Xismosa Xit

A

• Art Matters by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Chris Ridell book 
  • an encouraging read because it encourages art, but also has a couple of politically incorrect drawings that I was disappointed in

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

• Letter to a CES Director: My Search for Answers to My Mormon Doubts by Jeremy T. Runnells 
  • Runnells was heavily involved in the Latter Day Saints (AKA Mormon) Church growing up, but started to have doubts when looking into historical and archeological evidence that did not back up the Book of Mormon. Therefore, he wrote to an LDS Church Education System (CES) Director hoping to get these questions answered, but none came. He also questions Old Testament God, concerns which I myself have had since I was little. 
• The Library Of The Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith
  • it’s queer, it has interesting ideas about the importance of stories and human potential, but the ending is unsatisfying. It leaves on some kind of cliffhanger for the next book, but there are two compelling characters that may have “died” and I can find NOTHING about them coming back, which makes me not want to read the next one.
  • Related content: (spoiler alert for Gideon the Ninth/The Locked Tomb series) Me finishing Gideon the Ninth and IMMEDIATELY researching whether Gideon would be back, not caring if I spoiled the next book for myself because I was so desperate to see lesbian Jesus again.  
• Loose Woman by Sandra Cisneros
  • my favorite author since 6th grade, I’m revisiting her poems and remembering myself a bit.
• Lore Olympus by Rachael Smythe

M

• The Myth of Sisyphus And Other Essays by Albert Camus
  • I will deny reading this. You will pull up this page on Colochos de Flores and show me and I will turn away. I call it public-school-forced-white-men’s-thoughts-into-me-and-I-try-to-oppose-them-whenever-possible-even-if-they-have-decent-ideas trauma. This is the result of my rabbithole while trying to understand Everything Everywhere All At Once. It can be difficult to follow his line of thinking bc some people, usually academics, don’t like to be straight-forward (looking at you, Bourdieu)*, but I’m getting some nice nuggets to chew on out of it. The absurdity of being alive and all that.
  • *I recognize that this is also me…

N

O

P

• Payback’s A Witch by Lana Harper
  • a little millennial-y, which can be cringy, but mostly about bisexual witches with the added bonus that they don’t have to deal with homophobia 🙂
• Peoples guide to capitalism: an introduction to marxist economics
  • a more understandable guide to communism and how it applies to today. Nice.
• Pleasure Activism by adrienne marie brown
  • recommended to me by a good friend (Lin, I’m so sorry it’s taken me this long), and I finally checked it out from the physical library after it languished in my digital bookcase for months. I’m only a quarter of the way through and I’m already in love with it. adrienne brings in many teachers and peers to talk about their connection to pleasure, both sexual and not, and how it is revolutionary to pleasure yourself, espeicallly as Black non-cismen.

Q

R

• The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy
  • I do not remember why I picked up this book. I don’t remember reading the description, or even seeing a review on it. I just picked it up one day, and it was a profound read. It does have a depiction of a miscarriage, living with an alcoholic, and having an affair. Her unchronological writing makes for fascinating connections across her life. 

S

• Saga (volumes 1-4)
  • about outsourcing war and genocide, and the difficulties of raising a child which both sides would hate.
• Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn by Lynn Saxon
  • When I newly 18 and waiting to leave for college, my best high school friend and I went to downtown Tempe alone, and ventured into the High Happy Healthy Hippy shop. Iconic. We started a conversation with the woman behind the counter, and she extolled the book Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá and encouraged us to email her with any questions. I loved that conversation, and had the book on my To Read list for the past 8 years. I finally started reading it. A few pages in, I decided to go to its GoodReads page, which I try to avoid bc I like to form my own opinions. Yet, one review recommended Sex at Dusk as a good counter argument. Saxon is not arguing that sex is unhealthy, but she is arguing that sex is more intentional about prolonging the lives of genetics than Sex at Dawn would like to recognize. I like reading about science, and am trying to learn more about human sexuality in history.
• Sissy by Jacob Tobia
  • If you ever watched She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (I rave about the 8 foot tall lesbian here), and fell in love with the voice and look and energy of Double Trouble, then you will enjoy this audiobook being read to you by Double Trouble because the actor behind them is both the author and the narrator.

T

• Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood by Danny Trejo
  • read by him
  • I love Danny Trejo, I love his voice, and sometimes he laughs at the stories he tells in his book. I want to meet him and hug him.

