@goodbadanduglybooks / www.goodbadanduglybooks.net
Just finished An Emotion of Great Delight by Tahereh Mafi—it was heartbreakingly amazing!
“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (via quotespile)
Here are some exciting and promising YA or New Adult books coming in 2021, all with LGBTQ+ characters and themes. There are so many more, but there aren’t covers yet or I’m waiting to include them in a follow-up post!
1. May the Best Man Win by Z.R. Ellor (May 2021) - A trans boy enters a throw-down battle for the title of Homecoming King with the boy he dumped last summer.
2. Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee (May 2021) - A trans boy’s first love challenges the ideas of perfect relationships he writes about in his popular blog.
3. Jay’s Gay Agenda by Jason June (June 2021) - After moving from his rural town to a big city, Jay makes a list of all the romantic things he will finally be able to do.
4. In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens (April 2021) - A young prince must rely on a mysterious stranger to save him when he is kidnapped.
5. One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston (May 2021) - A 23-year-old realizes her subway crush is displaced from 1970’s Brooklyn, and she must do everything in her power to help her and try not to fall in love.
6. Perfect on Paper by Sophie Gonzales (March 2021) - A bisexual girl who gives anonymous love advice to her classmates is hired by the hot guy to help him get his ex back.
7. The Girl from the Sea by Molly Ostertag (June 2021) - In this graphic novel, a girl can’t wait to escape the island where she lives. She has many secrets, as does the mysterious girl who saves her from drowning.
8. Thanks a Lot, Universe by Chad Lucas (May 2021) - A friendship forms between the popular boy and the boy prone to anxiety attacks.
9. Bruised by Tanya Boteju (March 2021) - A teen girl navigates first love, identity, and grief when she immerses herself in the colorful, brutal, beautiful world of roller derby.
10. As Far as You’ll Take Me by Phil Stamper (February 2021) - Marty is excited to be in London, exploring his sexuality, and finding the people he will call home.
11. Infinity Reaper by Adam Silvera (March 2021) - The sequel to Infinity Son, Emil and Brighton try to navigate the ongoing war.
12. When Tara Met Farah by Tara Pammi (January 2021) - Tara makes a deal with Farah to help her pass the math course in exchange for welcoming Farah into the local Bollywood Drama & Dance Society.
13. Between Perfect and Real by Ray Stoeve (April 2021) - A trans boy wants everyone to see who he truly is and thinks playing a role on stage will help.
14. The Ghosts We Keep by Mason Deaver (June 2021) - After their older brother passes, Liam begins spending time with their brother’s best friend.
15. Flash Fire by T.J. Klune (July 2021) - In this sequel to The Extraordinaries, Nick just wants to finish his self-insert bakery AU fanfic but can’t because new superheroes and villains keep showing up in his city.
16. Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta (June 2021) - Two girls on opposite sides of a war discover they’re fighting for a common purpose and falling for each other.
17. Yesterday is History by Kosoko Jackson (February 2021) - After a liver transplant gives him the ability to time travel, a boy jumps back and forth between 1969 and the present, falling for another boy in the past along the way.
18. Zara Hossein is Here by Sabina Khan (April 2021) - Zara’s family has waited years for their visa process to be finalized so that they can officially become US citizens. But it only takes one moment for that dream to come crashing down around them.
Book haul!! Particularly in love with the “Little Universes” cover. Anyone read these?
I’m back!! Hi everyone!! It’s been a really long time. I was a campaign manager for the election in America, so I was away for quite a bit. How has everyone been?
below are comprehensive lists of indigenous writing by indigenous authors, chosen by indigenous peoples. enjoy and reblog to spread the word.
indigenous writing by indigenous authors (written by a cherokee woman) <– list includes brief summaries and reviews
indigenous books chosen by a cherokee man <– the list includes brief summaries/reviews of each title
a list of books by indigenous authors (by a cree woman) <– the list includes brief summaries of each title.
if you have other books or authors you would like to recommend, you can come submit them to our blog or our ask box. feel free to add onto this post with more recommendations and ideas as well
I got these three books for $16! It’s been so long since my last haul, so it was nice to have a mini one.
I’d really like to meet the vlogbrothers some day because they’ve really had an influence on my life (for years now, actually).
I met John Green like 8 years ago but it feels like I didn’t because all I said was “hi” 😂
The universal interrupted while reading face
Eat My Words used bookstore in Minnesota
[Image Description: image 1 is a storefront with a decorative bike in the window and bookshelves. Image 2 is of a bookstore with a couch in the center and surrounding shelves]
Reading by the lake
[Image Description: a book open with a lake in the background]
Apologies if this has already been circulating, but someone on Twitter came up with this!
