PROUD blog tour: Recommendations

The authors of PROUD reveal their recommendations of LGBTQ+ lit! 

For this post, I asked Stripes for some recommendations of books that some of the authors featured in the anthology would recommend to readers looking for some more LGBTQ+ to read and boy did they deliver! So get something to take notes on because you'll want to jot down some of these amazing titles they came up with! I'm adding a bunch of them to my own list! 

1) What was the Queer book or poem you connected with personally as a young reader and why did it connect with you?

Simon James Green: BEAUTIFUL THING by Jonathan Harvey. It’s not actually a novel, it was originally a play, and then later a film. It’s about two teenage boys growing up on a council estate in South London, and it was written in the 90s. The dialogue is so real, and the story is so tender and, indeed, beautiful. You can buy the script (and you can watch the film) and I’d highly recommend it.

Michael Lee Richardson: Recently, Casey Plett’s Little Fish, about a trans woman finding out that her religious grandfather might also have been trans. Casey Plett is so good at character, and this book - her first novel - is so sharp and honest and witty.

Karen Lawler : My Real Children by Jo Walton - an alternate history title that follows its main character through two different versions of post-WW2 history (neither matches ours) and two versions of her life. In one she finds love, but the world is much worse than the one we know. In the other she finds heartbreak, but we have colonies on the moon. I was particularly moved by the questions it raised about individual happiness vs collective good, inevitability and the ways in which small actions can have huge consequences.

Moïra Fowley-Doyle: Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue -- a collection of queer fairytale retellings that I first read & fell in love with at 14

Cynthia So: Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake. A 12-year-old girl has a crush on another girl and realises she likes girls - I realised I was queer at about the same age!

2) Share a current book that you think someone who enjoys your story in PROUD would like to read next.  

Simon James Green: Check out FLYING TIPS FOR FLIGHTLESS BIRDS by Kelly McCaughrain, RUNNING WITH LIONS by Julian Winters, OUT OF THE BLUE by Sophie Cameron, and JACK OF HEARTS by L.C. Rosen.

Michael Lee Richardson: Simon James Green’s books, Noah Can’t Even and Noah Could Never, are fab! There should be more funny books about GBT boys.

Moïra Fowley-Doyle: Ask the Passengers by AS King -- a gorgeous contemporary YA with a dash of magic realism about a queer teen girl figuring herself out

Cynthia So: Picture Us in the Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert, a contemporary realistic story about a Chinese-American boy who's an artist and in love with his best friend.

Karen Lawler: Simon vs the Homosapien Agenda. Contemporary gay teen romance for the win.

3) What Queer books do you love?

Simon James Green: BOY MEETS BOY by David Levithan. The final line of that book is probably my favourite final line, ever.

Michael Lee Richardson: I’m hoovering up Alice Oseman’s books at the moment - so much stuff about queer friendships and relationships and fandom and internet culture - love ‘em!

Moïra Fowley-Doyle: Jeanette Winterson has been one of my favourite authors since my secondary school English teacher lent me her copy of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit after I wrote a short story in class when I was fifteen about two girls falling in love. Every copy of her books I have has been heavily underlined by me at various ages since.

Cynthia So: The Miseducation of Cameron Post by emily m. danforth!

Karen Lawler: Sarah Waters and more specifically Fingersmith are my favourites. Fingersmith has it all - a brilliant, pacey, surprising plot, excellent and well-developed characters, a historical setting that completely comes alive, and a hot lesbian romance.

Author Bios: 

Simon James Green is an author and screenwriter. His debut YA novel, Noah Can’t Even, was published by Scholastic in May 2017, followed by the sequel, Noah Could Never, in June 2018. The books have also been optioned for TV by Urban Myth Films. Simon’s screen credits include co-writing feature-length rom-com Rules of Love (BBC), and a short stint directing Hollyoaks (C4).

Michael Lee Richardson is a writer and youth worker from Glasgow. As a screenwriter he has written comedy for CBBC and BBC Alba. His original work has been shortlisted for BBC Scotland’s Frank Deasy Award and the BAFTA Rocliffe Comedy Award, and his young adult comedy ‘Real Life Experience’ was ‘highly commended’ for BBC Writersroom’s Trans Comedy Award. In 2015 he won the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in the Children and Young Adult category. As a youth worker, he set up and ran Trans Youth Glasgow, part of LGBT Youth Scotland. He currently works for LEAP Sports Scotland on Trans Team, a project aimed at encouraging transgender young people to engage with sport and outdoor activities. www.hrfmichael.co.uk

Karen Lawler is an American living in London with her awesome wife and extremely cute dog Buffy. She loves reading, especially sci-fi, fantasy, YA, and historical non-fiction, and she funds her book habit by working in children’s publishing. She loves a good teen movie (10 Things I Hate About You is the best and she will fight you on that). This is the first time her writing has appeared in print.

Moïra Fowley-Doyle is the author of The Accident Season, which was shortlisted for the 2015 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, and Spellbook of the Lost and Found, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Irish Book Awards. Moïra is half- French, half-Irish and lives in Dublin with her husband, two daughters and two cats.

