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olderthannetfic · 8 months

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re people regretting transition or detransitioning.

My little cousin experimented with gender for a bit in her late teens before deciding that she was a cis girl after all. The experiment involved clothes shopping, a haircut, and asking her friends to call her by different pronouns, and lasted for maybe two months tops.

Some of my our family members are generally supportive of that, and view it quite reasonably as a young person exploring various options before finding herself. The dumber and meaner ones, on the other hand, say she detransitioned and is proof that trans people are just playing around and that anyone teen who transitions will come to regret it.

And then they turn around and say they're happy for me and proud of my transition. Because I didn't get anything figured out until I was well into my twenties, and I didn't get to start HRT until I was past 30. These family members are actually dumb enough to think it's an age thing, and that my having to suffer for decades was somehow a good thing.

If the "worst" that happens as a side effect of trans acceptance is a bunch of teenagers getting dumb haircuts and wasting a few hundred bucks on clothes they won't wear again, I don't see how that's a negative side effect at all. That's just what teenagers do.

Grrr. Fucking assholes.

A lot of the "Oh noes, what if you regret it?" stuff comes with a huge side of "What if your WOMB is no longer able to make BABIES after you POISON yourself?" nonsense too. I see plenty of transphobia of all sorts in all directions, but the specific fretting over transition is so, so, so often about how every uterus should be used as a baby factory. People say this shit with a straight face who would never support that idea if you forced them to face the subtext of what they're saying.

There are, genuinely, rare people who do regret it, but it's way more common that someone either experiments with entirely reversible things or takes hormones for a while and then decides to stop taking hormones without actually characterizing it as "regret" themselves.

It's usually other people imposing that narrative from the outside, aside from rare cases where there was some level of coercion to do medical procedures the person was never that into in the first place (e.g. transitioning in order to be legally allowed to change pronouns on ID or getting a boob job at a partner's behest—a thing that afflicts cis women too).

I remember a friend from school years ago going "What if I'm wrong?" and even at the time, I was like "But what if you're right and then spend 20 years waiting to be sure while being miserable?"

In this, as in most other big life decisions, I think you should take your best shot, not second guess yourself, and if you change your mind years later, you can deal with that then. But yes, so many people think there's some sort of virtue in decades of misery as you either can't figure out what's wrong or know what's wrong and are denied access to medical care.

I questioned my gender in my teens back in the 90s. I just didn't do anything that made other people particularly aware of it at the time and ended up deciding that gender is a big lie and who cares. This is probably more common than people think.

The main upshot was that I ended up reading an incredibly dense book of journal articles on third gender roles that was a bit of a headache for a 14-year-old.

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charlottan · 6 months

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every book i read at least a good chunk of in 2023 ranked under the cut grin😁

1. American Gods (2001) by Neil Gaiman (currently reading) - simply a terrific book. Neil Gaiman at what I believe to be his best. Classic novel

2. Dhalgren (1975) by Samuel R. Delaney (currently reading) - monolithic 70s postmodern book that touches on issues of gender and race. very very good

3. Shantaram (2003) by Gregory David Roberts (currently reading) - very loveable and long book about the true story of an Australian man, arrested on heroin charges, who escapes prison to India and gets involved in arms trading. I'm only on like page 70 out of 900 but I'm deeply in love.

4. Going Postal (2004) by Terry Pratchett (currently reading) - discworld’s postal service! Plenty of hijinks. excellent book

5. Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller (currently reading) - classic anti war satire, what can you say. Still ridiculously funny, the humor really doesnt age at all. it’s very screwball in a way that holds up. Such a joy to read

6. Sirens of Titan (1959) by Kurt Vonnegut - beautiful book, definitely my favorite of the three Vonnys that i finished this year. you can feel his love, as always

7. Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021) by Anthony Doerr- Charming book that spans multiple characters and time periods, all concerned with an ancient codex that symbolizes a sense of faith. I don't really remember this one much but I know I had a lot of fun reading it. Would recommend to anybody

8. Hell’s Angels (1967) by Hunter S. Thompson (currently reading) - very interesting book about, of course, the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club. Thompson becomes a fly on the wall, giving the reader a very, very, perhaps almost too close look at the bikers’ ways and rituals. Very good book if you’re into that sort of thing

9. Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace (currently reading)- not much to say about the old Jest. classic annoying book. i read a good chunk this year :thumbsup:

10. Bag of Bones (1998) by Stephen King - average 90s era King. still just as gripping as his 70s and 80s work but with a more comfortable writing style i think. pretty good

11. Detransition, Baby (2021) by Torrey Peters (currently reading) - not much to say about this one really. Its pretty good so far though, pretty classic transfem lit

12. The Dead Zone (1979) by Stephen King - this book had a terrifically gripping second act but then it kindof goes off in a different direction in act 3. Or rather, it feels like act 3 could have been its own decent short story, with the first two acts together being their own novel.

13. Equal Rites (1987) by Terry Pratchett - transmasc king. Girl wants to be a wizard instead of a witch, average discworld novel, nothing memorable but still pretty good

14. Galapagos (1985) by Kurt Vonnegut - Ok vonny book. It definitely had some strong Vonny moments but overall felt a little Different from the rest of his stuff. But maybe in a good way

15. Deadeye Dick (1982) by Kurt Vonnegut - middling vonnegut novel. It was ok. But an ok kurt vonnegut book is still a really good book

16. On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac - classic beat novel. pretty good if you're into slice of life 1940s/50s stuff, which you probably arent, but if you are and you haven’t checked this out, go for it!

17. Nevada (2013) by Imogen Binnie - Decent, however it felt very bare bones in a way that, for instance, Detransition, Baby makes up for.

