I follow hundreds of queer book blogs to scout out the best sapphic book news and reviews! Many of them get posted on Tumblr and Twitter as I discover them, but my favourites get saved for these link compilations. Here are some of the posts I’ve found interesting in the last few weeks.

If you want to do some good in the world by getting LGBTQ picture books into pre-K to grade classrooms, support Pride and Less Prejudice! They use donations to send free age-appropriate book bundles to teachers who request them.

And for more ways to spend your money supporting queer books, LGBTQ Reads has a list of queer books available at various indie bookstores, complete with buy links! It couldn’t be easier to pick up some new to you authors while giving indie bookstores the support they need right now.

Looking to blow up your TBR pile/preorder list? Check out Sasha and Amber Read’s 2021 – The Year of Sapphic Excellency. There’s also Hsinju’s Lit Log’s 2021 Sapphic Releases from LGBTQ+ Indies for even more. If you can’t preorder all the titles you’re interested in, I recommend putting them in your Google Calendar and sending a reminder the day before. Then you can put it on hold at the library! That’s how I keep my library holds always maxed out.

Of course, if you want to be aware of queer books coming even further out, there’s LGBTQ Reads’s August Book Deal Announcements post, which includes books that may not be out for years.

If you’d rather check out new releases that are coming out soon, try Autostraddle’s 65 Queer and Feminist Books Coming Your Way in Fall 2020.

Now that you’ve spent all your money ordering and preordering books, you can get instant gratification with Book Riot’s 12 of the Best Queer Webcomics You Can Read For Free. I used to be a big webcomics fan, so this is reminding me that I should jump back in!

@ellelillylew

#diversebookrecs #queerbookrecs the straights have had that trope forever. It’s our turn now

♬ original sound – ellelillylew

Now I have to share the post that had me clicking the fastest: 15 TikTok Accounts That’ll Help You Dive Into LGBTQ+ Literature. I blame Pop Sugar for me now contemplating getting TikTok. No one told me there were queer book TikTokers!

YA Pride interviewed teenagers about how queer books have affected their lives at Teens Talk About LGBTQIAP+ YA. If you, like me, are over 25, you will feel old reading these. But either way, they are heartwarming, and include how some of these teens explored and discovered their identity through books.

Lambda Literary posted Queer Diaries Are Celebrations of a Secret History, which looks at the history of Lou Sullivan’s, Anne Lister’s, and Mary MacLane’s diaries–as well as a suggested queer diary reading list.

Reads Rainbow has a rapid-fire recommendation post of Sapphic YA Fantasy Recs, with the reasons you should read each pick.

The always-wonderful Casey wrote 8 Queer YA Novels With Coming of Age Hope to Relive Alice Wu’s “The Half of It”–and if you haven’t watched The Half of It on Netflix yet, run and do that first! I loved it. These books include: “falling in love through letter writing, figuring out your queer identity, keeping secrets, new friendships, small towns, and slowly getting to new your new girl crush.” Who can resist?

YA Pride’s The Path to Publication: Writing the Queer Black Girls of Cinderella Is Dead has Kalynn Bayron describe the obstacles to publishing Cinderella is Dead, including being told in writers’ groups that it wasn’t mainstream enough, while agents insisted the fairy tale retelling was overdone: “It’s not standard practice to reply to an agent at all, much less with the question, ‘How many of those reimaginings center BIPOC? And how many of them are also queer?'”

Fiona Zedde posted on Woman and Words Black LesBiQueer Books, Y’all!, highlighting some recent releases by Black queer women, including lots of romance and erotica recs!

Oprah Magazine has a list of 5 Best Audre Lorde Books to Read Right Now, because there’s never been a better time to read them. Speaking of Audre Lorde, Autostraddle’s Year of Our (Audre) Lorde continues with August’s New Spelling of My Name, which contemplates Zami and how it relates to Jehan’s own relationship with New York City.

The Atlantic’sThe Groundbreaking Female Artist Who Shaped Manga History, about Kuniko Tsurita, whose “Occupants” depicted a lesbian relationship, and who included gender noncomformity and queer coding in her work.

If you are a lesbian literature nerd like me, you will love this story that was posted on twitter: Resurfaced medieval tale has the most incredible queer plot twist. Explicitly queer medieval lit! With no real judgement of them!

