TTT – Top Ten Books from my Favorite Genre

June 4, 2019 by Goddess in the Stacks

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is the top ten books from my favorite genre. Because there aren’t any pride-themed topics this month – which is quite the oversight – I’m picking my top ten favorite LGBTQIA+ fiction books!

On Saturday I did a roundup of ALL the LGBTQIA+ books I’ve reviewed on this blog so far, but I’m going to narrow it down to my favorite ten today!

In a rough order but not an exact one:

The Merry Spinster is a collection of short fantasy stories that explore gender in interesting ways, by transgender author Mallory Ortberg. It’s a pretty trippy collection and quite fun.

The Spy with the Red Balloon is the sequel to The Girl with the Red Balloon, but I don’t think you really need to read the first one to understand the second. The plots are pretty separate. In Spy there is a demisexual character and a gay character, and it’s a lovely magical-realism exploration of World War II. (Girl explores living in East Berlin, behind the wall, after the war, and has a time-travel element. Both books are fantastic and written by a demisexual Jewish author.)

River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow are two novellas exploring an alternate history United States in which hippos were imported to the Mississippi and used like cattle. Wranglers ride hippos, it’s great. One of the main characters is non-binary, and has a romance with another character. The author is non-binary as well.

Starless, by Jacqueline Carey, is a sprawling, epic fantasy that covers a princess and her nonbinary bodyguard as they embark on an epic quest to save their world. (And possibly fall in love with each other on the way.)

The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles) is a great summer read. It’s bright and sunny and follows a teenager as she tries to determine who has the best burgers in LA while falling in love with another girl. This is also the only contemporary fiction book on the list – I mostly read fantasy, as you can tell!

The next four are all at about the same level of I LOVE THEM.

Once & Future is queer King Arthur in space. It encompasses a bunch of different identities and it’s an amazing take on King Arthur and it’s just wonderful. I cannot wait for the sequel.

Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, by Leigh Bardugo, have a pair of gay characters in the troupe of thieves, and it’s an epic heist novel followed by a revenge & rescue novel. I really need to read the rest of the Grisha-verse, because I LOVED these two.

The Wrong Stars and its sequel, The Dreaming Stars, are a pair of sci-fi novels starring an incredibly diverse spaceship crew (the captain is a bisexual demisexual!) trying to save the world from a massive alien threat. It’s a space opera with nonbinary, trans, and ace characters, as well as the bi and demi captain.

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice & Virtue has a pair of gay characters and the asexual sister of one of the boys, who gets her one novel in The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy. Both books are really fun.

And my all-time favorite book with queer themes right now is one I keep bringing up in Top Ten lists because it’s JUST. SO. GOOD. The Priory of the Orange Tree is a beast of a book, at over 800 pages, with a F/F romance at its heart. (One of the women appears to be bisexual.) It has dragons and politics and action and big battles and assassins and magic and it’s just amazing. I will keep boosting this book because I love it so much.

Book Review: It’s Not Like It’s A Secret

June 3, 2019 by Goddess in the Stacks

It’s Not Like It’s A Secret
by Misa Sugiura
Young Adult/Romance/LGBT
394 pages
Published 2017

Before I dive in I want to explain that I’ve tagged this with polyamory not for the main characters, but for a few side characters. If you’re looking for a poly romance, this is absolutely not it. This is a teenage lesbian romance, with a side of racial issues.

Sana is a California transplant from Wisconsin; both her parents are immigrants from Japan, so despite feeling like she’s a midwesterner, none of her friends think of her as one. There’s a cringe-y scene early in the book where she cheers with her friends about being “midwestern farmer’s daughters” and they tell her she’s cute for thinking that, but she’s Japanese, obv. I felt really bad for her. When her family moves to California, suddenly she’s not the only Asian girl in a sea of whiteness. It’s an interesting mix of having a place with your own people but also fighting the stereotypes of sticking with your own ethnicity. It’s assumed she’ll be friends with the other Asian kids, which annoys her, but she also finds to be true; having not had the opportunity to have friends like her before, she finds she really likes it. (See my Friday 56 quote about it.) But she also tries to break that mold and be friends with people she’s not assumed to like – like Jamie Ramirez and her Hispanic friends, and Caleb and his white goth friends.

The book also explores the way racism hits races differently; the Hispanic kids get hassled by cops while the Asian kids don’t – though they also have things expected of them that the Hispanic kids don’t. The book gets into cultural expectations as well – PDAs are not really a thing in Sana’s world, so she’s reluctant to be public about her affections at school, which drives misunderstandings.

It’s only in the last few chapters that all the secrets come out, and Sana struggles to put things right.