18. The Rum Diary (1998) by Hunter S. Thompson - To be honest I don’t remember this one At All but i know i read it in like 3 days so its gotta be good. Still cant put it too high in the ranking though sorry hunter

19. And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks (1945) by Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs - first ever book written by either of them, and it’s ok. It’s supposed to be a murder mystery but the murder doesnt happen until like the last 20 pages so idk

20. The Colour of Magic (1983) by Terry Pratchett - first discworld. Not that memorable but i wouldnt say it was bad either

21. 1Q84 (2009) by Haruki Murakami (dropped) - I really wanted to like this one. And i did, *mostly*. However, Murakami has this writing style that is obsessively technical and formal and makes for incredibly unnatural monologues, for one thing. This is just a personal preference though; I know it's very acclaimed. I'm honestly sad I couldn't make it past the writing style to enjoy it at least enough to make it through.

22. The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy (dropped) - too edgy

#book talk

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yvesdot · 2 months

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TRANS RIGHTS READATHON 2024

(March 22-29, 2024)

Since people have gotten ahead of me on reading my queer monster short story collection for Trans Rights Readathon, I figure I ought to introduce it. Something's Not Right is a collection of stories featuring a diverse cast of human and non-human characters struggling with what society thinks is right. There are stories about transphobia, stories about trans love, stories about casual hot trans roommates who help you deal with your problems (dealing blood to vampires and witches); whatever bizarre relationship to queerness you could imagine, it's in there.

Anyone who can't afford a copy and/or can't get one at their local library is welcome to contact me directly for a free e-copy, no questions asked. I also have thousands of words of free fiction available on my website, including two explicit novelettes (Long Line and Band Girls) both of which include trans characters.

And a week's worth of personal trans recommendations from my top reads of the last couple of years, should you need it anytime:

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

Females by Andrea Long Chu

When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb

The Third Person by Emma Grove

Other Ever Afters by Mel Gillman

decolonizing trans/gender 101 by b. binaohan

Bonus links: ko-fi | Patreon

#indie writer #writeblr #writers on tumblr #book sale #trans rights readathon #trans books #queer books #fantasy #sff #transrightsreadathon #trans rights readathon 2024 #writeblr community

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genderqueerpositivity · 5 months

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A list of books I've read so far in 2023. My goal was two books a month and it hasn't worked out like that, which is okay. Some of these I actually started last year too, and they're listed in the month that I finally finished them.

January:

The Girl from the Sea | Molly Knox Ostertag

Heartstopper, volume 1 | Alice Oseman

Heartstopper, volume 2 | Alice Oseman

February:

Detransition, Baby | Torrey Peters

Neuroqueer Heresies | Nick Walker

March:

Heartstopper, volume 3 | Alice Oseman

Too Bright to See | Kyle Lukoff

April:

Heartstopper, volume 4 | Alice Oseman

May:

Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story | Jacob Tobia

June:

Unmasking Autism | Devon Price

August:

Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury

September:

Pageboy: A Memoir | Elliot Page

October:

Kapaemahu | Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth | Andrew Joseph White

Driven to Distraction | Edward Hallowell, John Ratey

November:

Different Kinds of Fruit | Kyle Lukoff

December:

I Hope They Sing Christmas Carols in Hell (holiday poems for heretics) | Kaitlin Hardy Shetler

#2023 #books #reading list #op #personal

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goosemixtapes · 5 months

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max's top books of 2023 :3c

as usual, these rankings are based on some arcane mix of objective quality + my personal enjoyment (previous year's lists)

it was another weird reading year! i did a lot of reading for school, more so than in the past; some of it was really good and some of it was, uh. well, some of it was william wordsworth. nothing i absolutely loathed, though (most of the reads i disliked were books i could at least appreciate on an art/history level), which is cool. so i'm bringing back the runner-up category. did not make it onto my top ten list but were really good anyway: beartown by fredrik backman (books that no joke made me understand why people are insane about sports) and the GORGEOUS re-release of my dear @yvesdot 's debut, something's not right, which i have read before but will always gladly revisit again.

my top anticipated release for 2024 is alecto the ninth again.

(but shoutout also to just happy to be here, king cheer, and henry henry. trans people! shakespeare, even!)

and the list! in increasing order of enjoyment, with pictures this year!

10. The Common Liar by Janet Adelman

no, i can't believe i'm doing this either. i can't believe i did all that preamble and the first book on my list is an academic thesis analyzing shakespeare's antony and cleopatra. but also? it's the only book anyone ever needs to write about shakespeare's antony and cleopatra. janet adelman said it all. which is cool, because i have a fixation on that play, but also sucks, because i was also trying to write an essay on it and mine wasn't nearly as good. btw if anyone wants to buy this for me, somehow, for the $120 it costs on amazon because academia is awful, i will send you my address,

9. Robert Icke's Oresteia

i don't need to say anything about this play, because it's the source of "this was always going to happen. she's been dead since the beginning." that should be enough. but after becoming deranged about the oresteia last year, i finally read this, and holy shit, this adaptation of the story is so fucking genius and icke's writing is so fucking good. it's antiwar! it's about mental illness! there's gender! the fucking ENDING! (i have a pdf if anyone would like it. anything to plug this play bark bark bark rufrufruf grrrrrr)

8. Down Girl: the Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

this is a little bit cheating, because i haven't finished this book yet, so maybe in the final chapters manne will say something like "what if we blew up every orphan" and i'll have to retract this. but right now it's fucking excellent! i've been making an effort to read more nonfiction lately, and this one shines; manne sets out to analyze misogyny not as a personal hatred of women that some men harbor, but as an intricate and structural system forcing women into the role of Giving (attention, affection, power, etc; sometimes their lives). and it's sooooo smart. some of it is stuff i already know (and some of it is Academic Philosophy TM that goes right over my head), but manne articulates her point excellently and i can feel it rearranging my brain, so it's going on the list for longevity and skill!

