MN Bennet

Weekly Bookish Question #439 (April 27th - May 3rd, 2025)

Book bans are on the rise across the US, but even if you want to go read and buy as many books with LGBT+ representation as you can get your greedy little hands on--it's hard to know what you don't know :/

The Queer Books Database lists over 3,500+ fiction and non-fiction titles in a google docs spreadsheet that lets you search by representation, or just by age, genre, year published, and more. It doesn't just track LGBT+ rep but also tags for people of color, disability, mental health, neurodivergence, fat rep, older characters, and religion!

You can use the database to search for:

multiple identities at once--find rep for a schizophrenic asexual lesbian, an autistic black boy, or a non-binary soldier with tinnitus

age appropriate books--search for children's books, junior chapter books, teen titles, and YA

non-fiction education--this includes biographies and memoirs, self-help, mental health, sexual education, LGBT+ history, legal resources, and affirming spiritual texts

trope/setting/time period--get a list of ghostly paranormals, queer fiction set in africa, gay regency romances, enemies-to-lovers, dark academia, and tons more!

With how the US is trying to digitally colonize the online space, I think it's soon going to be time for me to shudder the doors of my Meta accounts - if not delete, then just abandon them. TikTok with its likely ban will set a precident that the USA can bully into selling to them any foreign-controlled site, game, social media, or store that it wants to by claiming "data privacy" - which is rich given the USA regularly has to send out warnings to citizens about data breaches of its OWN companies. So yeah, it's a dangerous step in a direction I'm not happy about. META is cozying up to the Orange, and has stated it wants to be the next Elon's Bastardized Twitter. I knew it was going to happen back when they introduced their own version of "being verified" as a subscription service. The service is just working as normal instead of throttling and shadowbanning your posts and profile. I don't think that algorithm throttling has happened full force, but I already see my posts barely getting seen as it used to, and that was the last place I got regular commission work. Upon further reflection though, MOST of my current clients are people who know me/have followed me a while/have commissioned before. So the question - do I REALLY need META for my business to continue? Or is it already shot in the barrel and I should begin cutting it out? I think the answer is clear. I won't pay to make a service work as it should, and I'm sick and tired of billionaires thinking we'll just roll over. Well, ya'll made cost of living so fucking expensive, what makes you think I'd part $20 a month for your shitty user experience?

I'm not a fulltime artist, I'm part time and work a day job. Still, my art pulls in $200-$500 a month and that's nothing the shirk, that's half to all my groceries in a month (I'm a parent and have 5 pets, food is expensive!) NOT TO EVEN MENTION the removal of protection for anti bullying and harrassment of minorities and sexual identities. I'm nonbinary, and ALL MY books are queer. The way the cesspool, ALREADY bad, is going to be even more embolden? It's a fucking joke.

Two Who Live On by MN Bennet was amazing! It's the sequel to Three Meant to Be, a magic school adult book, focused on a telepathic teacher.

I'm a big fan of anything with telepathy, so I was glad to see Dorian's ability increase and his mind link more and more often with his boyfriend Milo, giving him a refreshing break from other people and from demons. <3

This major m/m used to be m/m/m (Finn died a few years before Book 1, but there are a few scenes with his spirit, so maybe that still counts as polyamory). As for the students, some feelings are developing and will surely lead to an m/m couple in the near future.