Speaking of queer lit crit, did you know that one of the most popular board books of all time has a queer backstory? If you didn’t, you need to read Lambda Literary’s ‘Goodnight Moon’ and the Queer Love Story of the Great Green Room.

This post has the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee. For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s Twitter! We’re also on Facebook, Goodreads, Youtube and Tumblr.

Support the Lesbrary on Patreon at $2 or more a month and be entered to win a queer women book every month! $5 and up patrons get guaranteed books throughout the year on top of the giveaways!

I follow hundreds of queer book blogs to scout out the best sapphic book news and reviews! Many of them get posted on Tumblr and Twitter as I discover them, but my favourites get saved for these link compilations. Here are some of the posts I’ve found interesting in the last few weeks.

Over at Medium, Elizabeth Andre shared 79 Black Lesbian (and Bi, Queer, Trans, and Non-binary) Fiction Authors You Should Know, so there’s no excuse to not be reading Black queer books! If you’re a non-Black person, we should be reading both books that educate us about anti-Blackness as well as stories about Black joy. This list includes a lot of Romance authors, so that’s a great place to start!

Along the same lines, also check out Book Riot’s 20 Must-Read Black Authors of LGBTQ Books. I always look through these LGBTQ lists to make sure they’re not mostly m/m books, so rest assured there are lots of sapphic books to add to your TBR here.

If you’re looking for something a little more political, Electric Literature posted A Syllabus for the Uprising, which recommends books to get read for the queer Black revolution.

I’ve been mentioning this every round up, but that’s because you should be aware of Autostraddle’s Year of Our (Audre) Lorde, where Jehan reads Audre Lorde poems and connects them to what’s happening in the world right now. Last month was July Is a Black Unicorn.

Speaking of Black sapphic reads, Sometimes Leelynn Reads created The Cinderella is Dead Book Tag, so if you read and loved Cinderella is Dead and have a book blog/bookstagram account/booktuber channel, give this tag a try, and let me know what your answers are!

The Lesbrary New Releases posts promote sapphic books of all kinds, but sometimes you’re looking for a particular identity. For the bi+ bibliophiles, check out reads rainbow’s Book Releases: July-December 2020 Books With Bi Protagonists.

And for pan page-turners, there’s also Book Riot’s 5 Books With Pansexual Main Characters.

Of course, I’m not forgetting the literary lesbians. Here’s Audible’s Best Lesbian Listens by Queer Authors.

Audiobooks are a great way to squeeze in reading during commutes or chores or just when the world is on fire and you can’t concentrate on the page. For more recs, try Book Riot’s 15 LGBTQ YA Audiobooks to Listen to in the Second Half of 2020.

Casey Stepaniuk is also providing awesome queer book recommendations, and her latest is at Autostraddle: 8 Great Queer Scandinavian Books, from Tender Novels to Supernatural Horror.

If you’re already eagerly anticipating fall, Book Riot’s 12 Queer Witch Books to Bring the Magic to Your TBR would make for excellent books to stock up on before those breezy Autumn nights.

Over at Electric Literature, Jessica Xing wrote about equating her queerness with monstrousness as a young closeted person, and how pulp helped with that, in Lesbian Pulp Novels Made Me Feel Normal.

OZY wrote about Nobuko Yoshiya, the first writer of Yuri, who is an amazing historical figure more people need to know about: The Daring Feminist Writer Who Inspired Manga.

And for another historical exploration, check out ‘Paris-Lesbos’: the Vibrant Lesbian Community Where Women in the 1920s Thrived to learn about the literary lesbian salons of Paris in the 1920s, and how queer authors flourished at that particular point in history.

This post has the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee. For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s Twitter! We’re also on Facebook, Goodreads, Youtube and Tumblr.

Support the Lesbrary on Patreon at $2 or more a month and be entered to win a queer women book every month! $5 and up patrons get guaranteed books throughout the year on top of the giveaways!

I follow hundreds of queer book blogs to scout out the best sapphic book news and reviews! Many of them get posted on Tumblr and Twitter as I discover them, but my favourites get saved for these link compilations. Here are some of the posts I’ve found interesting in the last few weeks.

• Anxious Nachos posted My Top Queer Releases of 2020 So Far. They also posted a wrap up of all their 30 Days of Pride posts!
• And for more new releases to add to your TBR, Oprah Magazine posted their picks for All the LGBTQ Books That Are Changing the Literary Landscape in 2020
• If you’re looking for bisexual or pansexual books, you might want to check out The Quiet Pond’s recommendations. (Of course, you can also browse the Lesbrary’s bisexual tag!)