7. Dictator by Robert Harris

does this book objectively deserve to be on this list? you know what, yeah. i'll say it with my whole chest. i don't like how harris writes women and there are plenty of things to pick at in his cicero trilogy, but i had so much goddamn fun reading it that i can't not put it on the list. this was my year of being really really into cicero, and this was fun to read alongside e-pistulae. harris is sooooo good at making ancient roman politics gripping. the last scenes of this book. augh. ack. ough!

6. Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters

there are a lot of valid critiques of this one (a lot of bad critiqus, too, but such is writing literally anything about transness), but i fucking adored it. i LOVE dual timelines, i LOVE unlikable characters, and i FUCKING LOVE TRANSSEXUALITY! moreover, i love that peters isn't afraid to Go There, to poke at the messy ugly sides of transness (and queerness in general) that i think a lot of us don't like acknowledging, especially to cishet people whose view of the community is already skewed. i don’t think this is the One Great Trans Novel; i think there are a lot of great trans novels, and we need more. but this one did hit me RIGHT in the chest, and i couldn't put it down.

5. Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane

the iliad but achilles is a trans woman and she's fighting the war on both mortal and divine levels and she and helen have an insane homoerotic half-god rivalry and everybody is fucking crazy. pitched as "for fans of TSOA" but as i said in my review if TSOA is a pleasant but watery iced tea then this book is gasoline laced with crack. there is a bisexual transgender threesome. i fucking love women. book of the fucking summer

4. White Teeth by Zadie Smith

i probably enjoyed wrath goddess sing more, but i can't not rank this book highly on this list. this book is such a fucking masterpiece. it's tolstoy for the modern age. it's a sprawling multi-familial multi-cultural multi-generational epic about race and gender and religion and science and humanity and britishness. smith's prose is fucking amazing; her character work is even better; this book has no plot but it uses its length sooooooo well. the first zadie smith i've read, but by god there will be more. she wrote this at TWENTY-FIVE. that's fucking CRAZY. do you know how much control over your craft you have to have to write this at twenty-five. bonkers. it is also the only enjoyable book i read in my modern literature class, so shoutout to white teeth for keeping me sane,

3. The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

this book is ostensibly about bechdel's relationship with exercise. it is actually about bechdel's relationship with her own body, her own soul, her desire for individualism in the style of the transcendentalists, transcendentalism in general, mortality, and aging. i can't really tell you more than that because i didn't actually "read" this so much as i absorbed it through my skin like a frog while trying not to tremble like a little purse dog. i am not gonna lie man i did not have a very good. um. august. or september. or october november december. so this book really could not have come at a better time. alison bechdel i am obsessed with you

2. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

ALISON BECHDEL I AM OBSESSED WITH YOU!!!! this one narrowly edges out secret to superhuman strength because... well, i'm sort of rating the entire comic strip's run, and dude. holy shit. i love lesbians so much. this strip is such an important piece of lesbian history; it reminded me that a lot of the things lesbians (and LGBT people in general) argue about and deal with today are... the same things we've always argued about and dealt with, from intracommunity label discourse to global politics to hitting on women badly. but history aside--it's also just really fucking good! it's really funny! if you are a neurotic leftist, as so many of us are, it's hysterical! it's smart! it's hot! it's heartwarming! i read it over the first half of the year, in little bits and pieces, and by the end i felt like i really had gone decades with these characters. really just. so good. the power she has the range she has

1. the suzanne collins reread

okay. this one is definitely cheating. because i usually like to keep this list to books i'm reading for the first time, and i HAVE read the hunger games and the underland chronicles. but i read them, like, almost ten years ago, and i was not prepared to be so thoroughly fucking bodied by them this time around, now that i have critical thinking and analysis skills. we all know the hunger games is a fucking banger, so let me pitch the gregor the overlander series: something of a modern alice in wonderland setup, where the eleven-year-old main character falls into an underground world full of strangeness, except this world isn't whimsical, it's dangerous and stuffed with giant talking animals like bats and rats and cockroaches. there's a war on. there are plagues. there are war crimes. there is a plotline that is extremely explicitly about ethnic cleansing. there is some of the most heartbreaking fucking shit you've ever read in your goddamn life. there is also a rat who quotes macbeth and the underlanders revere a guy named bartholomew of sandwich. this series is for middle schoolers. i cried. not when i was a middle schooler reading it the first time; i mean now. so i'm breaking my no-rereads rule, because it really would be a lie to say that my best reading experience wasn't revisiting all of collins' work with my friends (yes, i read TBSOS; i think it's fine but not great). sorry to give publicity to an author who definitely doesn't need my help, but a few years ago my #1 spot went to shakespeare, so.

if you've read this far: thank you! please tell me your thoughts! tell me your favorite books of 2023! tell me which books you're excited for in 2024! and have a very lovely new year :)

#max.txt #misc book tag #readings

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autolenaphilia · 1 year

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Transfem authors of fiction: a list

I wrote a version of this list in Swedish for a meatspace friend, figure I might redo it for a tumblr audience. The books recommended are usually novels, and in case of prolific authors, the one recommended is usually the most successful and acclaimed one. I haven't read all of these, but I'm working on it. The list is in alphabetical order after the author's last name. I added some notes to the list, to introduce the authors and their books.

