Sarah, founder of The Little Contemporary Corner and one of my best pals, is no stranger to Wonderfully Bookish – she’s written a couple of guest posts for me in the past, including a list of books that should be Disney films, and her review of Toffee by Sarah Crossan. She’s back again today to join in with my blog birthday blogathon!
Sarah and our other wonderful pal (and Sarah’s co-blogger) Sophie host a monthly LGBTQ+ book club in Manchester, and today she’s going to tell us some of her favourite books she’s read because of it. If you’re in need of some great LGBTQ+ book recommendations, this is the post for you. I actually own all three of the books she mentions, and I haven’t read any of them. SHAME ON ME.
(Also, in my photos of the books I took to accompany the post, you might notice my Pride Pencils… how cool are they?! I’ve wanted to feature them in photos for a while so this is the perfect chance!)
Without further ado, here’s Sarah!
Hello! I’m Sarah from The Little Contemporary Corner and I’m taking over Charlotte’s blog today to help celebrate her upcoming blog birthday! I wanted to talk a little bit about LGBTQ+ books, and more importantly, LGBTQ+ books that I’ve read because of my book club.
If you didn’t know, or you know, don’t follow The Little Contemporary Corner on social media, you won’t know that myself and Sophie (my co-blogger) run an LGBTQ+ book club in Manchester. We meet once a month and talk about a monthly book choice, along with all things LGBTQ+. We have regular members, but absolutely everyone is welcome to join us. We love having new faces there and getting to know more people.
Because of book club, I’ve ended up reading a lot of LGBTQ+ books that I probably wouldn’t have picked up otherwise. We’ve dipped in to some fantasy and sci-fi, which aren’t genres i’m usually completely comfortable with. But, having the book club is making me expand my reading a little bit, and honestly I’ve been really enjoying the change. I wanted to talk about the books that are out of my comfort zone, but I’ve adored reading because of book club.
First of all, this was a pick right at the beginning of the year, but I fell completely in love with Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. I honestly didn’t think I’d think much of it, I’d wanted to read it but only in a sense of ‘that seems popular and has a pretty cover, I should get around to it sometime.’ When it was chosen as our January book of the month, I ended up flying through it and adored the story and the characters. I think I was one of the most enthusiastic at book club that week. Not only is the story incredibly well paced and well written, the characters feel incredibly real (even though they’re aliens). I haven’t yet managed to get around to the other books by Becky Chambers, but I honestly can’t wait to have some free time to dive in to those stories.
Another book completely out of my comfort zone but one I ended up loving was Girls Of Paper And Fire by Natasha Ngan. This was suggested to us by a book club attendee (we love suggestions so keep them coming), and I think most people who came to book club that month ended up really loving the book. It broke me nicely in to fantasy and I loved the characters and the world of it. I was always really afraid of fantasy writing but knowing that everyone else was reading it with me truly felt like a little bit of a relief.
The last book that I wanted to talk about was Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman. We picked this pretty early on in our book club journey, and it’s not something I would have picked up myself. It always seemed a little pretentious, a little too wordy and just something I wouldn’t enjoy. However, once I read it and got in to the characters a little more, I ended up absolutely living this book. I love the characters and the journey we go on with their sexuality, and I think it’s truly a wild ride of a book. It’s something that I can see myself re-reading in the future definitely.
So those are the books that I’ve fallen in love with since starting my LGBTQ+ book club, and ones that I definitely would recommend for some LGBTQ+ representation (no matter how strange it may be, these books aren’t known for being fluffy and cute).
I want to say a huge thank you to Charlotte for letting me take over her blog, and you should check out The Little Contemporary Corner (@TLCCBlog) on all social media to keep up with book club related news!
Thank you to Sarah for helping me with my blogathon. Head over to her blog where she has tons of bookish content to give you going for hours. They’re currently doing Blogtober, so they have plenty of posts for you to read!
And if you’re in the Manchester area, the next LGBTQ+ book club meeting is on 31st October, where the book they’ll be discussing is Sawkill Girls! If you can’t make it they put up a Google Form at the end of the month so you can still share your opinions if you’ve read the book.
Pin this for later:
