10 Books That Got Me Through the Decade

Reading is how I stay alive. Sometimes a book is a fun break from the real world, and other times one buoys me during the heaviest parts of my life. Here is a list of the ten books (or series) that took root inside of me over the last decade.

#1: The Ruby Oliver Quartet

This series carried me through the end of high school and into adulthood. It’s witty and fun (think Mean Girls) but also deals with the parts of growing up that aren’t really popular in mainstream young adult fiction, like learning that you are responsible for your own closure, and that there is no such thing as a happy ride-off-into-the-sunset end. It’s messy and real, like most of e. Lockhart’s books.

Also, Ruby Oliver totally helped me understand my panic attacks.

#2: Deadpool: Suicide Kings

I know. I’m the only person in the world who likes Deadpool. But this was the first comic series I became obsessed with. I fell in love with the dark humor. Also, I think the first time I heard the term pansexual was in relation to Deadpool. So thanks for the help with figuring out my own orientation, Gerry Duggan!

#3: The Hunger Games

I first read this series after the sudden death of my ex-fiance. I felt like other books and movies in this genre lacked realistic depiction of the effects of being a part of violence. These books helped me navigate my own trauma, and Katniss’s determination to be strong, and to be “something to hold on to” for the people that die around her also taught me who I wanted to be when dealing with my father’s terminal illness. She also helped me mold my idea of what love should be.

#4: The Buffy the Vampire Slayer Comics

I loved the comics for the same reason I loved the show; fantastical, sometimes campy stories that are usually metaphors. The end of the show got brave for it’s time with it’s queer content, and the comics pushed it even further. I lived for the gay storyarchs, particularly Willow’s and Andrew’s. Willow gave me strength to come out when I did.

Though I still firmly believe that Willow is bisexual.

#5: The Vampire Chronicles

This was the first queer content I ever read. I started the series when I was a teenager and revisited it in my adulthood. It was really amazing to see this storyline go from gay subtext in it’s first installment (Interview With the Vampire) and spawn into the blatent queer representation it is today. (Last installment is Blood Communion, 2018.)

#6 Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

This might have been the first queer book I read that didn’t involve fantastical beings. The characters are so real, and the story is beautiful. Ari and Dante give voice to groups that don’t often have a large platform through exploring their ethnic and sexual identities.

#7: The Hate U Give

This book had a huge impact. It rekindled my belief in the power of words, and gave me an idea of the sort of writing I wanted to do. Star is teaching a generation how to be brave.

#8: Captive Prince

I stumbled upon this series through some adorable fanart. Once I found the source material and read the premise, I completely expected nothing more than a steamy gay fantasy novel. This series broke me. I did not expect there to be so many layers. It’s what Fifty Shades of Gray should have been, with its commentary on the effects of abuse and imbalanced power dynamics.

#9: Simon Snow series

I kept hearing “It’s like Harry Potter, but gay.” It’s so much more than that. The series is a full-functioning story, but it’s also a self aware a satire about young adult fiction tropes like the idea of a chosen one, and teenage love triangles. It also realistically depicts the effects of trauma and grief. These characters breathed life into me when nothing else could.

#10: Red White and Royal Blue

This was another book where I read the premise and expected little more than a fun romance, but was completely unprepared for the heavy emotional punches. The story was such a contradiction to our current political climate, yet somehow managed to give me hope that our world can change for the better.

In writing out this list, I think my biggest discovery is that I spent the last ten years becoming more and more gay. What has this decade been for you?

Tipping the Velvet

Nancy Astley lives an adequate life in Whistable working as an oyster girl in her parents' parlor. She has a respectable suitor named Freddy, and her closest confidant is her older sister, Alice. They spend much of their nights the summer of 1888 watching shows at the theater where Alice's beau works. During a warm-up act at one of these shows, Nancy is captivated by Kitty Butler, a singer who performs as a male impersonator, and Nancy’s perfectly predictable life is turned upside down.

“When I see her, it’s like - I don’t know what it’s like. It’s like I never saw anything at all before. It’s like I’m filling up, like a wine glass when it’s filled with wine. I watch the acts before her and they are like nothing - they’re like dust. Then she walks on the stage and - she is so pretty; and her suit is so nice; and her voice is so sweet … She makes me want to smile and weep at once. [...] I never saw a girl like her before. I never knew there were girls like her…”

After watching Miss Butler’s show every night for a week, the two strike up a friendship. Nancy eventually becomes Kitty’s dresser and leaves her home for London, where the pair create a double-act and fall into a secret affair.

Through Nancy's observations as she finds different ways to financially support herself, the novel explores themes of first love and first heartbreak, as well as the social constructs of sexuality, gender, classism, and sexism. Though the novel takes place during the Victorian era, Waters manages to make parallels between that time period and these same accepted ideals in modern society.

“Four nights before I had stood in the same spot, marvelling to see myself dressed as a grown-up woman. Now, there had been one quiet visit to a tailor’s shop and there I was, a boy - a boy with buttons and a belt.”

While impersonating a male is strictly for the sake of Kitty’s stage performance, when Nancy dons a suit and cuts her long hair, she finds herself more comfortable in her own skin. She makes people around her uncomfortable by being “too real” as a boy, resulting in their stage manager altering her suits and applying her makeup to emphasise her femininity. Once Nancy leaves the stage, she keeps her suits and experiments with presenting as male in public, and finds a new freedom she had never experienced while roaming London as a woman.

