Burning Through Books: Autonomous

Unlike my usual books that exist to crowd up my shelves, Autonomous by Annalee Newitz was lent to me for a bookswap (I gave The Psychology of Timetravel and Release, both of which I’ve reviewed previously). From what I understand, this book was their debut novel back in 2017 after a history in journalism, which I feel is pretty well reflected in the world and characters of the book.

Burning Through Books: Proud

I’ve already written a littke about the Proud collection. Compiled by Juno Dawson, this is short stories, poetry and art all exploring gender and sexual identity and what pride means to different people. Before I focused entirely on the poetry, but this time I read each of the short stories. I would call this my “pride read”, but I try to read queer literature all the way through the year anyway. This just felt very fitting.

Burning Through Books: Always Coming Home

For once this wasn’t a book off my own shelf, but rather one passed to me to read. Being my first Ursula Le Guin, I didn’t have any expectations for it, which I think benefitted my read as Always Coming Home is very unusual in her catalogue of works.

Burning Through Books: Loki

Craving a break from all the non-fiction and wanting something easy again, I picked up my recently-gifted copy of Loki by Melvin Burgess, knowing before I even started that it would be right up my alley. As a fan of the iconic Marvel comics, as well as many of Neil Gaiman’s works, it’s easy to fall in love with any take on the god of mischeif himself. Burgess, I think, especially has an understanding of the type of audience that would be picking this book up.

Burning through Books: Rocking the Boat

It’s hard to claim that I am clearing my bookshelves off when all I’ve been reading lately is brand new books that will stay on my shelves, but I can finally say that I will be passing this book on and not have to reshuffle my shelves for the Nth time.
I want to make it clear before I start, I do genuinely think Angela V. John’s book Rocking the Boat: Welsh Women Who Championed Equality 1840-1990 is incredibly well researched and no doubt a very valuable publication for Welsh historians and history-fans alike. However, as someone who has over and over talked about being a tired reader who struggles with demanding literature, this definitely falls into the demanding literature box.

Burning through Books: Forbidden Lives

Having had the pleasure of meeting Norena Shoplanda few times, it seemed right that I finally read my copy of her book and wise up on my own country’s heritage. Though I’ve read some other Welsh LGBT+ history books now, I find every time I open one I learn so many more things. This was no exception – while I had heard of some of the people within these pages, I was also learning about people and events I had never heard of before in my life.

Burning Through Books: A Little Gay History of Wales

Unshockingly I am still working my way through the vast stack of books I have been bought over the years, but now I’m down to the ones that are non-fiction and more for referential use, so it’s likely most of these will stay on the shelves and the rest will be ones that are comparably weaker to what I already have – much like the linguistic and etymology books I was reviewing some time ago (and still have many of).

“Bonus Books” of 2022

Least year, alongside the book-a-month I was reading, I also managed to squeeze in an extra three books to read while at work or commuting. This is why some of my books were so difficult to finish in a month, but having a variety of reads through the day was quite satisfying.

Burning Through Books: Tales of the City

I picked up my copy of Tales of the City by Armistead Marupin at a local queer shop, having been such a fan of the 2019 Netflix TV series starring Elliot Page. If, like me, you are familiar with the series first then the books second, then it’s worth knowing that the plot of the series functions as a sequel to the books. If youre the opposite and knew of the books first, then the 2019 series is about an older Mary Ann returning to Barbary Lane in the current day. If you’re not really aware of either, then just enjoy my usual quick overview.

Burning Through Books: The Rise of Kyoshi

This book is fairly recent on the shelf, but it’s also huge and one I’ve been itching to read for a while. The Rise of Kyoshi by F. C. Yee is a novel set in the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe, prequelling the animated series. I’d heard a lot about it before picking it up and was already a big fan of the show, so this was already a guaranteed win for me. What I hadn’t expected was the fact it was clearly aimed at an older audience than the show, and could take far more risks than the cartoons ever could.