[Image description: a tweet by Liz, handle ecmoy, that reads “hello! i made a bot that you can text and will recommend a title of a book written by a black author based on genre. it will also link you to a black-owned bookstore that is selling the title. text (409) 404-0403 to try it :)”]
When you can’t find a single book with a Jewish protagonist that isn’t about the holocaust
I actually read a really nice novel that had decent Jewish representation when I was in college and its story was about a murder mystery. Due to how my memory works, I lost the book and I forgot the title :( :( :(
okay I wrote a really long thing and my phone deleted it so here is take 2 of my MASTERPOST OF NON-HOLOCAUST-CENTRIC JEWISH MC’s:
Historical Fiction
“All Other Nights” by Dara Horn - Jewish spy for the union in the civil war
“Shylock’s Daughter” by Marjam Pressler - retelling of the Merchant of Venice with a sympathetic Shylock and a historically accurate look at the Ashkenazi AND Sephardic Jewish community in 16th century Italy
“The Chosen” by Chaim Potok - Hassidic + Modern Orthodox Jewish boys ‘friendship’ (lbr we all ship it) in 1945-1948 NYC
“My Name is Asher Lev” by Chaim Potok - ultra-orthodox Jewish boy takes up art, paints a crucifixion scene, and sh*t hits the fan
“The Museum of Extraordinary Things” - Jewish photographer + (non-Jewish) daughter of a sideshow owner meet and fall in love in turn of the century Brooklyn, and also a subplot about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
“Escape from Egypt” by Sonia Levitin - retelling of the Passover story
“Daniel Deronda” by George Eliot - it’s like Jane Austen. With Jews! (And while everything is not all hunky-dory, it’s also not the antisemitic travesty I’ve come to expect from 19th century gentile writers).
Contemporary
“Hacking Harvard” by Robin Wasserman - 3 nerds take on a bet to get a slacker/stoner into Harvard (also a really nice critique of the college admissions process tbh)
“The Pact” by Jodi Picoult - (suicide tw) A tragedy hits 2 families. The novel centers on a trial and flashbacks to the event in question.
“Someone to Run With” by David Grossman - set on the streets of Jerusalem, a boy tries to return a lost dog to its owner, a girl who has run away from home in search of her brother (this is the English translation, obviously, but if you can read novels in Hebrew I highly recommend reading the original, משהו לרוץ איתו)
Urban Fantasy/Fantasy/SciFi
“The Mediator” series by Meg Cabot - teenaged girl starts seeing ghosts / YA romance (although the fact that the MC is Jewish is not even remotely relevant to the plot, it is mentioned outright several times which is more than most books)
“The Cure” by Sonia Levitin - futuristic dystopian society tries to cure one young man’s appreciation of music by sending him to a Jewish shtetl in 13th century Poland (fair warning for dystopian fans, though, the middle 2/3rds reads like historical fiction, so.)
Children’s (Middle Grade) Books
“All of a Kind Family” by Sydney Taylor - the classic “1920s NYC Jewish family”
“Dave at Night” by Gail Carson Levine - boy sneaks out of an orphanage in early 20th century NYC
“Witness” by Karen Taylor Hesse - told in free verse, the KKK visits a small town (I’m including it because it’s not a Holocaust book, and it’s really good, but it still might will set off your antisemitism sensors so fair warning)
“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” by Judy Blume - Classic. (Also, takes on an interfaith family in a really interesting and nuanced way!)
“Samir and Yonatan” by Daniella Carmi - two boys (one Israeli, one Palestinian) end up in the same hospital and learn that they have more in common than they thought
Plays
“Angels in America” by Harold Kushner - I can’t even begin to describe this one just google it. (or: Jewish and Mormon gay people in NYC during the AIDS epidemic, and also angels)
“Thirteen: The Musical” by Dan Elish and Robert Horn, music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown - Jewish boy’s parents get divorced and he moves from NYC to Appleton, Indiana right before his Bar Mitzvah
Also for children’s books: Rebecca in the American Girl historical collection is a Russian Jewish immigrant.
Also for weird epic romances, I remember Cynthia Freeman having a lot of Jewish protagonists. One of her books (Illusions of Love) slightly discusses the Holocaust but it is from the perspective of an American Jewish character who served in World War II and it’s not presented as *the* thing that defines him. (Most of that book is a love triangle between this character, the Nice Jewish Girl his parents want him to marry, and an Irish-Catholic woman from a poor background who works her way into an advertising career.)
I haven’t read them [yet? to-read list miles long, concentration about an inch long] but if you’re down with indie-pub check out @shiraglassman who authors a series of fantasy novels featuring f/f couples. I’ll bet she knows more novels t add to the list too!
(sorry hope it’s cool i @’ed you ms glassman)
It is definitely cool! I actually didn’t get the @ notification for some reason but I found this post just poking around Jumblr and then checked the notes to see what people were saying on it. I do have books to add to this list; not just my own–as you said, fluffy f/f-focused fantasy starring Mostly Jews–but also:
Miss Jacobson’s Journey by Carola Dunn (review) - Regency-era spy romance about escaping from France and getting back to England. Hero and heroine are both Jewish and although they’re Ashkies, it has Sephardic rep as well
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker (review) - 1900′s fantasy set in the immigrant communities of NYC. Beautiful epic drama about friendship.