• On Lambda Literary, Julie R. Enszer posted Dead Lesbian Poets: A Meditation in Six Parts, which is a thoughtful history of lesbian poetry from an esteemed lesbian poet.
• Xtra Magazine posted How Femme Memoirs Challenge Queer Stereotypes about Rural Living, which includes recommendations as well as a reminder to challenge “metronormativity” (seeing being in a city as the norm) in queer spaces.
• Book Riot’s Pride is a Rebellion, and Rebellions are Built on Hope recommends 10 hopeful queer SFF titles.
• LGBTQ Reads offers the newest installment of the Under the Gaydar series, which gives recommendations where the cover and blurb don’t give away the queer content (perfect for closeted readers): Under the Gaydar: F/F YA Fantasy.
• Niamh Murphy’s 11 Gorgeous Adaptations for Lesbians and Queer Girls who Love Fairy Tales!

• Autostraddle continues their Year of Our (Audre) Lorde with June’s Uses of Anger, exploring Lorde’s essay and how it relates to Black people living in the US today.
• Here’s a fun one: Book Riot posted a quiz that asks Who Said it: Fiona Apple or Virginia Woolf? 
• Pop Matters looked at the history of Olivia by Dorothy Strachey, and why it’s a classic of lesbian literature.
• Corinne Manning, author of We Had No Rules, posted Crafting The Narrative Of Abuse on Autostraddle, which discusses how editing one of these short stories changed her understanding of abuse in her life.

This post has the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee. For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s Twitter! We’re also on Facebook, Goodreads, Youtube and Tumblr.

Support the Lesbrary on Patreon at $2 or more a month and be entered to win a queer women book every month! $5 and up patrons get guaranteed books throughout the year on top of the giveaways!

This has been a Pride like no other. Our usual celebrations were cancelled for COVID-19, and police brutality protests take us right back to where Pride began. LGBTQ people have Black trans people to thank for the LGBTQ rights movement, for Pride, and for so much that we take for granted, which is why it’s even more important for us to stand by them now. Police continue to target Black people of all genders, Black trans people continue to face so much violence, and the fight for rights is far from over. Black Lives Matter protests continue (even if they’re not getting as much news coverage), and there are many ways to support the movement. Check out the Black Lives Matter carrd for continually updated petitions to sign, places to donate, and ways to educate yourself. For white and white-passing people, I highly recommend reading Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad. It guides you through digging into your own internal racism and the work to be done, and it’s really opened my eyes to how far I have to go, and how much anti-racism education is a lifelong process.

The world of LGBTQ books and publishing has began to reckon with its own racism, with Black Lives Matter protests bringing more attention to the inequalities that Black authors have been raising the alarm about for years. Check out the Lesbrary’s recent article Let’s Talk About Racism in Lesbian Publishing for a brief overview of the most recent iteration of the conversation.

• Continuing this conversation, Black f/f author Renée Bess wrote Excuse Me While I Burn a Few Bridges, asking publishers and readers both to examine their own racism, and also names a ton of Black authors of lesbian and f/f fiction
• Sistahs on the Shelf is a fantastic resource for Black lesbian and f/f books. They’ve been on hiatus for a while, but I’m so happy to see that Sistahs on the Shelf is back!!
• In the article Reading Black Joy: F/F Romances by Black Authors, I mentioned how Katrina Jackson’s twitter thread about queer Black romances was where I got many of the titles. At LGBTQ Reads, Katrina Jackson wrote about that thread and why she started it: Finding Queer Black Love in Literature
• Leah Johnson, author of You Should See Me in a Crown, wrote the stunning essay How Queer YA Novels Taught Me to Write My Own Happy Ending about growing up Black and queer and finding possibility in queer YA
• For other resources to find more Black queer books, NBC News posted Best Black Queer Books, According to Black LGBTQ Leaders, including recommendations from the president of the Human Rights Campaign, the executive director of Equality North Carolina, a filmmaker, and the programs officer for communities of color at GLAAD
• And for finding more queer authors of colour generally, check out Electric Literature’s Poetry Collections About Being a Queer Person of Color

