Hello and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
All our past selves are inside of us.
At The Cut, Katie Heaney discusses not counting how many books you read:
“[I]n 2018, I did not read 60 books. I read 49. Which is about 82 percent, a B-. I knew I had legitimate reasons for not meeting my goal: I started a full-time job in 2018, I got engaged in 2018, I allowed myself to abandon nine full books in 2018. But I still felt bad. I hate not meeting my goals so much that I usually do not set them unless I am certain I can achieve them. The worst part was that, when I looked back on the books I read last year, I saw only a fraction I’d really enjoyed. And even while reading those, I’d been rushing, trying to finish number 11 so I could get to number 12, and so on. I was reading to meet an arbitrarily set number, rather than reading because it was one of my favorite things to do.”
Feminist dystopic fiction is too sensationalized, suffering, and incredibly white.
Women illuminated manuscripts.
Just saying you’re feminist isn’t enough.
Here are a few ways to read more.
Book twitter is outraged that Mari Kondo is holding a gun to their heads trying to get them to throw out all their books except oh wait that is not what she is saying in any way at all. When you’re ready to go there, here are some things to do with the books you don’t want anymore.
Lin-Manuel Miranda bought a New York bookstore on the brink of closure due to a rent increase.
Queer people liked The Well of Loneliness even though straights had it banned, duh.
Today is a good day to preorder a book coming out that you’re excited about!
“Physical books are thriving.” At Quartz, Natasha Frost reports a feel-good trend:
In the United States, the news is even rosier for indies: the number of independent bookstores grew by 35 percent between 2009 and 2015, while sales of physical books have increased every year since 2013.
“Why does women’s writing about relationships need to be relatable?”
Read these 11 books by women and also these. Read essential climate-change texts written by women. Read these books in January. Read these poetry collections in 2019. Read these books about tech culture. Read these books Casey loved last year. Read these debut novelists in 2019. Read this history of the Los Angeles Public Library. Read these books about women rescuing women. Download and read these free books.
So…giant queer book exchange with all of our tidied books? There’s space on my shelves, it’s uncomfortable.
Can I just say that I so appreciate this column and always use the links to lists of books to figure out what to read next? Okay thanks!
on the one hand i totally get not counting a physical number of books read in a year bc it encourages focus on the wrong aspects of reading
on the other hand a not-insignificant part of me still remembers the vicarious thrill of winning my elementary school reading challenge and getting my name on a plaque in the library
If your books spark joy then keep them