Cynthia So is bisexual and proud to be queer. She is Chinese, born in Hong Kong and now living in London. She studied Classics at university. Her writing has appeared in speculative fiction magazines including Anathema: Spec from the Margins, which publishes work by queer people of colour.

I Was Born For This by Alice Oseman

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 400 

Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books  

Released: 3rd of May 2018

For Angel Rahimi, life is only about one thing: The Ark – a pop-rock trio of teenage boys who are currently taking the world by storm. Being part of The Ark’s fandom has given her everything – her friendships, her dreams, her place in the world.

Jimmy Kaga-Ricci owes everything to The Ark too. He’s their frontman – and playing in a band is all he’s ever dreamed of doing. It’s just a shame that recently everything in his life seems to have turned into a bit of a nightmare.

Because that’s the problem with dreaming – eventually, inevitably, real life arrives with a wake-up call. And when Angel and Jimmy are unexpectedly thrust together, they will discover just how strange and surprising facing up to reality can be.

What I Have to Say 

Alice Oseman has proved once again that she writes great books, books that challenge perceptions and bring important issues to light. This book was a very insightful look on Fandom and the different sides of it. I felt she really showed all the different sides of fandom, the perception of it from outside, from inside, the different types of fans and some of the more worrying reasons that people turn to fandom. She managed to write a book that showed what goes in inside the heads of superfans without ignoring the bad or the good. 

Jimmy was a really interesting character. Through Jimmy Oseman showed anxiety at it's worse and she wasn't afraid to show it realistically. A lot of books try to pretty up anxiety showing it in a way that may be more palatable to the reader, but doesn't show truly how bad it can get. And while I did find some of Jimmy's part of the book a little hard to read, as a sufferer of pretty bad anxiety, I can attest that there is nothing in the book that wasn't a real thing that many people go through every day.

 I worry that people will see it as immature and over the top, but the fact is that a lot of people view anxiety attacks as immature and over the top, because we're a society that values a tampering down of emotions and showing extreme emotions such as those that come in a panic attack or the other things that Oseman showed Jimmy feeling throughout the book are seen as immature in today's society. 

I also liked the fact that there wasn't one part of fandom that Oseman didn't look into. She showed the pressure of fame and how it can bring those in the spotlight a lot of stress and pain and cause them to resent or fear their fans. She looked at the two sides of fandom as a group, those that didn't care who they hurt and the ones who would protect the band no matter what it took. She showed the friendship and happiness that being part of a fandom, part of /something/ can bring and she showed how people can let fandom consume their life due to problems or worries in their own lives. 

I loved all the characters in this book and as always, how real Oseman's writing in. I hope you all do too. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Harper Collins for providing me with this copy for review. 

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 400

Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books 

Released: 25th of February 2016 

What if everything you set yourself up to be was wrong?

Frances has always been a study machine with one goal, elite university. Nothing will stand in her way; not friends, not a guilty secret – not even the person she is on the inside.

But when Frances meets Aled, the shy genius behind her favourite podcast, she discovers a new freedom. He unlocks the door to Real Frances and for the first time she experiences true friendship, unafraid to be herself. Then the podcast goes viral and the fragile trust between them is broken.

Caught between who she was and who she longs to be, Frances’ dreams come crashing down. Suffocating with guilt, she knows that she has to confront her past…

She has to confess why Carys disappeared…

Meanwhile at uni, Aled is alone, fighting even darker secrets.

It’s only by facing up to your fears that you can overcome them. And it’s only by being your true self that you can find happiness.

Frances is going to need every bit of courage she has. 

What I Have to Say 

I don't even know how to begin to sum up this amazing book. It is just so important. Alice Oseman has put into writing so many things that people have been avoiding saying for years. Things like the way our school system just doesn't give teenagers any other option than A Levels and university, simply by not saying that the other options are out there. How they are making teenagers feel like not getting good grades at GCSE will ruin their lives completely. And not only that, but she has dared to write a book where a boy and a girl main character are friends and never get together or have any romance with each other. She even used the word asexual. 

Not only did she manage to include all these extremely important topics, but she did so while creating a beautiful and moving story. A story about identity, taking the main character, Frances on a journey of finding herself, learning what she actually likes and is good at outside of what school has taught her that she has to be. 

This story has so much mystery, suspense and tragedy that it overwhelms me in a way that makes it hard to write about just how wonderful it is, because there's just so much that I could say. It's reminded me how great Alice Oseman is as a writer and what I originally liked about Solitaire, while also going on to achieve something even better. 

This book is definitely one that will stay with me and that I will force on all my friends.

I think that teenagers looking towards university and finding out what they want in life should read this book.

Students facing GCSEs, especially if they're bad at tests should read this book. 

And perhaps most importantly, anyone who feels that university or even A Levels may not be the right path for them, but doesn't know what other options are out there, should very definitely read this book. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Harper Collins for providing me with this review copy,