• Of course, Pride has also come with a tidal wave of queer book recommendation posts, and Book Riot always excels here. Check out 10 LGBTQIA+ Fantasy and Sci-Fi Adventures to Take You Far From Here and 8 LGBTQ+ Fairytales From 2020
• Anxious Nachos has been doing 30 Days of Pride, covering a ton of genres: Queer Romcoms, Historical Fiction, and The Rise of the Queer Novella
• In the comics side of, Comic Book Resources posted The Best Manga Reads for Pride, From Utena to Wandering Son
• And finally, in slightly more niche genres, check out Electric Literature’s 8 Stories by LGBTQ Women Writers From Around the World recommending lesbian literary geographies

Lesbrary link round ups are made possible by Patreon!
Support the Lesbrary for $5 a month and get queer books throughout the year!

• Pride has also brought some posts about queer history, which I love to see. Stylist’s These Fascinating LGBTQ+ Stories are a Celebration of Joy We All Need to Hear is about The Log Books, a podcast that tells stories from the handwritten log book entries of volunteers at Switchboard, a British LGBTQ+ helpline in the 70s and 80s
• Of course, maybe you want to pick up some queer history books! Check out Book Riot’s 12 Informative Queer Women’s History Reads
• And if your brain is feeling too overloaded for a history book, maybe Book Riot’s 11 Photography Books To Enjoy for Pride will be more your speed

• Speaking of Pride and history, The Boar discussed Why are LGBTQ+ Children’s Books Still Being Censored?
• Lisa Jenn Bigelow, author of Hazel’s Theory of Evolution, discussed the importance of LGBTQ representation for young kids: “While adults wait for the ‘right time’ to introduce issues of gender identity and sexual orientation in an affirming and fact-based manner, the mob never stops chanting its messages of hatred and fear.”
• And if you want to see how people are doing this work, check out the Mental Floss post This Organization Is Bringing LGBTQ+ Representation to Rural Schools One Box of Books at a Time
• Looking for queer kids’ books to read to your kids and niblings or just to read yourself?Try Book Riot’s 10 of the Best LGBTQ+ Middle Grade Books That Celebrate Pride as well as Popsugar’s 50+ Books For Tweens and Teens With LGBTQ+ Characters and Experiences
• Not enough? More are coming out all the time! Dahlia Adler and LGBTQ Reads posted LGBTQA MG 2020 Preview (July-December), 31 Brand New LGBTQ YA Books To Devour This Summer, and LGBTQAP YA 2020 Sequel Preview: July-December
• And finally, celebrating queer community, check out Book Riot’s 5 Great Queer YA Books About Friendship for Pride

• And of course, it wouldn’t be Pride on the bookternet without some good old-fashioned giant lists of LGBTQ book recommendations. Check out Reads Rainbow’s Book Recs: Twitter’s Best LGBTQ Books
• If you’re very organized and caught up on new queer releases, keep in the loop for upcoming titles with LGBTQ Reads’s June 2020 Book Deal Announcements

Support the Lesbrary on Patreon at $2 or more a month and be entered to win a queer women book every month! $5 and up patrons get guaranteed books throughout the year on top of the giveaways!

I follow hundreds of queer book blogs to scout out the best sapphic book news and reviews! Many of them get posted on tumblr and twitter as I discover them, but my favourites get saved for these link compilations. Here are some of the posts I’ve found interesting in the last few weeks.

• I’m proud to see how many queer lit pages are using their platforms to advocate for Black Lives Matter–Pride was a riot against police violence, and it is imperative for LGBTQ people to stand together with Black Americans (and Black people around the world) fighting for their rights. Andi Marquette talked about this at Women and Words: Yeah…About that Whole Pride Thing…
• One way you can support is with your wallet, and LGBTQ Reads posted Shop Queer Books from Black-Owned Bookstores to make it easy to support Black-owned bookstores while you’re building your Pride TBR.
• Autostraddle has been celebrating the Year of Our (Audre) Lorde all 2020. Check out the latest addition: May’s Burst of Light.

• It wouldn’t be a link round up without some new books to add to your TBR. Check out Dahlia Adler’s 30 LGBTQ YA Books You’ll Absolutely Want To Pick Up This Spring and Autostraddle’s 60 Queer and Feminist Books Coming Your Way in Summer 2020

Lesbrary link round ups are made possible by Patreon!
Support the Lesbrary for $5 a month and get queer books throughout the year!