Nota Bene this list is based on my personal research, and largely reflects my own tastes in fiction, as in what I've read and considered reading. And it is of course not at all complete. And it's a transfem authors list, so no transmasc authors no matter how worthy. And it's about authors of fiction, not memoirs or non-fiction. So no Christine Jorgensen, even if she wrote a book I want to read. And Jan Morris gets in based on her two Hav novels, not her more prolific non-fiction work. Links are to my reviews on this blog if they exist.

Anders, Charlie Jane - SF/F writer, debuted with Choir Boy (2005), but most famous for All The Birds in the Sky (which won a Nebula).

Aoki, Ryka - her latest sf/f novel Light from Uncommon Stars is her most popular, but she has published both fiction and poetry before.

Becker, Saga - Våra Tungor Smakar våld (Swedish author, her book is untranslated, although quite good)

Binnie, Imogen - Nevada

Daniels, April - Dreadnought and its sequel Sovereign. Novels about a teenage trans girl superhero.

Deane, Maya - Wrath Goddess Sing

Felker-Martin, Gretchen - Manhunt (horror novel)

Kaveney, Roz - Tiny Pieces of Skull (also wrote the Rhapsody of Blood fantasy series, plus numerous poetry collections and non-fiction)

Kiernan, Caitlin R. - Usually categorized as a horror author, written numerous novels and short stories since her debut novel SIlk in 1998. The most acclaimed are probably her novels The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl (which won the Bram Stoker Award)

Leitz, May - Fluids and Girlflesh (review forthcoming)

Morris, Jan - Hav (mostly wrote non-fiction, history books and travel literature, Hav is an omnibus of her two novels about Hav, both "imagined travelogues" about a fictitious country)

Peters, Torrey - Detransition Baby

Plett, Casey - Little Fish (Lambda award winner)

Pollack, Rachel - Prolific writer of several kinds of books, including a pioneering career as a sf/f writer. Did her fictional debut with a short story in a 1971 anthology (credited under her deadname) and published her first novel Golden Vanity in 1980, which are literally the earliest pieces of fiction by an out trans person (not memoir or non-ficton) I've been able to find. So very much a pioneer. Her most acclaimed book is probably Godmother Night (1996) which won the World Fantasy Award. Also wrote comics, most notably Doom Patrol.

Rumfitt, Alison - Tell me I'm Worthless

Serano, Julia - 99 Erics (her debut as a novelist after years of pioneering transfeminist writing and poetry)

Thornton, Jeanne - Summer Fun (Lambda award winner)

#my posts #transfem literature

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twinkubus · 2 years

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I would love some book recs! especially queer literary fiction!

Amazing!! I would love to share :) Also responding @ anon who asked for my trans book recs. This is for you too!

Since this is so long it'll probably get cut off on the dashboard, tl;dr there will be 1) list of trans-authored books and 2) a list where I talk about queer authors more generally (which includes some trans people that don't have trans characters in their books (yet)).

Trans Books by Trans Authors

Sketchtasy by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

The Pervert by Remy Boydell (graphic novel)

X by Davey Davis

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman

Transmuted by Eve Harms

Future Feeling by Joss Lake

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor

Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel by Julian K Jarboe

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones by Torrey Peters

The Masker by Torrey Peters

Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante

A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett

A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett

Little Fish by Casey Plett

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom

The Black Emerald by Jeanne Thornton

Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton

Small Beauty by jia qing wilson-yang

The above are all trans-authored books that have trans characters in them. They are mostly lit fic with a few dips into genre here and there. I have bolded some of my faves!

For queer book recs/authors more generally,

Poppy Z. Brite, the pen name of Billy Martin, who is gay and trans. He has some great 90s horror novels, in particular Exquisite Corpse, a gay serial killer thriller/romance.

Dennis Cooper, writes gay "extremist" fiction, my fave of which is The Sluts, which takes place entirely on an early 2000s gay escort forum.

Shola Von Reinhold, another trans author, wrote one of my fave books I've read this year, LOTE, which is textually extremely transgender, but I don't think explicitly "labels" the mc as trans, so I'm putting it in this list. I usually use 'dark academia' as a pejorative but this would be dark academia in the best sense of the word. Involves lots of research into weird stuff, hyperfixations, and very little academia.

Brontez Purnell writes lit fic about black gay men, and has another one of my fave books, Since I Laid My Burden Down, as well as probably the best title in this list: Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger. Those were both smallish press releases, I believe, but he's gotten more attention recently via his FSG short story anthology, 100 Boyfriends.

Sarah Schulman. If you are on Tumblr hopefully you already know about her. If you haven't read any of her fiction, I'd recommend Rat Bohemia, Empathy, and People In Trouble (this is the book Rent was based off of).

Brandon Taylor is very popular on twitter but I feel like I haven't seen much about him on tumblr. I really liked his debut novel Real Life, which follows a gay black postgrad student in a midwestern PhD program full of mostly white people. He also has an anthology, Filthy Animals, full of linked stories that take place in a similar setting.

James Baldwin. Another classic author. If you haven't read Giovanni's Room, go read it.

Carmen Maria Machado has a stunning memoir, In The Dream House, about lesbian domestic violence. She also writes speculative fiction stories, some can be found in the collection Her Body and Other Parties.

Eric LaRocca is gay horror's current darling due to his breakout hit Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, about an online long-distance lesbian d/s relationship. He's been pumping out the books recently, all with great titles and covers.

Jean Kyoung Fraiser released a debut last year that was in my top faves as well, Pizza Girl, a coming-of-age story about a just-married and recently pregnant 18 year-old who works (you guessed it) as a pizza delivery girl, and develops a crush on an older woman, one of her customers.

