Get a Life, Chloe Brown (by Talia Hibbert)

This qualifies as a "fat-positive romance" for the Read Harder Challenge, but since I've already fulfilled that category, it also fits in "Read a book featuring a beloved pet where the pet doesn’t die." (The main character also has fibromyalgia, which is represented really well, which is where I thought this would slot in, but apparently I misremembered one of the categories.) 

This book is funny and charming and sexy; actually, maybe a little too sexy. There is a lot of very explicit sex and it somehow felt like a bit too much, too soon. But I loved the alternating points of view, the authentic emotional journeys each character was on, and the matter-of-fact and very positive handling of both body size and disability. 

You'd have to be really okay with a whole lot of non-euphemistic sex scenes, but if that's you, it's very worth reading. Also, the pet doesn't die!

The Vanishing Half (by Brit Bennett)

This book is highly acclaimed (including by Barack Obama) and my friends at work also raved about how great it was. Also, it's on the Tournament of Books list so I was hoping I would finally finish one ToB book this year.

It was a bit slow going for me in the beginning, which made me nervous, but it picked up the pace when we jumped into the next generation and I ended up loving it. There are a number of Chekhov's guns that never actually get fired, which I found refreshing in a weird way. It felt more naturalistic, even if I had some questions and curiosities at the end that were never answered.

Some of the Goodreads crew didn't find the characters fully realized, but this was not an issue for me; I thought the characters were amazingly drawn. Excellent novel and I hope it goes far in the ToB!

I Want To Be Where the Normal People Are (by Rachel Bloom)

This book of essays by Rachel Bloom (of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fame) was a Christmas gift from Ian. It talks about her experiences with anxiety throughout her life, which was also explored in her television show. It is also hilarious. It has everything from childhood diaries (which made me laugh until I cried) to Harry Potter fanfiction (including a disclaimer about the now-problematic J.K. Rowling) to the script for a musical (which you can hear her perform on her website).  Just a delighful, relatable, and very funny read.

 

Cruising (by Alex Espinoza)

This is a memoir attempting to disguise itself as a scholarly text. Which is fine! Just good to know going into it.  

Espinoza touches on the history of cruising, recounts his own cruising experiences and summarizes other sources, sometimes in a very choppy way.  Often I was hoping he'd dig deeper on a topic, whether that be the actual mechanics of cruising, the history of the cruising subculture at various points, or the points he's trying to argue.  (The idea that cruising is egalitarian, for example.)  He interviews a few men (presented as "countless" men), which you gather was more about trading cruising war stories than any sort of research. He mentions Squirt.org a lot of times. He mentions "connecting emotionally" a lot of times but doesn't explain exactly how using a glory hole means you are "connecting emotionally."

Anyway there is a lot of interesting stuff here about a fascinating subculture, but mostly it is clear that Espinoza really really loves cruising, and a bit more distance, originality, and depth would have served this book well.

The Final Six (by Alexandra Monir)

The Final Six has a really fun premise: 24 teenagers are competing to be the six who get to fly to Europa to colonize it.  Only perhaps the mission is more sinister than it seems!

Our two point of view characters are Leo (a boy from Italy who has lost his family in a climate disaster) and Naomi (a girl from a Persian-American family in Los Angeles), and over the course of the competition they fall in love.

So many ways in which this book let me down. We don’t get to know any of the other characters, except for Beckett, who is basically a cartoon villain. (It’s improbable he even sticks around, because teamwork is essential to a group of astronauts and there is no way someone with Beckett’s attitude would make it past the first round of cuts.) Leo and Naomi fall in love, of course, except there is no chemistry and I see no real reason they even like each other. The pacing is off.  Some of the things described as part of the training seem to violate the laws of physics.  (Speaking of which, in The Martian it takes like three years to get to Mars. In this book they don't even mention how long it's going to take to fly to Jupiter. I want more science in my sci fi, damnit!)

The second book in the series is available from the library but after reading reviews I’m going to skip it.

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot (by Mikki Kendall)

This is a highly regarded book of essays about intersectional feminism that I might just not be the target audience for. I know I fall into white feminist blind spots so I went into this ready to hear about them, but her examples are like "actually Lena Dunham is a bad feminist!"and "Pocahontas costumes are racist!" and.. I think we all know that at this point? At some points, she builds a strawman of a white feminist who doesn’t really exist. (Like "feminists" who supported Brett Kavanaugh. Again, I think we know these are not real feminists.)