• You can be forgiven for wanting to read something light at this point in a pandemic. Autostraddle’s 13 Books Packed With Queer Joy to Block Out the World can help.
• Not enough? Try Book Riot’s 31 of the Best Queer Books with Happy Endings.
• And of course, you can pretend you’re on the beach with Book Riot’s 14 Summer Queer Books for Your June TBR.

• Probably the biggest LGBTQ lit recent news is the announcement of the winners of the 32nd Annual Lambda Literary Awards!
• If you’re looking for pansexual rep in your Pride reads, LGBTQ Reads posted a recommendations post: Happy Pan Day of Visibility!
• And if you’d rather pick up some specifically lesbian reads, check out The Nerd Daily’s LGBTQ+ Alphabet Recommendations: L for Lesbian Fiction
• Entertainment Weekly posted an interview with four queer authors: Nicole Dennis-Benn, Akwaeke Emezi, Naoise Dolan, and Garth Greenwell. They have a fascinating conversation about the state of queer publishing: There’s Never Been a More Exciting Time for Queer Literature. These Authors Show Us Why.
• And finally, CBR posted about a 1970s underground lesbian comic: The Messy Authentic Brilliance of Come Out Comix.

This post has the covers linked to their Bookshop.org pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee. For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s twitter! We’re also on Facebook, Goodreads, Youtube and Tumblr.

Support the Lesbrary on Patreon at $2 or more a month and be entered to win a queer women book every month! $5 and up patrons get guaranteed books throughout the year on top of the giveaways!

I follow hundreds of queer book blogs to scout out the best sapphic book news and reviews! Many of them get posted on tumblr and twitter as I discover them, but my favourites get saved for these link compilations. Here are some of the posts I’ve found interesting in the last few weeks.

• In not-so-surprising news, LGBTQ Books Most Challenged in Libraries. Worse, though, is that the challenges have increased 20% from last year.
• The Los Angeles Blade put out a tribute to Phyllis Lyon, a lesbian activist icon who passed away last month: Phyllis Lyon gives a happy middle finger to the Lavender Scare
• LGBTQ Reads celebrated Lesbian Day of Visibility with a list of lesbian book recommendations: make sure to click through to last year’s post for even more!
• Autostraddle also celebrated Lesbian Visibility Day by discussing The Art in Your Lesbian Canon (books, movies, TV shows, etc)

Lesbrary link round ups are made possible by Patreon!
Support the Lesbrary for $5 a month and get queer books throughout the year!

• Autostraddle provided some Queer Comfort Reads for Tough Times
• And hey, while you’re doing some comfort reading, why not check out Where to Start with Yuri Manga?
• Stuck at home with nothing to read? Autostraddle posted 13 Legally Free Digital Queer Books for Your Quarantine Needs
• For some short, powerful reads, try these 20 Must-Read Poetry Collections by Queer Female Poets
• If you, like me, are a big Sarah Waters fan, you’ll want to check out Eight Awesome Queer Historical Fiction Books Like Tipping the Velvet

• The incomparable Dahlia Adler posted 30 LGBTQ YA Books You’ll Absolutely Want To Pick Up This Spring
• Update your TBR lists: here are some Queer YA Releases Pushed Back Because of COVID-19
• But not to worry, here are some books that either just came out, or will be out ASAP: 2020 Sapphic Releases (January to June)
• More in the Romance mood? Here are 10 Great 2020 Queer Women Romance Books to Watch Out For
• Even more 2020 goodies: 10 Bisexual Women Books of 2020 to Look Forward to
• If you want to read books that already came out, check out some 2019 LGBT YA Books instead.

This post, and all posts at the Lesbrary, have the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee. For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s twitter! We’re also on Facebook, Goodreads, Youtube and Tumblr.

Support the Lesbrary on Patreon at $2 or more a month and be entered to win a queer women book every month! $5 and up patrons get guaranteed books throughout the year on top of the giveaways!

Well, we are living in weird times. I hope that everyone is staying safe and healthy, and that you’re using this time inside to catch up on reading. If you have to be on the front lines, whether as a grocery worker or as a nurse or doctor, or anything else that is helping the world keep turning right now, I am grateful for you. Personally, I’m temporarily out of work, but I’m in Canada, so monetary help should be coming soon (fingers crossed). On to your regularly-scheduled links!