One thing I really liked about the book is the narrative structure. At the beginning of the school year, Sana’s English teacher gives them a project, which is to keep a journal to transcribe poems into and talk about what they mean to you. Chapters from Sana’s poetry journal are interspersed with chapters of the narrative, and give some nice insight to how she’s feeling. Her love interest, Jamie, also loves poetry, and it plays a large part in their relationship.

I quite enjoyed this book.

From the cover of It’s Not Like It’s A Secret:

Sixteen-year-old Sana Kiyohara has too many secrets. Some are small, like how it bothers her when her friends don’t invite her to parties. Some are big, like the fact that she’s pretty sure her father’s having an affair. And then there is the one that she barely even admits to herself, the one about how she might have a crush on her best friend.

When Sana and her family move to California, she begins to wonder if it’s finally time for her to be honest with her friends and family, especially after she meets Jamie Ramirez. Jamie is beautiful and smart and unlike anyone Sana’s ever known before. The only problems are: Sana is pretty sure Jamie’s friends hate her, Jamie’s ex isn’t totally out of the picture, Sana’s new friend Caleb has more-than-friendly feelings for her, and things with her dad feel like they’re coming to a head. She always figured that the hardest thing would be to tell people that she wanted to date a girl, but as Sana quickly learns, telling the truth is easy . . . what comes after it, though, is a whole lot more complicated.

Smashbomb Sunday!

June 2, 2019 by Goddess in the Stacks

So I’m going to do something a little different today and talk about Smashbomb!

I cross post my reviews to four places: my local library, Amazon, Goodreads, and Smashbomb. I’ve been cross-posting to Smashbomb since late 2017 – I reviewed them way back then, when the site was young. It has continued to grow and evolve and really become something quite cool.

Smashbomb is basically a social network for reviewing things. They have lots of categories; they’ve expanded a bunch from 2017, and now have Apps, Books, Movies, Music, Podcasts, Tabletop Games, Tech, TV, Video Games, and Videos. I’m of course most active in Book Reviews, but I also dabble in Tabletop Games and Movies. (I probably ought to branch out to Music, too!)

Their only downside is that occasionally they don’t have a book in their database yet when I want to review it, but it’s pretty easy to add books to their database. I actually have a spreadsheet of what books I’ve cross-posted where, and I need to go back through and add a bunch of them to Smashbomb! You also get credit for adding and updating item entries, so there’s a benefit to adding things yourself.

It’s almost gamified, with the kudos points. You can earn kudos for reviewing things, and people can award kudos to reviews or comments they particularly like. Once you have enough kudos, you can start entering their giveaways! (It’s a low number – 50 – for most of the giveaways, but high ticket items set the floor higher.) All they ask is if you win a giveaway, you write an exclusive review for Smashbomb.

There are leaderboards, for who has reviewed or rated the most things, who’s earned the most kudos, who’s added items to the database, and so on.

They’ve also added Orbs – groups – which I haven’t quite got the hang of yet, but I’m working on getting more involved in.

I do wish the notifications were separated a little more – specifically comments, and posts in orbs, which I might want to respond to, from everything else. I can go to “Show All Notifications” and filter down to just comments, so it’s not all bad, but that means I have to go check for comments because they tend to get buried in the hotbar drop down of notifications. I’ve already submitted that as feedback, which they’ve been VERY responsive to in the past. Another reason I like the site so much!

Smashbomb has also just started a “Publishing Partners” program for bloggers or other online content creators, where they help publicize your content if you talk about the website a bit. (Full disclosure, that’s why I’m writing this up, though my old review of Smashbomb has never stopped getting hits, which amuses me to no end.) I highly recommend getting involved on this site for other bloggers. I’d continue using the site and cross-posting book reviews anyway, but this is an added bonus!

If you’re already on Smashbomb, or if you go make an account, let me know your username and I’ll go follow you! I’d love to spread the love (and kudos!) around!

Happy Pride Month!

June 1, 2019 by Goddess in the Stacks

Today begins Pride Month, and I’m going to review a bunch of LGBTQIA+ books this month! I have three lesbian romances already in the queue (one of which was my Friday 56 yesterday!), one graphic novel with bisexual rep, a biography I’m currently reading, and plenty more.

If you’d like to check out my past LGBTQIA+ book reviews, you can look through the categories below!