Kendall also enmenrates other issues that are feminist issues but often presented (or dismissed) as racial issues, but she's not arguing for anything outside of general liberal progressive politics at this point. I already agree with her about defunding the police, Black maternal health, and housing as a basic human right, and so do most of the white feminists I know. We're probably failing on a lot of counts, but not those.

What resonated with me the most strongly were the sections on respectability politics, the "Mommy wars" (wherein the idealized standards of motherhood are based on women with resources and money), and the idea that white feminists want to "pass the buck" to white men instead of owning their own failures (god knows that's usually my first instinct). The writing itself is a bit scattershot though and I would have appreciated more hard data, more focused arguments, and stronger calls to action.

I came away feeling it is flawed but there is a lot of important food for thought here, and I wholeheartedly agree about this: if your feminism isn't intersectional, you're doing it wrong. 

Romances and Romcoms

 My last book of 2020 and my first two reads of 2021 all qualify as romances or romcoms, so we'll bundle them together!

First was Beach Read by Emily Henry, which had some funny moments but was more emotionally complex than you might expect. The main characters are both writers, and they decide to trade genres for a summer; she will write litfic and he will write romance.  She is also dealing with the source of her writer's block: after the death of her seemingly perfect father, she discovers that he had a secret lover on the side and questions everything she once believed about romance. There are real emotional stakes here along with the romance.

Secondly, I'm not putting it on my official list, but one of the RHC categories for 2021 is "a fanfic" so I did read a Villaineve fic called for hire. It had a fun plot and captured the characters well! There is also a whole lot of sex, which should shock nobody.

And speaking of a whole lot of sex, the final read was Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade, about two fanfic writers.  One is a proudly fat woman and the other is secretly the star of the show he writes fanfic about. It's very inside baseball about the fanfic world, and very wish fulfillment fantasy too. (Not one but two male leads on the show write fanfic about it? Mmm okay.) (The running jokes about pegging were hilarious though.) (Yeah this book is definitely very explicit.) 

I abandoned a book recently because of a very similar premise; in this case the fanfic setting and the plus-sized heroine kept me reading, but I did get similarly frustrated by the fact that one character just needs to tell the other character the truth and then the situation is resolved. [Spoiler] The fact that he didn't tell her before they had sex meant it was unforgivable to me. I loved the character of Marcus but it was such a betrayal of trust. [End spoiler]  I also do not think the fatness was handled as realistically as it could have been but maybe I'm just not as self-actualized as these characters. 

I am also trying to read some litfic for the Tournament of Books but I keep stalling out on Deacon King Kong. Obama liked it and so did all the peeps on Goodreads, so I will keep trying!

Year-end Book Wrapup 2020

My goal this year was to read 70 books and to complete the Read Harder Challenge. Achieved! You can see all my Challenge books on last year’s wrapup post. 

This year, I read 80 published books and 4 unpublished books by friends, which I did not blog about for obvious reasons but will when they are published! (They are all great. My friends are hella talented.) I read 60 books by women, 23 by men, and one collaboration between a nonbinary writer and female graphic artist.  At least 25 of these were young adult novels, mostly queer. Definitely my comfort reading of the year.

Top five books of the year:

1.  The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

I didn’t read a ton of litfic this year, it turns out (I am 0 for 12 in the Tournament of Books shortlist) so this is actually the only litfic in my top five!  But it is really great. The story of a girl who is granted immortality but cursed not to be remembered by anyone she meets. There are some plot holes in how this is handled, and the modern-day stuff is stronger than the flashbacks, but still a book I really enjoyed.

2. Stay Gold

This is a romance in which the main character is a trans teenager. Both he and his love interest are well-drawn and their chemistry and banter are wonderful. But this book is not light and fluffy. It has extremely vivid transphobic content and could potentially be triggering. If you are sensitive to transphobia and homophobia (against the lesbian characters), I would go read what others have to say about this book before listening to a cisgender person. All that said, I put this at the top of my list because not only are the characters great, it viscerally conveys what it feels like to be a trans man in an authentic way. (The author is a trans man.) I ugly cried at the end of this and felt a greater level of empathy for my transgender friends. That, for me, made it worthwhile.