I follow hundreds of queer book blogs to scout out the best sapphic book news and reviews! Many of them get posted on tumblr and twitter as I discover them, but my favourites get saved for these link compilations. Here are some of the posts I’ve found interesting in the last few weeks.

• Autostraddle’s The Future We Lost in the Fire is one of my favourite articles I’ve read in recent memory: it explores the Nazi burning of the Magnus Hirschfeld library, and the forgotten queer history of Berlin.
• Also on Autostraddle, they are continuing their Year of Our (Audre) Lorde, reflecting on Lorde’s ongoing legacy and how it relates to our current struggles, with March’s Poetry Is Not a Luxury.
• The New Yorker’s Inside Tove Jansson’s Private Universe is a thoughtful biography of Tove Jansson, which has reminded me that I really want to pick up some full-length biographies of her, because she seems like such an interesting character.
• Book Riot’s Queer Representation in Books: Give Me All of It, Every Kind is a personal essay about the importance of a diversity of queer representations, including different identities, genres, and tones.

Lesbrary link round ups are made possible by Patreon!
Support the Lesbrary for $5 a month and get queer books throughout the year!

• As always, there are a selection of lists worth checking out, starting with Autostraddle’s Eight Great Angsty Lesbian Romance Books and their 11 Books for Getting Started with Polyamory and Non-Monogamy.
• Tor.com is celebrating ten years of their Queering SFF column with Five Series From the Last Decade That Can’t Be Missed. On the Sleeps With Monsters column, they also provided some (queer SFF) recommendations for What to Read When the Whole World’s Falling Apart.
• My latest Book Riot video is 28 LGBTQ Books with Rainbow Covers, because a) April 3rd is Find a Rainbow Day and b) I think we could all use some pretty covers to look at right now.

• The 2020 Lambda Literary Awards Finalists and 2020 Publishing Triangle Awards Finalists have been announced!
• If you’re looking for bisexual rep, check out Reads Rainbow’s Book Releases: January-June 2020 Books With Bi Protagonists
• And if you just want to add to your TBR in general, take a look at Autostraddle’s 25 Books Relevant to Your Queer Feminist Interests Coming Out Spring 2020

April new releases are going to be their own post, which will be up in the next few days!

This post, and all posts at the Lesbrary, have the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee. For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s twitter! We’re also on Facebook, Goodreads, Youtube and Tumblr.

Support the Lesbrary on Patreon at $2 or more a month and be entered to win a queer women book every month! $5 and up patrons get guaranteed books throughout the year on top of the giveaways!

I follow hundreds of queer book blogs to scout out the best sapphic book news and reviews! Many of them get posted on tumblr and twitter as I discover them, but my favourites get saved for these link compilations. Here are some of the posts I’ve found interesting in the last few weeks.

Saffic Analysis:

• Malinda Lo’s The Invisible Lesbian in Young Adult Fiction: Malinda Lo’s informational posts on LGBTQ lit are some of my favourite things to read, and they’re always full of infographics.
• School Library Journal’s Not Quite Banned: Soft Censorship That Makes LGBTQIA+ Stories Disappear: How queer lit gets quietly censored in schools.
• Tor.com’s Season of the Witch: The Rise of Queer Magic in YA SFF: What a time to be alive. Queer witch lit is finally here!
• Anime Feminist’s Yuri is for Everyone: An analysis of yuri demographics and readership: This is an ambitious analysis of who reads yuri (f/f) manga. Spoiler alert: it’s a wide range of demographics.

Personal Reflections:

• Book Riot’s Want to Start a Queer Book Club? Here’s How: Live the dream! Includes some recs for your first reads.
• Tor.com’s Looking Back on Ten Years of Queering SFF, From 2010 to 2020: I’ve only recently discovered Tor.com’s Queering SFF column, so I was surprised to learn that it turned ten this month! The Lesbrary and Queering SFF are both fifth graders!
• Book Riot’s Seeing My Queer, Ill Self in Jenn Shapland’s New Memoir: This is a personal essay relating to Shapland’s description of her illness, and how its erasure connects to the invisibility of her sexuality. Vulnerable and compelling.
• Literary Hub’s Googling Literary Lesbians: On Carson McCullers and the Erotics of Incompletion: Another take on the Shapland new release. I loved this thoughtful meditation on a Google search I know all too well: “Was [NAME] a lesbian?”