…and wonderful graphic novels like The Rabbi’s Cat, the Rabbi Harvey books (our legends told as if they were set in the American Wild West), and the Mirka books (fantasy starring an Orthodox pre-teen girl.)
The YA LGBT contemporaries Gone Gone Gone by Hannah Moskowitz and My Year Zero by Rachel Gold have Jewish MC’s. And non-LGBT but YA about Orthodox teenager is Playing with Matches by Suri Rosen.
By the way, @dappercat, your concentration may have an easier time with the standalone short stories in my universe than my full-length novels: Tales from Perach. They range from 900 to 9000 words and 6 of the 7 of them have Jewish MC’s.
The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay - very thinly-veiled account of life in the waning days of Golden Age Spain, with adventures and political intrigue, starring a Jew, Muslim, and Christian
Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon - A pair of 10th century Jewish mercenaries (who are almost certainly a couple) go on a quest to return the kidnapped prince of Khazaria to his empire.
(I want to echo the recommendation of The Rabbi’s Cat, and of Shira Glassman’s Mangoverse stories, which are so lovely)
I haven’t read it yet but I’m desperately trying to get my hands on an audiobook of “He, She and It” by Marge Piercy
None of the books listed under Jewish here are about the Holocaust, and only The Spy With the Red Balloon is set during WWII: https://lgbtqreads.com/representation/religion/
Also!! Feverwake Duology by Victoria Lee! MC is a bisexual Jewish-Latine boy with powers, and the main antagonist is immortal, Jewish, and from Europe. I listened to the audiobook for both and it’s is veryyyy good and there is also an ongoing webcomic adaption.
Author is non-binary/bi-gender, Jewish, and Melungeon.
Some BIG content warnings for the series tho, please look at author’s blog to read them all.
Spinning Silver has a jewish protagonist, IIRC?
It does, you are correct!
Color Me In is also a story about a black Jewish girl trying to find her place in New York! I just read it and it’s pretty good
GBU Review: The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore
Rating: 5/5 stars
Rundown: 307 pages | Published 2015 by Thomas Dunne | YA Fantasy
Summary: For twenty years, the Palomas and the Corbeaus have been rivals and enemies, locked in an escalating feud for over a generation. Both families make their living as traveling performers in competing shows—the Palomas swimming in mermaid exhibitions, the Corbeaus, former tightrope walkers, performing in the tallest trees they can find. Lace Paloma may be new to her family’s show, but she knows as well as anyone that the Corbeaus are pure magia negra, black magic from the devil himself. Simply touching one could mean death, and she's been taught from birth to keep away. But when disaster strikes the small town where both families are performing, it’s a Corbeau boy, Cluck, who saves Lace’s life. And his touch immerses her in the world of the Corbeaus, where falling for him could turn his own family against him, and one misstep can be just as dangerous on the ground as it is in the trees.
Good: --Incredibly unique. At first I thought this may be a slight Romeo and Juliet retelling, but I was definitely wrong. Though it has two feuding families, the story is much deeper than that. The whole time I was sort of wondering what it was all about in the best possible way. I could see the puzzle pieces being laid out in front of me, but I didn’t know where they would lead until the end. --Lovable main characters. This is a dual point-of-view narrative and I enjoyed reading from both perspectives greatly. Both Cluck and Lace are likable but realistic characters. Though this book is in third person, you can feel their different personalities shine through the page. --A good message. Family isn’t everything, and as someone who has at times struggled with family, it means a lot that this book emphasized the importance of making a life for yourself. --Beautiful writing. McLemore is really able to paint pictures and weave metaphors together with real life. This was a book that I could not just skim. I had to make sure I read each line carefully in order to get the full picture, and while that may not be for everyone, I loved the way it made me think.
Bad: --Confusing and hard to follow at times. Particularly in the beginning, it was hard to know exactly what was going on. I got the hang of it, but the first forty pages were a little rough. --Unclear fantasy. For those who love really strong and overt fantasy, this may be a challenge. It is hard to separate what is actually magical and what occurs in real life, since this occurs on Earth in modern times. However I found it added to the uniqueness of the book.
Ugly: Nothing!
Overall: I’m really glad I picked up this not-so-well-known book. It was not a quick read, but it was interesting and incredibly unique. This is perfect for those who love a complex, mysterious read. It does not bring you into a new world, but rather brings you into a world you already live in more deeply.
Book vending machine alert
This would be such a great idea for airports
I know that all of you in the northern hemisphere are tired of the snow and the cold but down here in Australia, we’re itching for that winter wonder. So here’s a few books with snowy settings and polar fantasies to bring a sense of winter chill to those of us waiting for it - or not ready to let go of it just yet 😉❄️
Weekly Bookish Question #182 (May 24th - May 30th):
What do you like in a title?
I love a good reference, liek if the line shows up in the text that is always wonderful
I also like flowery language or a metaphor. Sometimes I like when character’s names are in the title too.
That’s an interesting question! I just can’t stand really long titles. It makes it harder to recommend to friends!