Venita Blackburn wrote How to Wrestle a Girl, a black lesbian coming-of-age short story anthology. Also a recent release. I really loved the writing in this one.

...Okay, I think that's most of the big hitters for me at least! Going to give a few honorary mentions: Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, translated from Korean, about the life of a young gay man in Seoul. Also anything by Joe Koch, who writes horror, nothing specifically gay/trans that I have read yet, but The Wingspan of Severed Hands is really beautiful stylistically.

And just one more, since it's October: The Route of Ice and Salt by Jose Luis Zarate, published in the 90s and translated from Spanish, a gay reimagining of Dracula's sea voyage to England.

#queer fiction #lgbt fiction #book recs #idk if there are any tags people use lol well whatever #hope you can find smth you like :)#ask #currently reading

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heartknives · 1 year

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my 2022 in books! finally! I read 99 books last year somehow, and therefore slightly surpassed my goal of 36, lol. audiobooks are my new best friend and i've now used my ereader so much it's starting to drain its battery at like 5x the speed it used to </3

top 5ish books (no real order) of 2022 would beeee

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Ring Shout by P. Djéli Clark

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

honorable mentions/other reads that really stuck with me: Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield, The Change by Kirsten Miller, Good Neighbors by Sarah Langan, The Most Precious Substance on Earth by Shashi Bhat, and Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

my reading goal for 2023 is 52 books! trying to go for quality over quantity. :) and i'm working on getting through a physical TBR pile that has grown exponentially in the last twelve months, the first time i bought more than like... 3 or 4 books for the whole year lmao. reading is so fun it was a good year to re-learn that!!!!

#.txt #reading tag #some of my favorite/most surprising reads came from the library i love the library!#posting again for my own posterity i wanna do a full wrap up post but like i'm the only one who cares and i'm lazy #saving it for my book journal and my wife who lets me ramble all i want about how much i hate m/aggie s/tiefvater #amongst many other boring book-related subjects <3

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peraltasass · 1 year

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books i read in 2022

✩✩✩✩✩ - ★★★★★

Fiction:

Myth Retold: Iphigenia by Winter J. Kiakas: ★★★★✩ (cute!)

Heroes by Stehen Fry: ★★★✩✩ (too much whitewashing)

Loveless by Alice Oseman: ★★★★✩ (was frustrated that at the end, only one type of friendship (deep, intense, emotional) was once again posited as the “right” type of friendship to have)

Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan: ★★★★✩ (read these once when I was like 12?)

Percy Jackson: The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan: ★★★★✩

The Wave by Morton Rhue aka Tedd Strasser: ★★✩✩✩ (ik it’s like a big thing but. the writing didn’t catch me at all - maybe it was the translation or maybe it is just not as well written as claimed)

Percy Jackson: The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan: ★★★★✩ (ah yes, we all know that girls saying no to love = saying no to men)

Percy Jackson: The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan: ★★★★✩ (just stop it with the jealousy between girls jfc)

Percy Jackson: The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan: ★★★★✩ (didn’t remember the ending at all, was surprised by how okay I was with it)

we are the ants by Shaun David Hutchinson: ★★★✩✩/★★★★✩ (am incredibly indecisive about how I feel about this one. made me feel more feeling that I thought at first but also frustrated me quite a lot)

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes: ★★★★✩ (very powerful, I only have tiny notes)

Ulysses by James Joyce: ★★✩✩✩ (I don’t cARE if it’s the bEsT nOvEl Of ThE 20th cEnTuRy, I did NOT have a good time)

Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao: ★★★½✩ (I hate to say it but it was too much like Percy Jackson for most of the main part)

One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus: ★★★½✩ (did get me eventually; as someone who wrote their ba thesis on the breakfast club it was nice to see the stereotypes deconstructed but also frustrating at times)

Ausser Sich by Sasha Marianna Salzmann: ★★★½✩ (VERY overwhelming at times, but also intensely powerful)

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender: ★★★★✩ (cute)

Die Götter müssen sterben by Nora Bendzko: ★★★★★ (my new fav book)

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters: ★★★★✩

Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa: ★★★✩✩ (for uni)

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater: ★★★★★ (re-read)

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater: ★★★★★ (re-read)

Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater: ★★★★★ (re-read)

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater: ★★★★✩ (re-read, still the least good of all of them)

I Was Born for This by Alice Oseman: ★★★★✩ (cute quick and easy read)

Non fiction:

A Year Without a Name by Cyrus Dunham: ★★★★✩ (for uni)

Wir können mehr sein by Aminata Touré: ★★★½✩

Und jetzt Du by Tupoka Ogette: ★★★★★ (@German white people: READ THIS)

Read This to Get Smarter by Blair Imani: ★★★★✩

Queer Gestreift by Kathrin Köller and Irmela Schautz ★★★★✩

My Left Foot by Christy Brown: ★★★★✩ (for uni)

Read This to Get Smarter about Race, Class, Gender, Disability & More by Blair Imani: ★★★★✩

Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon: ★★★★✩

Graphic novels, comics, and webcomics:

Tidesong by Wendy Xu: ★★★★✩

Princess, Princess Ever After by Katie O’Neill: ★★★✩✩ (too short!)

This Place: 150 Years Retold: ★★★★★

Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker, Wendy Xu, and Joanette Gil: ★★★★★

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell: ★★★★✩

Suki, Alone: ★★★✩✩ (liked it, wish it had given me MORE)

Fine. A Comic About Gender by Thea Ewing: ★★★★★ (STRONG recommend!)