Lesbrary link round ups are made possible by Patreon!
Support the Lesbrary for $5 a month and get queer books throughout the year!

Authors of Colour:

• YA Pride’s LGBTQIAP+ Black History Month Book List 2020: I was so glad to see Black History Month produce so many resources like this!
• LGBTQ Reads’s Black History Month 2020: And this! Which is updated and expanded every year.
• Reads Rainbow’s Book Recs: Books By and About QPOC: Rainbow Reads is a new follow for me, but I’m really liking what I see so far.
• ‘The Color Purple’: A sublime portrayal of lesbianism ahead of its time: This post discusses how The Color Purple, a classic of Black literature, has had its lesbianism erased.
• Lambda Literary had the Audre Lorde Taught Us series, where authors discuss Lorde’s legacy in their own work. Meanwhile, Autostraddle is celebrating Year of Our (Audre) Lorde every month.

New Releases:

• LGBTQ Reads’s TBRainbow Alert: 2020 Graphic Novels and Memoirs, Part I
• Lambda Literary’s New in February: Brandon Taylor, R. Eric Thomas, and Lidia Yuknavitch
• Anxious Nachos’s F/F February: Most anticipated 2020 sapphic releases
• Book Riot’s 15 LGBTQ YA Audiobooks to Listen to in the First Half of 2020

March new releases are going to be their own post, which will be up soon!

This post, and all posts at the Lesbrary, have the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee. For even  more links, check out the Lesbrary’s twitter! We’re also on Facebook, Goodreads, Youtube and Tumblr.

Support the Lesbrary on Patreon at $2 or more a month and be entered to win a queer women book every month! $5 and up patrons get guaranteed books throughout the year on top of the giveaways!

Check out my master list of more than 100 bi and lesbian books that I (Danika) have read and loved! I have recently updated with some of my recent reads, including an awesome manga and a memorable YA book. They all have links to my full review.

You can also check out the Lesbrary Amazon Page, which has the same recommendations, but you can browse by cover, and each book has a tweet-length recommendation.

If you’re a close reader of the Lesbrary, you might have noticed a lack of Link Round Ups in the past few months. That’s a result of me being overwhelmed by practicum (I survived! I’m a teacher now!), but I’m also using it as an opportunity to experiment a little bit. I’ve still been compiling interesting links, but I’ve shared most of them on tumblr and twitter. For this post, I’ve saved up what I think are the most useful links I’ve come across in the last few months.

Some interesting comics content to check out:

• Comics Beat’s Gift Guide: 50 queer comics for everyone on your list: Better late than never
• Comic Book Resources’s Wonder Woman: The Iconic Hero Was the First Bisexual Superhero: A thorough history of Wonder Woman’s bisexuality, from conception to now
• Advocate’s The Best LGBTQ Graphic Novels of 2019: I can’t wait to finally read these! (I loved Stage Dreams.)
• Okazu’s 100 Years of Yuri 2020 Project by Erica Friedman: Okazu is an excellent resource for anything yuri, and in this post, she looks at the entire history of yuri, from 1919-2019.

The end of the year (and decade!) brought with it a deluge of lists. Here are some of my favourites:

• Autostraddle’s 80 of the Best Queer, Lesbian and Bisexual Books of the Decade
• Autostraddle’s 55 of the Best Queer Books of 2019

And as for the present–or near-past–here are some lists of new releases since the last round up:

• LGBTQ Reads’s New Releases: November 2019
• Lambda Literary’s New in November: Bernardine Evaristo, Carmen Maria Machado, and Robyn Crawford
• LGBTQ Reads’s New Releases: December 2019
• Lambda Literary’s New in December: Ryan La Sala, Steve Abbott, and Rachel Rabbit White
• Lambda Literary’s New in January: Larry Kramer, M.K. England, and Garth Greenwell

The recent releases I’m excited about:

• Collie Jolly by Leigh Landry: I love reading sapphic Christmas books in October, and this one also has a dog theme! I can’t resist!
• In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado: Check out my review here.
• The Life and Times of Butch Dykes: Portraits of Artists, Leaders and Dreamers Who Changed the World by Eloisa Aquino: This little illustrated book is sitting on my dresser, and I am so looking forward to flipping through it.
• A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow by Makoto Hagino: This looks like an adorable yuri manga, set at an aquarium.

The rest of the links had to do with 2020 new releases, so they got their own post here!

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