U

V

W

• We Ride On Sticks
  • teen girls are scary, sometimes even more so when they sell their souls. It’s great.
• World Religions: An Illustrated Guide edited by Seán McLoughlin
  • I took a world religions 101 class in college. I learned nothing about the basics of each religion. I am learning more about the basics from this 2007 guide. But of course, there are only 2 pages on African religions. And they’re called exactly that – African religions. Still, I’m learning a lot about other religions, but of course the longest section is devoted to Christiatiny, and I sense that the authors of that section were particularly careful in their phrasing, more so than in other sections. Can’t offend the Christians.

X

Y

Z

• Peoples guide to capitalism: an introduction to marxist economics
  • a more understandable guide to communism and how it applies to today. Nice.
• Organizing Solutions for people with ADHD
  • also nice and calming and validating. I’m pretty sure i don’t have ADHD, but this helps me find ways around feeling drained picking up after myself with my depression. Aaaaaaaand I Found out later that the author is a Wellesley grad!
• Nona The Ninth by Tasmyn Muir
  • [spoilers] Picture it: me, sobbing, screaming “I JUST WANT THEM TO BE HAPPY! I JUST WANT THEM TO KNOW THEY ARE ALL LOVED!!!!”
  • Read “them” as: a family AND lesbian Jesus who’s mad about being resurrected and not knowing where her worst-enemy-and-simultaneous-love-of-her-life’s soul is.
• In The Shadow Of The Moons by M.M. Kaye
  • wow. The pitfalls of being a messiah in the Moonies and not disciplining your children, and the simplicity of what children need.
• The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
  • read by Lorne Cardinal
  • Pretty non-linear, telling a terrible story of colonizer conquest with great jokes along the way, and how Indigenous survival seems to require the use of “dead Indian” aesthetics. There’s way more I cannot encapsulate well at the moment.
• Ratchetdemic: Reimagining Academic Success by Christopher Emdin
  • read by the author
  • Emdin advocates for students and teachers to be allowed to be themselves in the classrooms, and to not have their spirit killed by conforming to the US Educational standard. He focuses on Black youth who have the traits (creativity, ingenuity, enthusiasm for learning, etc) that US schools say they want, but then specify that they want those traits to come out in a “correct”/white way. He is encouraging Black teachers especially to be themselves to be able to show their Black/IPOC students that there is room in the world for them. Everyone is “ratchet,” but schools really only let white students express their ratchet selves. I think he went a little long on the examples, therefore taking a bit to get to the meat of his argument, but I appreciate the message, and have been trying to argue for something like this through cultural capital.
• Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk About Religion by Joseph Laycock
  • read by Thomas Allen
  • This one was fun, since it’s mostly about a group that calls out Chrisitians who say they want “religion” in schools and public spaces, yet do not want any other religions included besides Christianity. I agree with their seven tenants, which they have used to argue that people should have access to abortions because of their religion. While The Satanic Temple is still struggling with being a religion or not, many have found community in the group. The group is also quite self-aware, and briefly talked about the whiteness of Satanic spaces.  
• The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic by Leigh Bardugo
  • illustrated by Sara Kipin
  • This is technically part of the Grishaverse; it’s supposed to be a book of fairytales that are taught in the Grishaverse, like The Tales of Beedle The Bard for Harry Potter. I read this before touching anything else by Bardugo; I seem to be drawn to fairytale retellings. They all have a great and usually heart-wrenching twist. The last one is heartbreaking and beautifully told. Yet, when I picked up *Shadow and Bone* by Leigh Bardugo, expecting an even better story since she had the room to expound, I was disappointed with a romantic love triangle, which the 2000s and 2010s exhausted, and I had not encountered in Language of Thorns. By reading this one, I expected better from Bardugo in her novels.  
• Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories by Kelly Barnhill
  • another example of a fantastic short story writer that, so far, while reading their novel I am a bit disappointed. The title is the perfect description for the content.
• Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor
  • read by Larissa Gallagher
  • a dying woman’s last non-chronological telling of her own life and death. It actually tends to go backwards in time. She doesn’t believe in an afterlife, and find community with others who are dying/are curious about discussing their own death.
• The President and the Frog by Carolina de Robertis
  • read by the author
  • A magical realism-ish take on democracy, fun to listen to and thoughtful!
• This Town Sleeps by Dennis E Staples
  • read by Karpov Schwab
  • an Indigenous gay man wakes up a spirit of a dog and has to solve a mystery, all while dealing with an white lover. It’s always a white lover.
• God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stravrakopoulou
