June 2025 - What Are You Reading?

[Bill]

Going to try and stick with LGBTQ+ themed books for Pride Month. Starting off with Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt

[CJ]

I am not trying to do anything too ambitious reading-wise for Pride, but I have some books by various LGBTQIA+ authors lined up that I hope to get to this month. Currently working on Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott, and just checked out The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow and Even the Worm Will Turn by Hailey Piper from the library, so those are next.

[Richard]

I just finished Pioneer Summer by Elena Malisova and Kateryna Sylvanova, translated by Anne O. Fisher - translator, the intensely important queer romance of Soviet days that changed Russian law, brought down its publisher, and exiled its authors. Books still matter, folks.
https://expendablemudge.blogspot.com/...

[Carl]

Just finished this queer memoir. Good book, and probably others will rate even higher.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...#

[Carl]

Bill wrote: "Going to try and stick with LGBTQ+ themed books for Pride Month. Starting off with Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt"

Beautiful choice. Open, Heaven is gorgeous and lyrical.

[Richard]

The Slip by Lucas Schaefer got 4.5* from me here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Sav]

Be Gay, Do Crime: Sixteen Stories of Queer Chaos

I started the month with this gem! A collection of sixteen wonderfully chaotic stories about queer women carving out space for themselves and committing acts of deviance along the way.

It was a great, 4-star read for me: BGDC Review

[*＊✿❀ Q ❀✿＊*]

I'm trying to hurry up and finish my current reads so I can get started on some LGBTQ+ titles as well as some titles written by Black authors in honour of Juneteenth.

I just finished House of Flame and Shadow yesterday and I'm currently reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue 😊

[Amber :)]

currently reading Last Night at The Telegraph Club

[Peter]

I recently retired and can now enjoy reading novels instead of work related material. I recently read two books which at first I enjoyed and as I came to the end of the books was deeply distressed by the way the authors presented gay men. In The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, McBride received a great deal of praise for the book. However the villain he creates is an abusive pedophile who rapes a deaf young man in an institution. I would have thought that this stereotype of gay men as pedophiles was hung out to dry a long time ago only to discover it in a recent piece of fiction. The other book comes from the 1990's, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. The book is a strange religious si-fi work where the main character, a Jesuit priest, is repeatedly raped by an alien who is physically larger than the human and who is considered to be a child and not an adult. The alien then shares the human with his friends who also rape him and they rape him before groups of people. Apart from these final scenes, I was enjoying the book but then I felt total dismay with the ending. I am sure that it would have taken only a bit of imagination to come up with another way to represent the human violation which rape entails but that the choice was for a gay rape scene was deeply disturbing. I am wondering if anyone else has read these novels and what your reaction might have been to these scenes. I have been out of the loop in reading novels and would like to understand how other LGBTQ+ readers consider these book.

[Jacqueline]

Currently re-reading The Name-Bearer by Natalia Hernandez. The series is one of my favorite fantasy series.



The Name-Bearer

[Bill]

Finishing up the "Unbreakable Ties" trilogy by reading the third book, Let it Burn by A.V. Shener

[Richard]

A really timely gat-themed book from Netgalley reviewed today:
Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told by Jeremy Atherton Lin
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Jana]

finally reading Sunburn!!

[Richard]

More #PrideMonth goodness to report. Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Bill]

I'm enjoying I Remember Lights by Ben Ladouceur. In 1967 a man from the provinces heads to Montreal during the Expo '67 world's fair and discovers himself. Ten years later he witnesses the raid on Truxx; considered by some to be Canada's Stonewall.

[Grey]

I am reading New York Public Library’s “The Stonewall Reader”. Im new to reading for fun in my adult life- but I think I’m going to make reading LGBTQ history a pride month tradition.

Highly recommend The Stonewall Reader, it is an anthology of accounts from various people involved in the Stonewall Riots and queer/trans people of the time.

[kiryomi ౨ৎ (ia)]

I'm currently reading Hell Followed With Us, as it's by an author I really like. I'm trying to read only LGBTQIA+ books this month, and I've started out not great with two graphic novels that were underwhelming, but I hope to redeem myself.

[Richard]

I've finished Margaret Killjoy's latest novel/novellas, The Sapling Cage and A Country of Ghosts for #PrideMonth:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Richard]

Becoming a Visible Man (2nd edition) is still unique in #trans literature. Challenge your prejudices, and read Jamison Green's transmasc journey.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Laura]

I added new queer books to my TBR but I haven't actually read them oop. I want to at least get Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me this month though. This month I've read all of Dororo and now I'm reading Beastly and a Court of Frost and Starlight.

[Richard]

Speak EZ by Elle E. Ire was a rollicking good lesbian ghost romance with mystery/suspense moments.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Richard]

I'm disappointed in this excellent idea's execution: Give My Love to Berlin by Katherine Bryant, so perfect for #PrideMonth yet just...not quite there in execution:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Honestly I'd've been less sad if I'd been able to dismiss it with dislike.

[Richard]

I really got a lot out of In Theory, Darling: Searching for José Esteban Muñoz and the Queer Imagination , an essay/memoir by Marcos Gonsalez, and hope y'all will try it out:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Richard]

I just finished a gay historical fiction about the night of the Stonewall riot that I really, really enjoyed. Disorderly Men by Edward Cahill:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Great #PrideMonth read.

[CJ]

Reading The Firebourne Blade by Charlotte Bond this morning as part of my Pride month reading.

After that I'll finish up Someone Like Us by Dinaw Megestu, an very interesting novel about Ethiopian-American immigrant experience. If I have time today I'll start Gabe Novoa's new one, These Vengeful Gods.

[Richard]

What a read! I loved Tramps Like Us by Joe Westmoreland. It's my vanished generation of gay men's life story.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Sarah-Hope]

I just finished Mia McKenzie's These Heathens and loved every moment of it. Highly recommended!

These Heathens is set in Georgia in 1960: in the small town where Doris, the central character, lives and in Atlanta, where she travels to end a pregnancy accompanied by one of her former teachers. The "former" here is important. Doris left school a year of two ago because she was needed at home. Her mother has been facing a debilitating illness and Doris, the oldest, has to take on caring for her two younger brothers, along with cooking and cleaning and all the work that keeps a family functioning. Doris comes from a church-going family and is a firm believer. Much of her day is shaped by the "rules" her faith has given her to live by. But when Doris realizes she's pregnant, she's certain that Jesus doesn't want her to become a mother.

My ***** review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Bill]

Coffee Boy by Austin Chant is the story of a recent graduate who is surprised to land an internship in a political campaign, but as an out trans man finds himself scrutinized negatively and positively.