibes, laid-back stoic John, delightful elderly people, Wordle, Anne of GG, and Emily as an endearing flawed protagonist.

A lovely queer Canadian historical novel with just a touch of magical realism! Set just before, during, and after WW2, this book made the extremely overdone time period fresh and interesting. I loved how it centred a #nonbinary bi character and a sapphic woman, straddling a difficult line between celebrating them and being realistic about homo/transphobia / misogyny in the 30s and 40s. Queer historical happy ending!! Fuck that Landon guy though.

A mouth-watering and twisty mystery! The no-nonsense protagonist is Sagarine, a passionate chef whose love of food permeates most of the book's pages, when she isn't lamenting her attraction to a gorgeous Russian gangster for whom she finds herself working after the head chef of the restaurant where she works is found murdered. Fast-paced and compelling! I found Sagarine's truly terrible life decisions believable and the twists very well done.

Bath time treats and trying to decide which print book to start next! (The other two I'm currently reading are ebook and audiobook). Has anyone read either of these? A Wordle inspired contemporary romance set on Prince Edward Island (Canadian romances are so rare!) and a queer Chinese American rock climbing themed coming of age graphic novel!