I never know what to expect when I read Emma Donoghue – I either love her books or hate them and it’s often the ones everyone else loves that I do not love. Frog Music turned out to be a book that I really enjoyed though a lot of other people seem to have not enjoyed it nearly as much. Whatever.
She did a nice job with the story of Jenny Bonnet and a nice job with Blanche’s story, too. I liked it.
I wish I remembered where I saw A Cup of Water Under My Bed, some list, somewhere. Whatever, I probably wouldn’t have read this had it not been on a list that interested me – and I’m glad I did read it.
Daisy Hernandez is a great story teller and this is one of the best memoirs I’ve read in a long, long time.
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Diana Nyad is… badass. That’s just all there is to it. Find a Way was interesting. I enjoyed it, after following her attempts so closely. Also, she’s badass. Sheesh.
Church of Marvels was good but a little long in a couple of places, for me. It seemed to take forever to move through part 2 of the story.
I think the author did a nice job with the trans character and all of the characters, actually. I’m glad I read it, even though I wasn’t saying that a couple of days ago when I felt like it was just dragging.
I expected more from Beyond Magenta. I’ve read several non-fiction books about trans kids in recent months and this was not the best. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the kids who told their stories, I did. The format just didn’t work. The stories were a little flat and they shouldn’t have been.
And to think, I almost didn’t read Jam on the Vine. Sheesh. One of the best books I’ve read this year and I almost missed it. Good thing TW pointed it out when she finished.
This is not the normal post-civil war era book. There are black Muslims in Texas. There are lesbians. It makes you think a bit of Ida B. Welles but not enough to actually make you feel like you’re reading Ida B Wells fan fiction or something like that.
Read it!
Well that was depressing. Good, but depressing. The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell is FICTION but loosely based on a real person. The question is, how loosely based. I’m not a huge fan of the whole “ghost” story author’s note at the end… that sounds to me like it was added because family members of Lobdell tell a slightly different version of the story. Not that it matters, still a depressing story. Lesbian woman. Trans man. Whatevs. Pretty darn sad.
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I impulsed selected Alice + Freda Forever because I liked the font on the cover. I was also interested in reading more about this case. I’ve heard about it in passing but knew very little about it, really.
It was interesting. A little dry considering the subject matter. There was a lot of crazy going on back in the late 1800s and it wasn’t all just the Alice kind of crazy. Just sayin’.
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I finished a book and couldn’t decide what to read next so I grabbed a Naiad that TW bought at the little used bookstore in Cleveland last month. I should have reached for something that’s been in my stacks longer but I was feeling lazy and it was there. It was also amusing to us because of the title “The Love of Good Women” and because it was written by the author of Patience and Sarah.
And it was … what you’d expect. Old, really old, lesbian fiction. Not great. Not horrible. A classic.
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My library’s website was down so I didn’t know which book I should read next — my decision is often based on which books need to go back sooner rather than later, can’t be renewed again, or probably can’t be renewed because of the overall popularity. Rather than starting the wrong book, I decided to go for a quick read from my stacks. But I broke my own From the Stacks goal by selecting something we just bought. That was dumb. Oh well, one less book for next year’s FtS challenge, hah.
Wild Things was … ok typical Karin Kallmaker. Lesbian chick lit. Not great, not horrid. Ho hum.