What a month May was! Beautiful sunrises and sunsets, gorgeous days, lots of falling leaves and SUCH good sleeping weather! My lips aren’t loving this wind, but isn’t is so fun reading under a lap blanket with a tea beside you!
June is Pride month and I thought it would be fun to highlight some great allied books this month. I haven’t read enough LGBTQIA+ fiction but ever since Dave played at the Sydney World Pride in February I’ve really made an effort and I am loving it!
Honeybee by Craig Silvey is just a beautiful beautiful read. It’s also been number 1 two years running on the Better Reading Top 100.. it just brings tears to my eyes thinking about it. I’ve read it twice because I was standing in front of my bookshelf thinking surely it couldn’t have been as good; I finished it thinking it was even better than I thought it was. Sam is just the most loveable teenager. Vic was a delight, Read it, you’ll love it.
Holden Sheppard is brillant. I loved Invisible Boys, and loved The Brink even more. It starts off with a schoolies trip and I am leaving it there, I’m not giving a single spoiler…(although it kind of might be YA but I got so much out of it as an adult…) It’s also winning all the awards, and I don’t like that to be a factor, but this is a great novel!
I read Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers over Christmas and this was one I was leaning into while reading! I couldn’t have loved it more. As a hetro Australian woman, born in ’78 I cannot believe how much I loved and connected with Yale and his friends during the AIDS epidemic in Chicago in the 1980s. This is a beautiful written, beautiful story of love and too much loss.. I am tearing up just remembering passages as I type! I loved it!
Don’t Look Away by Danielle Laidley is my memoir recommendation for this month. This is the the story of AFL player and coach Laidley who ‘knew she was female, regardless of the gender she was assigned at birth’ When I saw Craig Silvey had written the forward you better believe I put my name down for it at the library. Now I have my own copy and I can’t look away. This is so insightful, so powerful, so interesting…I absolutely loved it, it’s such a powerful read and really gave me so many insights into identity and acceptance. I am SO glad to have read it, and SO proud to be a ally.
The Wife and the Widow by Christian White. I’m not saying anything more! I couldn’t put it down, I think I read in over a day or two (and just because its in amongst this list doesn’t mean a thing..)
