#30daysofbooks

#30daysofbooks day 9: a book by your favourite LGBTQ2+ author. . I’ve slacked on this project for a while. Once I hit this day, I felt like as someone who pushes hard to be a visible trans person, I needed to make a bigger impact with this one than most. . But the truth is, I haven’t read that many books by queer authors. About a year ago, I took a look at my shelf and realized how straight and male it was. I’ve made an effort to change that over the last year, but still, my oeuvre is pretty shallow. . I’ve read some wonderful books by queer authors. Some notable mentions include I’m Afraid Of Men by Vivek Shraya, The New Girl by Rhyannon Styles, Girlfriend In A Coma by Douglas Coupland, and Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation by Kate Bornstein. The one I enjoyed most, though, was Fierce Femmes And Notorious Liars By Kai Cheng Thom. . Fierce Femmes has an underground, punk rock aesthetic. It recognizes that trans people aren’t mainstream, queer culture isn’t mainstream, and it will probably never be. As we continue to gain representation in mainstream media, it’s important not to lose sight of that reality. It's great to see shows like Pose gain accolades, and openly queer characters featured in more mainstream TV shows. But these are still representational distilled through a mainstream lens, safe and palatable for the average viewer. . Our very existence is a threat to the cisnormative status quo, as are the characters in Fierce Femmes. . . . . . . #books #bookstagram #instabook #bookaddict#booklover #booklife #bookphotography#readersofinstagram #reader#instaread #readinglife #bookstagrammer #igreads#igbooks #ilovereading #readingtime #ilovebooks#bookblogger #readmorebooks #bookgeek #bookobsessed https://www.instagram.com/p/B5k2gNbnjf6/?igshid=584eo86pn9eg

#30daysofbooks day 8: your favourite book by a male author. . I already posted my favourite books by a male author, Self by Yann Martel and Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. So this one was a little tougher. . In the end, I went with High Fidelity because of when it showed up. I happened to be at a thrift shop and found it on the shelf. The movie was fun, and the boom was $3, so why not? . My time in university largely squelched my ability to read for pleasure, but this was a few years later, so the association of reading with stress and anxiety was becoming more and more distant. . I devoured it in two days. That led me down a rabbit hole - I consumed most of his bibliography over the following months. The weird, quirky obsessiveness of his characters is endearing and frustrating at the same time. As a non-Briton, I don't share many of the anxieties his characters do, but at the same time they still seem like fully realized humans, bizarre though they may be. . It may not be one of the greatest pieces of literature ever conceived, but I'll always be grateful to Nick Hornby for rekindling my love of reading. It was around that time I began writing for pleasure as well, so if you read any of my work and enjoy it, thank Nick Hornby too. . . . . #books #bookstagram #instabook #bookaddict#booklover #booklife #bookphotography#readersofinstagram #reader#instaread #readinglife #bookstagrammer #igreads#igbooks #ilovereading #readingtime #ilovebooks#bookblogger #readmorebooks #bookgeek#bookobsessed https://www.instagram.com/p/B3W38q8gtJ0/?igshid=1pvwwd44f7203

#30daysofbooks day 7: your favourite book by a female author. . I thought about this one for a while. A couple years ago, I noticed how pale and male my bookshelf was. At that point, I went out of my way to read a more diverse variety of authors. . Shout outs go to the following fantastic books my female authors I've read in the last year or so. . Kai Cheng Thom - Fierce Femmes And Notorious Liars @haamyue - The Tiger Flu Anna North - The Life And Death Of Sophie Stark @vivekshraya - I'm Afraid Of Men . At the end of the day, though, I had to go with the original #scifi masterpiece. Mary Shelley was so ahead of her time, and this book is so deep, so rich. I've read it 3 times, and each time I discover something new to love about it. . . . . #books #bookstagram #instabook #bookaddict#booklover #booklife #bookphotography#readersofinstagram #reader#instaread #readinglife #bookstagrammer #igreads#igbooks #ilovereading #readingtime #ilovebooks#bookblogger #readmorebooks #bookgeek#bookobsessed https://www.instagram.com/p/B2y9-e5Ace4/?igshid=1gs5le4mi6g9q

30 days of books day 6 - your favourite book to give as a gift. . This is Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It explores many of the issues the world is facing today through using biblical stories the way they were meant to - as parables, not fact. It's a heavy topic but presented in an easily accessible way. . . . . #30daysofbooks #books #bookstagram #instabook #bookaddict#booklover #booklife #bookphotography#readersofinstagram #reader#instaread #readinglife #bookstagrammer #igreads#igbooks #ilovereading #readingtime #ilovebooks#bookblogger #readmorebooks #bookgeek#bookobsessed https://www.instagram.com/p/B2EyV-IArif/?igshid=1tjmxopzfzv9e

