Happy Birthday to our trans masc icon Jessi! Here are their favorite books of ALL TIME.
I savored this like a glass of my favorite red wine and strolled through its pages in an attempt to slow time down so I’d never have to finish it.
Addie is terrified to realize that she is being set up in an arranged marriage she doesn’t want. Desperate, she runs to the woods on the eve of her wedding and beseeches the old gods to help her. Unbeknownst to Addie, the sun dips below the horizon, and she accidentally makes a deal with a powerful demon who grants her the gift of immortality but the curse of being forgotten by anyone she meets. However, three hundreds years into her curse, Addie stumbles upon a boy in a New York City bookstore who finally remembers her name. A boy whose past is almost as mysterious and tragic as Addie’s.
This book makes you want to leave a mark on the world desperately. It makes you want to travel, to breathe in new air in new places, to open your heart fully to people, it makes you want to dance in the rain and laugh with a stranger, it makes you want to take great big gulps of life. And perhaps most importantly, it makes you want to hold onto hope and joy, even in times of great despair.
This book is not only affirming, it's life saving.
Readers will cheer for River as they navigate the treacherous waters of internalized homophobia, cissexism, and transphobia and fight for air and freedom from the rigid societal structures that hold them captive.
I sobbed and smiled the whole way through.
Kihrin is the son of a minstrel during the day and a thief at night. But he soon realizes he's much more than that when an evil prince claims him as his rightful heir. However, life as a royal isn't what it sounded like in his storybooks, as Kihrin encounters terrifying demons, soul stealing magic, dragons the size of islands, god kings, snake cultists, seductive homocidal shapeshifters, and an ominous prophecy that points to Kihrin as the one who will herald the End Times. This is all a bit much for a 15 year old boy to handle.
Jenn Lyons is a master storyteller, deftly weaving plot threads in the past and present with her complex world and magic building. This epic fantasy is packed with plot twists, complicated family trees, and mind-blowing reveals. It made me completely abandon my entire TBR which is the mark of a remarkable series! Now to binge-read the rest of them.
I have never before felt so seen by a memoir and held so safely.
Maia's experiences with eir gender exploration and sexual identity are eerily similar to my own and made me feel way less alone in trying to navigate a storm of Gender Feels.
It was a breath of fresh air and a sigh of relief to know that some of the things I've thought, others have thought about before me and will after me. This book should be required reading for gender non conforming people as well as family members.
Are you struggling with your identity as you grow into adulthood?
You might need to read Girlhood.
This book saw me in a way books rarely do, and shook me deep to my core.
Melissa Febos' words filled me with anguish, rage, empathy, grief, and joy as she navigates the stark reality of what its like as society's perception of you changes, all while your perception of yourself remains the same. It shines a light on the early sexualization of young girls by society, and how shame only serves to trap people in their pain.
Her words also provide a roadmap to healing and redemption and I will be giving this to anyone who has suffered trauma at the hands of the patriarchy - so basically everyone.
saac Fitzgerald is an absolute fucking delight to read.
Some of his essays read like a fistful of bloody knuckles - the wounds raw and open to the air, pain ringing with every word.
Other essays are almost reverent in their worship of safety and acceptance - Fitzgerald points to bars and porn sets as two of the spaces where he's found belonging amongst the fallout of his chaotic childhood.
Each chapter courses with Fitzgerald's signature laughter, and his uncanny ability to see many truths at once.
It's a heartbreaking, beautiful mess of a memoir, and it offered me solace, grief, isolation, anger, and comfort. I think it'll do the same to anyone who's struggled with their past, with living in their own skin, or with existence itself.
Dex is a traveling tea monk, and although they love making people smile, they are still struggling to feel fulfilled. They seek solitude in the wilds, mysterious lands where robots were set free hundreds of years ago to roam.
When Dex encounters Mosscap, a robot with a childlike sense of wonder for human behavior, and deadly insects, the last thing they want to do is embark on an adventure with it-after all, they are the first person to encounter a robot in two hundred years! However, Dex has no idea that Mosscap will actually be teaching Dex what it means to be human.
Warm, lush and as cozy as a Studio Ghibli film, this book made me want to wander into the woods with my friends and build a yurt commune and never return. This book was the equivalent of talking to a friend about life over coffee and feeling like the world may just end up ok in the end. Dex and Mosscap are the new friendly faces of hopeful sci-fi!
With meticulous prose, Kuang weaves a tapestry of the darker aspects of global university and exploitation that comes with colonization, and how language is a tool wielded by the oppressor to expand their global power. I clung to every word, hungry and desperate for Robin's story to never end.
Kuang tackles issues of racism, class, and sexism in academia, and she paints a picture of the intoxicating way that yearning for belonging can lead to self-betrayal.
This book thrummed with rage and grief. I was completely devastated by this book and it will be one of my favorites of the year!
For her whole life, August has never let herself grow attached to any place or anyone, preferring to study people rather than actually getting to know them. Until she meets Jane, an impossibly perfect girl on the subway who she's inexplicably drawn to. A girl who inspires her to let people in again and cracks her wide open. There’s just one problem: Jane is from a different time.
With subway parties, drag shows, and a band of hilarious and sweet queer friends I would love to be adopted by, One Last Stop manages to provide laughs, queer history and love, a heist, time travel, and a feeling of belonging that is impossible to get from most other books. This book really describes the feeling of being afraid to let people know you, but also the feeling of relief when you decide to be your unapologetic self and are embraced by a community. It cured my pandemic loneliness, and filled me with bubbling laughter and heart squeezing happiness. Like August, I felt myself open up to the impossible magic that is love. This book was a love letter to the magic of New York City and the heart that its people have. And also to the queer community. This book is one that is tattooed permanently on my heart.
This quirky, unconventional, but mind-blowing debut from Tamsyn Muir is one you won't want to miss. Gideon Nav is a breath of fresh air, a straight shooter, and a badass swordsmaster whose only dream is to leave the miserable existence of indentured servitude to the Ninth House, a planet of dusty skeletons and humorless necromancers. When Gideon is given a chance to earn her freedom by posing as the Reverend Daughter's cavalier in a necromancer competition at First House, she leaps at the opportunity. Harrowhark and Gideon's witty and vulgar banter MADE this book.
GIDEON THE NINTH surprised me, made me laugh, shocked me, and broke my heart, leaving me as crushed as a pile of old bones. I'm already looking forward to the next installment.