  • read by the author
  • going through the history of how the Judeo-Christian idea of God morphed from a local storm god to what we are familiar with today.
• The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel J. Levitin
  • read by Luke Daniels
  • I thought it would be more about mind palaces and how to get organized, but the second half of the book was more about “thinking straight,” or as I like to call it, “thinking queer,” since it calls for critical thinking, which I tend to see more in the queer community anyway. He gives advice on HOW to think critically, and how our minds work with digital things; they don’t like to.
• Montessori for Every Family: A Practical Parenting Guide to Living, Loving, and Learning by Tim Seldin and Lorna McGrath
  • read by Alana Maria
  • listen, I’m just someone who wants to take care of children’s and inner children’s wellbeing as much as possible, AKA also learning how to care for my own inner child.
• Meander Spiral Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison
  • read by Bernadette Dunne
  • literature theory? She theorizes and gives examples on how stories are best when they meander, spiral, or explode radially. 
• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD
  • read by Marguerite Gavin
  • TLDR: Everyone needs therapy. 
• Carve: A Simple Guide To Whittling by Melanie Abrantes
  • I just want to make little animals.
• Steal Like An Artist Audio Trilogy by Austin Kleon
  • read by the author
  • includes Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going – gives good tips on how to keep your creativity up! We love lists.
• The Postmortal by Drew Magary
  • WOW, this kept me HOOKED. I don’t know why I liked it so much, since I recognized almost all of the human selfishness and ugliness in it, but I’m always a sucker for world building, especially for the future. The narrator was an asshole, and the last romance was annoying. 
• It Came From The Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror edited by Joe Vallese
  • read by a cast
  • do I watch horror movies? Hell no. Was this still incredibly intriguing? Yes. I’m sure this would be just that more impactful to queers who actually like horror, but I still loved this anthology.
• American Gods graphic novel series by Neil Gaiman
  • illustrated by P. Craig Russell, Scott Hampton, and Glenn Fabry
  • this is my third time reading American Gods and I loved the illustrations helping me to make sense of everything. FINALLY, I get it. I guess I slowed down enough as I enjoyed the graphics….
• The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold by Sam Knight
  • I thought this would be more about the possible of science of premonitions, but it ended up being more about the history of the men that ran the Premonitions Bureau, which wasn’t even relevant.  
• The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
  • this is more about the treatment of women in a society transitioning over to Christianity from “the old ways” and prejudice against indigenous people than it is about queerness. There is still some pining, but in a way where they don’t really know that attraction between women is “possible.” There is also a bit of not-that-graphic marital r*pe, bc what kind of historical fiction would it be without it (please read this question with dripping sarcasm)?
• When The Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen
  • this is about the horrors of slavery coming back to haunt a plantation wedding. The violence that white people enact on Black bodies are the main part of the horror, but also the reality of the treatment of Black people (mostly about the incarceration of Black men and the lack of attention paid to Black women) today and how those overlap. However, the pace was awkward where the beginning was too slow and the ending was too fast. I did see a comment from a Black reader saying that they’re pretty sure this was written without centering a Black audience.
• Mona by Pola Oloixarac
  • read by Sofia Willingham
  • a pretentious book that pretends it’s not. Or maybe it knows it’s pretentious? ugh.
• Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
  • read by Gemma Dawson
  • 1930s lesbians and a “cross-dressing” doctor whose rants are at least 50% of the book (not sure they would call themself trans). Proto-manic-pixie-dream-girl but more depressed-woman-walking-all-over-town-with-no-thought-to-those-who-are-infatuated-with-and-love-her.
• The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
  • read by Ruta Gedmintas
  • The lives of women in early 1500s France that caused them to dance in a fictional account of the Dancing Plague of 1518, complete with a mixed race relationship and a separate lesbian relationship. Sad, maybe a little hopeful.
• Evolution Gone Wrong by Alex Bezzerides
  • read by Joe Knezevich
  • TW for some ableism.
  • Essentially, we are in a middling stage of evolution as evidenced by our feet, back, and eye problems.
• In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
  • read by Freya Miller
  • I CANNOT FIND A GOOD EXPLANATION FOR THE ENDING MUST I DO EVERYTHING MYSELF (analysis pending)
• What Your Clutter Is Trying To Tell You by Kerri L. Richardson
  • read by the author
  • to go fuck yourself. JK, slightly, but prioritize your space, time, and peace, not your stuff.
• Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet – and What We Can Do About It by Nancy Fraser
  • read by Kate Udall
  • I mean… obvi? JK, not that obvi, they keep us tired so we don’t think too much about it.
• White Tears, Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad
  • read by Mozhan Mornò
  • Started, paused, keep putting it off bc this validates my experiences, but I wish I could afford to send this to all the white women I know.
• The Trouble With White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism by Kyla Schuller
  • read by Brittney Cooper
  • the exact same sentiment as White Tears, Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad.
• Be The Boss Of Your Stuff: The Kids’ Guide to Decluttering and Creating Your Own Space by Allie Casazza
  • read by the author
  • my inner child needs to declutter too.
• Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels
  • read by Cassandra Campbell
  • This was like being told that you were going to read about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from the perspective of Sherlock Holmes, and getting a tiny bit of that, but mostly through Moriarty trying to contradict Sherlock Holmes about Doyle, and then the second half being about a disciple of Moriarty trying to push Moriarty’s perspective. Was it interesting? Yes. Was it what I wanted to learn about? Not really. 
• The Clutter Corpse by Simon Brett
  • read by the author
  • weird take on female friendship, but a sweet relationship between mom and son, and there’s a murder mystery in the background.
• What It Means To Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life by Phil Zuckerman
  • read by Paul Brion
  • don’t base your morality on a deity. Try basing it on living with and caring for others; AKA humanism.
• Heart Eyes by Dennis Hopeless
  • the ending is annoying (turns romantic when it doesn’t need to), but gotta love a teenage girl embracing her own monstrosity.  
• “You Should Be Grateful”: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption by Angela Tucker
  • read by the author
  • THIS HAS TO BE REQUIRED READING, especially for people planning to adopt, especially cross-racially. This author’s parents empowered her enough to not think about their feelings and to be honest in her journey and in this book.
• Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church by The Investigative Staff of the Boston Globe
  • read by Paul Boehmer
  • I like reading about the (usually catholic) church getting their shit rocked. I just think it’s neat.
• The Hoarder In You: How to Live a Happier, Healthier, Uncluttered Life by Dr. Robin Zasio
  • read by Cassandra Campbell
  • can’t even remember… oops.
• The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings
  • read by Angel Pean
  • great questions about the status of women, especially BIPoC (Black Indigenous People of Color) women, and how they can love men fully in a society that requires men to be in control of their lives and “transgressions,” if they can truly love men at all. It has a magic system I wish I had written. The protagonist’s mom is hypocritical and annoying.
• Brooding Over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women’s Lethal Resistance by Nikki M. Taylor
  • read by Machelle Williams
  • I think I got about half an hour into this and knew it would be too much for me, but I still support them and want everyone else to know about them.- How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe, read by Wil Wheaton: extremely fun ridiculous read with the use of real science.
• The Rise and Fall of The Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte
  • read by Patrick Lawlor
  • Oh to be a large chicken roaming the earth.
• American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI by Kate Winkler Dawson
  • read by the author
  • About the triumphs and faults of the father of American CSI, Edward Oscar Heinrich.
• Nobody Wants Your Shit by Messie Condo
  • read by Hillary Huber
  • Swedish Death Cleaning, but make it a little obscene.
• Interstellar novelization by Greg Keyes, written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan
  • Listen, I just wanted more answers. I kinda got them.
• Hoarding: What Everyone Needs to Know by Gail Steketee and Christiana Bratio
  • read by LaQuinta James
  • Hoarders the show is wrong and highly likely to re-traumatize their “patients” with how quickly they get rid of the stuff. Cutting down the hoarding has to be an amazing slow and steady process.
• The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas
  • read by Scarlette Hayes
  • slow burn baby. Unfortunately about a Spaniard. Communication is no one’s strong suit.
• Parasite by Mira Grant
  • I guessed the end in the first 5 minutes of a 16-hour audiobook, but still an intriguing concept and perfectly-paced action.
• Quantum Bullshit by Chris Ferrie
  • read by Daniel Henning
  • the first half helps you build an understanding of quantum physics, and the second half is the author desperately trying to reach a word count.
• A (Very) Shot History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in Twelve Pithy Chapters by Henry Gee
  • read by the author
  • Loved the overview! We are not the beginning or the end. Also sound effects 🙂
• Pluto, Volumes 1-4 by Noaki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka
  • I’m obsessed and confused. I love a puzzle. I watched the anime on Netflix first (basically my first one), and I am now onto the manga so I can be ~immersed~.