3. The Murderbot series

This was recommended all over the place this year; I think Ask Metafilter was where I first heard about it.  Murderbot is a sentient humanoid robot who goes rogue, definitely does not want to be human, and loves watching their favorite series, Sanctuary Moon. They somehow end up being in charge of protecting a lot of humans and, unfortunately for them, having some emotions from time to time. Murderbot is a unique and completely loveable character. I didn’t always follow the broader intrigue and corporate espionage stuff, but who cares. Murderbot is delightful.

4. Catfishing on CatNet

A full length novel by the author of Cat Pictures, Please.  If you like that short story (and you must, right?!?) you will love this book. Creative, funny, entertaining, and overall such a pleasure.

5. Amelia Westlake Was Never Here

I read a lot of great (and some bad) YA romance this year but this was one of my favorites. Loved the characters and their chemistry and this was pure, unadulterated, fluffy lesbian goodness. I chased this high all year and never quite reached it again.

Honorable mentions: Frankly In Love, All This Could Be Yours, Quiet Girl in a Noisy World, Real Queer America, More Happy Than Not, Hot Dog Girl


Bottom three books:

Once again, since I abandon most books if I really don’t like them, this is more a list of “meh” than anything I truly disliked! That’s the one downside of being a DNF-er: I don’t get to truly rip into terrible books anymore.

1. New York 2040

Stuck with this because of the Read Harder Challenge but ultimately did not add up to much and was a slog to get through. Not my jam.

2. Like a Love Story

Figured I should probably identify my least favorite YA of the year, and this is it. A great premise torpedoed by unconvincing relationships and unrealistic events, along with some problematic content.

3. London Calling  

Lesbian romance without a good plot or a convincing romance. I probably finished this out of inertia, or maybe misguided optimism that it would get better at some point. 

On to 2021!

Last year I almost made my 2020 goal to read 100 books (I’m glad I didn’t, nobody needed more pressure in 2020).  I think 80 is a good goal though and I’ll up my goal to 80 books in 2021.

Of course, I’m going to keep going with the Read Harder Challenge as I enjoy challenging myself!  I’ll be updating this post as I get through the challenge and use a label on my posts so you can follow along.

I have ideas for some categories, but recommendations are always welcome. I’m not sure how to handle the very first category, “Read a book you’ve been intimidated to read.” A lot of people are doing books like Ulysses or Infinite Jest or War and Peace, but I’ve read all of those. #humblebrag. I never finished Swanns Way but I wasn't intimidated by it; I was just bored.

On the other hand I was really intimidated by Just Mercy this year, because I find it difficult to read about injustice and systemic racism. (Great book, though.) So I think I have to find a book that deals with something enraging or tragic or confronting. (This must be the right approach as I’m intimidated just thinking about it.)

Here are the categories:

Total: 24/24

[X] Read a book you’ve been intimidated to read: We Were Eight Years in Power
[X] Read a nonfiction book about anti-racism: Hood Feminism
[X] Read a non-European novel in translation: Breasts and Eggs
[X] Read an LGBTQ+ history book: Cruising
[X] Read a genre novel by an Indigenous, First Nations, or Native American author: Firekeeper's Daughter
[X] Read a fanfic: for hire
[X] Read a fat-positive romance: Spoiler Alert
[X] Read a romance by a trans or nonbinary author: One Last Stop
[X] Read a middle grade mystery: The Case of the Left-Handed Lady
[X] Read an SFF anthology edited by a person of color: New Suns
[X] Read a food memoir by an author of color: Crying in H Mart
[X] Read a work of investigative nonfiction by an author of color: Black Dahlia, Red Rose
[X] Read a book with a cover you don’t like: Billion Dollar Loser
[X] Read a realistic YA book not set in the U.S., UK, or Canada: Here the Whole Time
[X] Read a memoir by a Latinx author: My Beloved World
[X] Read an own voices book about disability: Their Troublesome Crush
[X] Read an own voices YA book with a Black main character that isn’t about Black pain: Smash It!
[X] Read a book by/about a non-Western world leader: The Woman Who Would Be King
[X] Read a historical fiction with a POC or LGBTQ+ protagonist: The Vanishing Half
[X] Read a book of nature poems: Bright Wings
[X] Read a children’s book that centers a disabled character but not their disability: Planet Earth Is Blue
[X] Read a book set in the Midwest: Eligible
[X] Read a book that demystifies a common mental illness: Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me
[X] Read a book featuring a beloved pet where the pet doesn’t die: Get a Life, Chloe Brown