The Tea Dragon Society by Katie O’Neill: ★★★★★ (too short but SO CUTE)

#text #me #books #my books #yeah so may be mostly inactive on tumblr but I always track my reading progress in my drafts lol #i read so much this year and it feels really good #my books 2023

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meta-squash · 1 year

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Squash’s Book Roundup of 2022

This year I read 68 books. My original goal was to match what I read in 2019, which was 60, but I surpassed it with quite a bit of time to spare.

Books Read In 2022:

-The Man Who Would Be King and other stories by Rudyard Kipling -Futz by Rochelle Owens -The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht -Funeral Rites by Jean Genet -The Grip of It by Jac Jemc -Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roche -Hashish, Wine, Opium by Charles Baudelaire and Theophile Gautier -The Blacks: a clown show by Jean Genet -One, No One, One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello -Cain’s Book by Alexander Trocchi -The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren -Three-Line Novels (Illustrated) by Felix Feneon, Illustrated by Joanna Neborsky -Black Box Thrillers: Four Novels (They Shoot Horses Don’t They, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, No Pockets in a Shroud, I Should Have Stayed Home) by Horace McCoy -The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas by Gustave Flaubert -The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco -Illusions by Richard Bach -Mole People by Jennifer Toth -The Rainbow Stories by William T Vollmann -Tell Me Everything by Erika Krouse -Equus by Peter Shaffer (reread) -Ghosty Men by Franz Lidz -A Happy Death by Albert Camus -Six Miles to Roadside Business by Michael Doane -Envy by Yury Olesha -The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West -Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche -The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox -The Cat Inside by William S Burroughs -Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry -Camino Real by Tennessee Williams (reread) -The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg -The Quick & The Dead by Joy Williams -Comemadre by Roque Larraquy -The Zoo Story by Edward Albee -The Bridge by Hart Crane -A Likely Lad by Peter Doherty -The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel -The Law In Shambles by Thomas Geoghegan -The Anti-Christ by Friedrich Nietzche -The Maids and Deathwatch by Jean Genet -Intimate Journals by Charles Baudelaire -The Screens by Jean Genet -Inferno by Dante Alighieri (reread) -The Quarry by Friedrich Durrenmatt -A Season In Hell by Arthur Rimbaud (reread) -Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century by Jed Rasula -Pere Ubu by Alfred Jarry -Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath by Anne Stevenson -Loot by Joe Orton -Julia And The Bazooka and other stories by Anna Kavan -The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda by Ishmael Reed -If You Were There: Missing People and the Marks They Leave Behind by Francisco Garcia -Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters -Indelicacy by Amina Cain -Withdrawn Traces by Sara Hawys Roberts (an unfortunate but necessary reread) -Sarah by JT LeRoy (reread) -How Lucky by Will Leitch -Gyo by Junji Ito (reread) -Joe Gould’s Teeth by Jill Lepore -Saint Glinglin by Raymond Queneau -Bakkai by Anne Carson -Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers -McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh -Moby Dick by Herman Melville -The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector -In the Forests of the Night by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (reread from childhood) -Chicago: City on the Make by Nelson Algren -The Medium is the Massage by Malcolm McLuhan

~Superlatives And Thoughts~

Fiction books read: 48 Non-fiction books read: 20

Favorite book: This is so hard! I almost want to three-way tie it between Under The Volcano, The Quick & The Dead, and The Man With The Golden Arm, but I’m not going to. I think my favorite is Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. It’s an absolutely beautiful book with such intense descriptions. The way that it illustrates the vastly different emotional and mental states of its three main characters reminded me of another favorite, Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey. Lowry is amazing at leaving narrative breadcrumbs, letting the reader find their way through the emotional tangle he’s recording. The way he writes the erratic, confused, crumbling inner monologue of the main character as he grows more and more ill was my favorite part.

Least favorite book: I’d say Withdrawn Traces, but it’s a reread, so I think I’ll have to go with Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. I dedicated a whole long post to it already, so I’ll just say that the concept of the book is great. I loved the whole idea of it. But the execution was awful. It’s like the exact opposite of Under The Volcano. The characters didn’t feel like real people, which would have been fine if the book was one written in that kind of surreal or artistic style where characters aren’t expected to speak like everyday people. But the narrative style as well as much of the dialogue was attempting realism, so the lack of realistic humanity of the characters was a big problem. The book didn’t ever give the reader the benefit of the doubt regarding their ability to infer or empathize or figure things out for themselves. Every character’s emotion and reaction was fully explained as it happened, rather than leaving the reader some breathing space to watch characters act or talk and slowly understand what’s going on between them. Points for unique idea and queer literature about actual adults, but massive deduction for the poor execution.

Unexpected/surprising book: The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox. This is the first book about archaeology I’ve ever read. I picked it up as I was shelving at work, read the inner flap to make sure it was going to the right spot, and then ended up reading the whole thing. It was a fascinating look at the decades-long attempt to crack the ancient Linear B script, the challenges faced by people who tried and the various theories about its origin and what kind of a language/script it was. The book was really engaging, the author was clearly very passionate and emotional about her subjects and it made the whole thing both fascinating and fun to read. And I learned a bunch of new things about history and linguistics and archaeology!

Most fun book: How Lucky by Will Leitch. It was literally just a Fun Book. The main character is a quadriplegic man who witnesses what he thinks is a kidnapping. Because he a wheelchair user and also can’t talk except through typing with one hand, his attempts to figure out and relay to police what he’s seen are hindered, even with the help of his aid and his best friend. But he’s determined to find out what happened and save the victim of the kidnapping. It’s just a fun book, an adventure, the narrative voice is energetic and good-natured and it doesn’t go deeply into symbolism or philosophy or anything.

