A Reader's Safe Haven

So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."

I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?

It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.

Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri - India-inspired high fantasy, with a servant, a princess, a burgeoning revolution, a magical illness, maybe-demons, and the usual-for-this-genre despotic government.

The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry by C.M. Waggoner - A gutter witch gets a job as a magical bodyguard, but events soon spiral out of control and her attraction to another bodyguard is not helping.

Science Fiction:

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki - A violin teacher must find a final protegée to buy her soul back from Hell. A prodigy needs a home and to be seen as a girl. The alien running the local donut shop tries to keep her business afloat while also being very interested in the violin teacher.

The Space Between Worlds by Makaiah Johnson - A woman who travels to parallel worlds for “research purposes” lands on a world, finds her doppelganger’s body, and begins to uncover a massive conspiracy.

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots - A data analyst starts crunching numbers on  superhero damages after she’s gravely injured by one. Her conclusion: superheroes must be stopped at all costs and she’s the one to do it.

Barbary Station by R.E. Stearns - A lesbian couple applies to be space pirates, but must stop a rogue spacestation AI before the pirates will induct them.

Fortuna by Kristyn Merbeth - A smugger takes a job that’s too good to be true and must find a way to keep her family together while she gets them out of trouble.

Bluebird by Ciel Pierlot - A woman on the run from an evil space empire learns they’re holding her sister hostage in exchange for her final invention for them. She’s not having it.

Mystery:

The Verifiers by Jane Pek - A woman who does background checks on online dates has a client turn up dead. She’s positive it isn’t suicide.

Romance:

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston - A woman trying to figure out her life meets a hot punk on the New York Subway. The problem: the punk is in a time loop and still thinks it’s the 1970s. Also features found family and massive amounts of queer chaos.

the Feminine Pursuits novels by Olivia Waite - Historical romances about art, science, quiet revolutions, women being undervalued, and of course, women falling in love with each other.

Other:

Portrait of a Thief by Grace Li - A group of Chinese-American college students is recruited to steal Chinese art back from museums. Multi-POV, several are sapphic.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo - A Chinese-American teen in the 1950s tries to navigate parental expectations, anti-Communist sentiments, and discovering that she’s gay.

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters - A working-class woman falls in lust with a drag performer and follows her to Victorian London. Both a bildungsroman and a believable portrait of queer London.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. Huge, intricate fantasy story with a queen shaking under the weight of her duty and a ‘handmaiden’ who’s really bodyguard, priestess and spy.

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo. Everyone in this world knows the story of the lady scholar who married the tiger queen. Turns out the clan of tiger shapeshifters up on the mountain remember it a little differently. A wandering scholar corned by tigers bargains for their life with the offer to change the record.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins. Disturbing, brilliant, heart-crushing historical fiction about a formerly enslaved woman facing trial for the murder of the woman she loved.

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue. Tragic, quietly beautiful historical fiction about love that blooms between a nurse and a hospital volunteer left to run a maternity ward by themselves for three days at the height of the Spanish Flu.

Chapter titles

Maps

Indexes of characters and places with pronunciations

Numbering books in a series on the spine

Simply simple shelves. 

Queer SFF books by POC authors. 

Person who has spent all their cash on rent and food still has a place to get out of the house and do something interesting.

Cool community classes and community art shows.

ESL tutoring.