M/M

The Poet X (side character)

The Bird King

Black Wings Beating

This is Kind of an Epic Love Story

What If It’s Us

Heart of Thorns (side character)

Always Never Yours (side character)

Less

Autoboyography

The Book of Essie (side character)

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue

The Clothesline Swing

The Rules of Magic (side character)

Six of Crows / Crooked Kingdom

F/F

A Blade So Black

Seafire (side characters)

Like Water

The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles)

Seriously . . . I’m Kidding (Ellen DeGeneres memoir)

When Katie Met Cassidy

The Animators

The Dirty Girls Social Club

Girls Made of Snow and Glass

Bisexual

Of Fire And Stars / Inkmistress

Furyborn (one fairly minor line, but it means the main character is bi.)

Queens of Geek

Reign of the Fallen

Wonder Woman: Warbringer

That Inevitable Victorian Thing

Transgender

Confessions of the Fox

The Bone Witch / The Heartforger / The Shadowglass (side character)

Period: Twelve Voices Tell The Bloody Truth (nonfiction)

Tomboy Survival Guide (memoir)

Demisexual

(see Multiple, I know, as a demisexual myself, I’m a little bummed too.)

Once & Future (Asexual, Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay)

The Priory of The Orange Tree (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual)

The Wrong Stars / The Dreaming Stars (Demisexual, Asexual, Bisexual, Transgender minor character, Non-Binary – the crew of the ship is queer as hell and it’s awesome!)

The Spy With the Red Balloon (Demisexual, Gay)

Autonomous (Bisexual, Robosexual?)

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud (nonfiction)

As The Crow Flies (queer)

The Merry Spinster (various, but lots of gender-nonconforming/non-binary/trans stories)

Friday 56 – It’s Not Like It’s A Secret

May 31, 2019 by Goddess in the Stacks

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from It’s Not Like It’s A Secret, a messy YA lesbian romance by a Japanese-American author.

I look around at Hanh, Reggie, and Elaine, and feel something I’ve never felt before. I’ve only just met them, but they get me like none of my Midwestern friends ever did. They don’t think I’m weird or feel sorry for me. They make me feel normal. And special at the same time, somehow, like we’re all part of an exclusive club with a secret handshake and everything.

I hadn’t realized how much of my life – of myself – I’d been trying to keep hidden in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, I was constantly trying to escape the fact that I was Asian, and hoping that people either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Now, I feel like it’s springtime and my new friends have just peeled off a hot, heavy jacket. I can be openly Asian. For the first time in my life, I feel like I belong.

Book Review: The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love

May 30, 2019 by Goddess in the Stacks

The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love
by Sarvenaz Tash
Young Adult
249 pages
Published 2016

The title of this book had me wary from the start, but I’d heard good things about it, and the author is a woman, so I hoped it wouldn’t be what it sounded like. Because seriously. We don’t need more books about angsty white guys complaining about the girl they love not liking them back.

Unfortunately that’s exactly what I got in this book.

First, the good points. The author has a very immersive writing style, and she captured the feeling of a Comic Con VERY impressively. I haven’t been to NYCC, but I’ve been to other nerdy cons, and the hectic pace of panels, and getting tickets, and standing in lines, but nerding out over ALL THE GEEKY STUFF – yeah, that was perfectly written. I really enjoyed that. The other characters – Casey and Felicia, specifically, and Samira, and the rest of Roxy and Graham’s families – those were also well done. The brief scene with Roxy’s Iranian family was especially nice, which is to be expected from an Iranian-American author!

But Graham irritated me. Roxy wasn’t well explored because we only saw things from Graham’s point of view, and her love interest Devin’s appeal wasn’t shown very well at ALL.

I spent most of the book wanting to yell at Graham to just TALK TO HER ALREADY. He’s all miffed that his plans aren’t going right and the obnoxious Brit is stealing his girl but he won’t. Just. TALK. To her.

I think the only reason I actually finished the book was because it was short. And for the description of Comic Con, that was actually really good. But the main character was just frustrating. I should have spent this time on another book.

From the cover of The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love:

Graham met his best friend, Roxy, when he moved into her neighborhood eight years ago and she asked him which Hogwarts house he’d be sorted into. Graham has been in love with her ever since.

But now they’re sixteen, still neighbors, still best friends. And Graham and Roxy share more than ever – moving on from their Harry Potter obsession to a serious love of comic books.

When Graham learns that the creator of their favorite comic, The Chronicles of Althena, is making a rare appearance at this year’s New York Comic Con, he knows he must score tickets. And the event inspires Graham to come up with the perfect plan to tell Roxy how he really feels about her. He’s got three days to woo his best friend at the coolest, kookiest con full of superheroes and supervillains. But no one at a comic book convention is who they appear to be . . . even Roxy. And Graham is starting to realize his fictional love stories are way less complicated than real life ones.

Goddess In The Stacks

Devouring libraries one book at a time