Book that taught me the most: Destruction Was My Beatrice by Jed Rasula. This book probably isn’t for everyone, but I love Dadaism, so this book was absolutely for me. I had a basic knowledge of the Dadaist art movement before, but I learned so much, and gained a few new favorite artists as well as a lot of general knowledge about the Dada movement and its offshoots and members and context and all sorts of cool stuff.

Most interesting/thought provoking book: Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I annotated my copy like crazy. I never had to read it in school, but I had a blast finally reading it now. There’s just so much going on in it, symbolically and narratively. I think I almost consider it the first Modernist novel, because it felt more Modernist than Romantic to me. I had to do so much googling while reading it because there are so many obscure biblical references that are clear symbolism, and my bible knowledge is severely lacking. This book gave me a lot of thoughts about narrative and the construction of the story, the mechanic of a narrator that’s not supposed to be omniscient but still kind of is, and so many other things. I really love Moby Dick, and I kind of already want to reread it.

Other thoughts/Books I want to mention but don’t have superlatives for: Funeral Rites was the best book by Jean Genet, which I was not expecting compared to how much I loved his other works. It would be hard for me to describe exactly why I liked this one so much to people who don’t know his style and his weird literary tics, because it really is a compounding of all those weird passions and ideals and personal symbols he had, but I really loved it. Reading The Grip Of It by Jac Jemc taught me that House Of Leaves has ruined me for any other horror novel that is specifically environmental. It wasn’t a bad book, just nothing can surpass House Of Leaves for horror novels about buildings. The Man With The Golden Arm by Nelson Algren was absolutely beautiful. I went in expecting a Maltese Falcon-type noir and instead I got a novel that was basically poetry about characters who were flawed and fucked up and sad but totally lovable. Plus it takes place only a few blocks from my workplace! The Rainbow Stories by William T Vollmann was amazing and I totally love his style. I think out of all the stories in that book my favorite was probably The Blue Yonder, the piece about the murderer with a sort of split personality. Scintillant Orange with all its biblical references and weird modernization of bible stories was a blast too. The Quick & The Dead by Joy Williams was amazing and one of my favorites this year. It’s sort of surreal, a deliberately weird novel about three weird girls without mothers. I loved the way Williams plays with her characters like a cat with a mouse, introducing them just to mess with them and then tossing them away -- but always with some sort of odd symbolic intent. All the adult characters talk and act more like teens and all the teenage characters talk and act like adults. It’s a really interesting exploration of the ways to process grief and change and growing up, all with the weirdest characters. Joe Gould’s Teeth was an amazing book, totally fascinating. One of our regulars at work suggested it to me, and he was totally right in saying it was a really cool book. It’s a biography of Joe Gould, a New York author who was acquaintances with EE Cummings and Ezra Pound, among others, who said he was writing an “oral history of our time.” Lepore investigates his life, the (non)existence of said oral history, and Gould’s obsession with a Harlem artist that affected his views of race, culture, and what he said he wanted to write. McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh was so good, although I only read it because 3 out of my other 5 coworkers had read it and they convinced me to. I had read a bunch of negative reviews of Moshfegh’s other book, so I went in a bit skeptical, but I ended up really enjoying McGlue. The whole time I read it, it did feel a bit like I was reading Les Miserables fanfiction, partly from the literary style and partly just from the traits of the main character. But I did really enjoy it, and the ending was really lovely. In terms of literature that’s extremely unique in style, The Hour Of The Star by Clarice Lispector is probably top of the list this year. Her writing is amazing and so bizarre. It’s almost childlike but also so observant and philosophical, and the intellectual and metaphorical leaps she makes are so fascinating. I read her short piece The Egg And The Chicken a few months ago at the urging of my coworker, and thought it was so cool, and this little novel continues in that same vein of bizarre, charming, half-philosophical and half-mundane (but also totally not mundane at all) musings.

I'm still in the middle of reading The Commitments by Roddy Doyle (my lunch break book) and The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, but I'm not going to finish either by the end of the year, so I'm leaving them off the official list.

#squash rambles #reading year in review #book list year in review #book list #reading list #book roundup #reading roundup

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peachyteabuck · 1 year

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Hi peachy :) I saw your post about your audio books and I was wondering, do you have a prefered genre you are listening to? I saw you post about history I think and the harry autobiography. Is there one you won't listen to?

I'm currently on my fifth book this year, there were a couple of weeks recently I didn't listen to my 4th because I had an ear problem. This one is the first book of 3, weird tho that the first and third are avaliable on audible whereas the second you have to buy/use a credit for. I have two so it's no problem but I won't do it till after I've finished the first one :)

that cat is FOR REAL me right now.

honestly i will listen to anything, the only limitations of what my library has. currently checked out I have:

she said by jodi kantor & megan twohey (what i'm currently listening to

detransition, baby by torrey peters (WHICH I AM SO EXCITED FOR Y'ALL DON'T EVEN KNOW)

how the word is passed: a necessary reckoning with the history of slavery in america by clint smith (this is my next read because it's due in 3 days but someone is waiting for it so i can't renew it)

the life-changing magic of tidying up by maria kondo

indivisible: daniel webster and the birth of american nationalism by joel richard paul

africatown: america's last slave ship and the community it created by nick tabor

we need to talk: how to have conversations that matter by celeste headlee

the 5 stages of grief by behnay books

the body keeps the score by bessel van der kolk

attached by amir levine

100 ways to simplify your life by joyce meyer

uncomfortable conversations with a black man by emmanual acho

wolf hustle: a black woman of wall street by cin fabre

i do mostly listen to history/nonfiction, i guess? i'm not a HUGE fiction person outside of my very tropey romance novels anyway, so when i look through what's available i normally don't pay much attention to the fiction they have. i also normally steer away from self help unless i either a) already know the author or b) it's not written by a man. the sugar jar, for example, is a self help book i actually really really liked (and highly recommend) versus the subtle art of not giving a fuck which i think should be banned from the zeitgeist. which one did i like? the one not written by a man.