“I think she was never quite sure if I were a girl come to her house to pull on a pair of trousers, or a boy arrived to change out of his frock. Sometimes, I was not sure myself.”

Waters uses the two main characters in part on of the story to inspect personifications of sexuality. Once Nancy understands that she is in love with Kitty and that women sometimes are attracted to other women, she never shies away from that part of her. Kitty, on the other hand, has always known she is a lesbian and has had other trists before her relationship with Nancy, but actively avoids any association with “Toms” or the underground gay community around her. When doubt is cast on her heterosexual public presentation, she quickly goes to drastic measures to solidify a heteronomative image.

As Nancy stumbles through various careers and positions in the city, the reader glimpses the Victorian class system, much of which still exists today. Through the different characters she meets and interacts with, we see the shocking disparity between the struggle of the working class and the privilege of the obscenely wealthy.

“How old are we likely to be when we die?”

“Twenty-nine!”

“What if I were a lady? [...] What if I lived in Hampstead or - or St John’s Wood; lived very comfortably, on my shares in Bryant and May? What is the average age of death amongst such ladies?”

“It is fifty-five.”

Tipping the Velvet is a timeless story that is still relevant over one hundred years after it’s setting, and twenty years after it’s publication. Nancy’s struggle to find love and self-identity is gritty and passionate, and leaves her audience with a warm glow of acceptance, as well as a desire to Do Better in the world around us.

#tippingthevelvet #sarahwaters #tippingthevelvetbookreview #lgbtqianovels #queernovels #lesbiannovels #wlwnovels #genderqueer #genderfluid #vicotiannovels #gothicnovels

Red, White & Royal Blue Is the Book We Didn't Know We Needed

As the Texan half-Mexican son of the first female president of the United States, Alex Claremont-Diaz is used to the spotlight. He has a carefully cultivated public image as America's heartthrob, with an easy intelligence and a devil-may-care attitude. He's careful to hide his sense of isolation, the insomnia, the way he throws himself into work or school when life becomes too much, and even his reading glasses from the outside world, only allowing his sister and their best friend Nora to see those parts of him. The one aspect of his life that he seems unable to contain is his growing obsession with Henry, the Prince of Wales. Painted in the media as rivals, Alex can’t help but feel that Henry is the embodiment of everything he should be and that he’ll “always be compared to someone else, no matter what [he does], even if [he] works twice as hard.”

After a public altercation between Alex and Henry makes its way into the tabloids, heads of family and public relations work to create the illusion of friendship between the two young men. When Alex finds himself forming a real connection with Henry, he begins questioning everything he thought he knew about Henry, and re-examining the ideas he had of himself.

On the surface, Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue is the modern-day Prince Charming story with a queer twist that we didn’t know we needed. Beyond the classic heart-warming romantic comedy, the book is a smart commentary on American politics and antiquated notions of morality. McQuinston uses Alex’s voice to share what much of the U.S. has been feeling since the 2016 elections; We Are Ready for a female president, We Are Ready for people of color to be seen, We Are Ready for LGBTQ+ people to be heard. Hate is prevalent, but it is not representative of our nation as a whole. You may feel like the world is a hopeless place, but You Are Not Alone. Make your voice matter.

The book also puts a spotlight on the way consumers hyper-fixate on public figure’s personal lives, leaving them without room to explore who they are and what they want from life without it becoming a public spectacle. It exhibits the effects that growing up in the public eye can have on a young person, particularly when dealing with grief, trauma, and identity.

Alex effectively represents what it’s like to be a minority from a notoriously bigoted place, and to know that there’s more to your home than that. He speaks up for the parts of Texas that are not known or heard. He works hard to try and show that he and his family represent their southern routes with (and not in spite of) their blended, unapologetically liberal family.

Henry depicts a struggle familiar to many queer young people; the obligation to remain closeted and be what your family expects you to be, or to be honest about who you are in spite of the consequences. The main difference between his struggle and that of most is that he is in a position of power, which makes the stakes very high, but also gives him a chance to make a real difference in the world around him.

“What are we even defending here [...]? What kind of legacy? What kind of family, that says, we’ll murder, we’ll take the raping and pillaging and the colonizing, we’ll scrub it up nice and neat in a museum, but oh no, you’re a bloody poof? That’s beyond our sense of decorum!”

Through love letters between the two protagonists, McQuiston showcases several queer historical figures, and casts some interesting speculation on a few historic political leaders. It leaves the reader with the clear message that gay people have always existed, and it is not wrong or immoral to be gay.

Red, White, & Royal Blue feels like a version of what the U.S. political landscape might have been, and is an important story to come out in 2019 because it paints a picture of what should be. Readers can explore concepts of naive idealism and blatant corruption, and put into perspective what is important in a world leader.

#RedWhiteandRoyalBlue #CaseyMcQuiston #rwrb #queernovels #YAqueernovels #queerromancenovels #lgbtnovels #lgbtqianovels #lgbtrights #lgbtqiarights #americanpolitics #AlexClaremontDiaz #AlexandHenry #PrinceHenry #americanelections #bookreview #redwhiteandroyalbluebookreview