#30daysofbooks day 5: the oldest book you've ever read . Not only is this the oldest book I've ever read, it's arguably the oldest book there is. Along with The Odyssey, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and Hesiod's Theogony and Works And Days, it's considered one of the oldest extant works in the western literary tradition. . The story itself is interesting, if only to recognize how many other works reference it. But meta-analysis of the text is so much more fascinating. . For context, there actually was a city called Troy, or Ilion (hence the Iliad). And there actually was a war of some sort that happened there, and the city really was destroyed. We've found Greek arrowheads there, so we know the Greeks were involved somehow as well. The best we can tell, it happened somewhere around 1250 BCE. . But it wasn't until around 800-750 BCE that anyone bothered to write down what happened. So as a result, The Iliad is the result of a 500 year long game of broken telephone. . The story was passed down via an oral tradition, and each bard added their own flavour to the story. So you can read battle descriptions where someone is wearing a helm whose description matches one we've actually found in archaeological digs that date to a period of time far later than the Trojan War. In fact, the technology to create them hadn't even been invented yet. . What's even cooler is that you can see someone wearing that helm, using a cuirass from the year 1000, a spear from the year 1200, and a shield from 700. No one would ever have worn these things in this combination, but because it was passed down orally it ended up being told like this. . But how on Earth could someone possibly memorize a story as long as the Iliad, you may be wondering. Good question. The theory is that bards would know the general narrative, and the general style of the poem, and just fill in the blanks with a set of lines they memorized and could slot in wherever. If you analyze the original Greek, it supports this theory - 95% of the half lines in the poem are repeated at least once. . . . . . #history #historynerd #classicalhistory #greekhistory #ancienthistory #books #bookstagram #instabook #bookaddict#booklover https://www.instagram.com/p/B1rL3xsA-rA/?igshid=ihvbuc3fe1ge

30 days of books day 4: a book you've read more than once. . Yann Martel is such a spectacular storyteller. This is unusual as a debut novel, especially from a cis man, since it explores a lot of things that would be very relevant for #trans people. . It follows the story of the main character, whose name you never learn, as they navigate their boyhood and adolescence, before one day waking up to find they have somehow become a woman. The mechanism behind this is never explained, and the protagonist never really questions it, she just continues on with her life. . It gets into some pretty heavy stuff, but I found myself so intimately gripped by her experiences. It was one of the important pieces of the puzzle that helped me come to terms with who I am. . I read it once just after university, and once a couple years ago just before I came out. . . . . . . . #30daysofbooks #books #bookstagram #instabook #bookaddict#booklover #booklife #bookphotography#readersofinstagram #reader#instaread #readinglife #bookstagrammer #igreads#igbooks #ilovereading #readingtime #ilovebooks#bookblogger #readmorebooks #bookgeek#bookobsessed https://www.instagram.com/p/B1oyEXOgQ7H/?igshid=1pm316rd9a6bp

30 days of books day 3: a book you never finished. . This might be one of the most disappointing books I've ever read. Not because it was awful, but because the concept seemed SO COOL but the book was just... boring. Read this description below and tell me how cool this sounds: . "In the year 2020, global warming has made the world a warmer, wetter place, but technological developments have run on apace. One of the hottest such areas is medicine, where organ transplants and gene therapy have introduced infinite new vistas to what was once the staid old human condition. . One of the most remarkable inhabitants of this new age is Crygender, a surgical hermaphrodite so deftly constructed that it is impossible to determine his/her original sex. Cry is the proprietor of Babylon, the world's most famous bordello. Located on the Japanese-owned island off San Francisco that once housed Alcatraz, but is no longer part of the United States, anything can be bought on Babylon, anything at all. Even murder. But this time the victim is Cry's very own self..." . Awesome, right? But no. Instead of exploring gender roles and ideas, they made Crygender into more of a circus oddity type character. . Thank u, next . . . . . #30daysofbooks #scifi #sciencefiction #vintagescifi #vintagebooks #books #bookstagram #instabook #bookaddict #booklover #booklife #bookphotography #readersofinstagram #reader #instaread #readinglife #bookstagrammer #igreads #igbooks #ilovereading #readingtime #ilovebooks #bookblogger #readmorebooks #bookgeek #bookobsessed https://www.instagram.com/p/B1e547OAXgg/?igshid=8b4xvjs2lj9l

30 days of books day 2 - the book you're currently reading. . In retrospect, I've struggled with anxiety for my entire life. But it wasn't until the last few years that I was able to properly put a name to how I felt, and how I let it affect me. . The wonderful @moragschmorag bought this one for me one day, along with a couple other books she thought would help me after a particularly rough time. One of them was literally called "Things That Help", a compilation of pieces from the zine Doris by Cindy Crabb, and it was awesome. Each piece is easy to read and stands on it's own, which makes it great as a bedtime book. . But I never got around to this one, though I think conceptually it's the most interesting. . I'm only a few pages in. Let's see. . #30daysofbooks . . . . . #books #bookstagram #instabook #bookaddict#booklover #booklife #bookphotography#readersofinstagram #reader#instaread #readinglife #bookstagrammer #igreads#igbooks #ilovereading #readingtime #ilovebooks#bookblogger #readmorebooks #bookgeek#bookobsessed #vintage (at DI Coffee Bar) https://www.instagram.com/p/B1cW5K1AvsW/?igshid=hgj2madthr4c