i used to use audible/share an account with the gf but this was before i really liked audiobooks. i honestly prefer the libby app, especially because i enjoy supporting my local libraries. also the libby app was this disgusting glaring orange 😂

#all communique has been redacted for your safety;#i try not to be a person who makes scathing sweeping claims about men (anti bio essentialism etcetc)#but dear fucking god men who write self help books are SO BAD AT WRITING SELF HELP BOOKS #idk if i fully wrote about how much i hated the subtle art of not giving a fuck. but i hated it #so so so bad

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genderqueerpositivity · 1 year

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This week I:

Got a lot of necessary cleaning done

Had a good therapy appointment

Got my labwork done early ahead of my next HRT appointment (because I totally forgot before the last appointment) and my T levels look great

(Why am I anemic though?? Never happened before. And I wasn't back when I had labwork at my primary care doctor in November)

(I'll be two years on T next month holy heck)

And then I got bubble tea after the labwork was done

Got my first ear cartilage piercing and I was brave about it; it actually hurt far less than my nostril piercing did lmao

Got gendered correctly at the piercing shop without even having to mention my pronouns!!

Finally finished reading Detransition, Baby

Managed to doomscroll less and sleep more

Did not get my Adderall prescription filled (not a win) but I tried (a win)

Successfully took the new increased dose of my venlafaxine everyday

And I actually have a full weekend off for the first time in awhile!

#what did everyone else do this week?#day to day stuff #op #personal #medical tw #food tw #needles tw

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distortingbones · 1 year

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I posted 7,758 times in 2022

That's 4,205 more posts than 2021!

99 posts created (1%)

7,659 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@m-e-w-666

[not a mutual]

@hanged-man-is-trans

@crit20lesbian

@oddly-okay

I tagged 4,400 of my posts in 2022

Only 43% of my posts had no tags

#ofmd - 792 posts

#mcr - 442 posts

#tma - 343 posts

#sam - 223 posts

#cats - 186 posts

#wwdits - 136 posts

#save - 88 posts

#bats - 72 posts

#ref - 54 posts

#wwdits spoilers - 54 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#me as someone with semi-severe misophonia who wants all environments to be perfectly silent except for noise that i put in there on purpose

My Top Posts in 2022:

354 notes - Posted April 25, 2022

my review of wednesday (2022): not gay enough

465 notes - Posted December 1, 2022

can't stop thinking about you could've raised a better girl like. god that's it isn't it. that's what it is to be someone who doesn't realize they may be trans until adulthood, but who has always felt a connection to the "other" gender. 45 years old telling their proverbial mother, you could've raised a girl if only i had understood myself sooner. you could've raised a girl if only i'd had the words for what i felt. you could've raised a girl if only i wasn't forced into maleness from birth. you could've raised a girl if only you'd seen me and listened to me and been the mother that i needed you to be. and i think i would have been better as a girl, and i wonder if maybe i wouldn't have been a disappointment to you if i'd been raised as your daughter instead of your son. and yes, i could have been a better son, but only if i were somebody else. maybe i should have tried harder to be a better son to you but maybe you could have been a better mother to me. maybe i would be a better girl now if you had raised me that way.

510 notes - Posted September 24, 2022

ok so this last episode reminded us that what we do in the shadows is a documentary, and that there's a lot going on behind the scenes that the characters keep to themselves that's not recorded by the documentary crew (like guillermo's embezzling - until he gets caught). we are not going to see anything personal, private, or secret. this is easy to forget because it seems like the vampires have zero filter whatsoever - but remember how well laszlo kept the secret about colin robinson's death and ALSO baby colin last season??

anyway, does anyone else feel like... for part of season 3 and for all of this season, there's been a lot more going on between nandor and guillermo than we see on screen? i think they read less like people who haven't acknowledged their feelings, and more like people who are keeping a very big secret kind of badly from their friends and the documentary crew.

this next part may be a stretch, but: i can imagine that they got together secretly last season, there was a big conflict where nandor was unwilling to be public about what was going on and instead kept putting on big displays of heterosexuality and/or running away, and then the season finale was supposed to be them being open about being together, free from the judgment of laszlo or nadja or the documentary crew. think about "my nan- master," think about the whispered exchanges between them where the crew is filming them secretly, think about their little moment where nandor says he won't bring guillermo's luggage and guillermo goes >:( and nandor goes "lol jk" like he isn't ashamed to be publically caring towards guillermo, and guillermo LIGHTS UP and it's so fucking cute

and then they didn't run away together. and season 4 has read a bit like a post-breakup, where neither will admit that anything even happened in the first place.

598 notes - Posted August 4, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

hey. autistic transmascs. it's okay if your autistic perspective influenced your discomfort with femininity, and that doesn't mean you're any less trans or that you shouldn't transition/should detransition. if transitioning makes you feel happier and more at ease with your body, then it doesn't matter "why" you're trans. womanhood is not inherently sacred and it's ok to not be a woman if you don't feel like one. a feminine body is not inherently superior to a masculine one, so you aren't "ruining" your body by taking masculinizing hormones or undergoing masculinizing surgeries. do what makes you happiest and don't drink the radfem koolaid.

1,068 notes - Posted September 30, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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