Emily: It’s been a long time coming, but we’re finally here with another installment of QUEER GIRL BOOK CLUB! And this month, we’re chatting about House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson. I picked this one out because I read and enjoyed Henderson’s last book The Year of the Witching. At first, I thought this book was going to be a sequel to that book, but then I heard that the sequel (entitled The Dawn of the Coven) had been pushed back, and that House of Hunger was going to be its own standalone novel. And that it was going to be super queer. So of course I thought… hey, this sounds like the perfect book for our lil club. Despite this cover. Which I’d love to hear Kelli talk about.
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: Briefly, A Delicious Life
Kelli: Happy New Year! I’m allowed to say that through the end of January, right?
Emily: I say ‘til the end of February. Let people ease into 2023. Haven’t we earned that?
Kelli: We may be a little late, but better late than never, and we are finally ready to discuss Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens. I picked this book because we love queer ghost stories here, and I’m also a fan of queer historical fiction (girls kissing but it’s not ALLOWED? Sign me up). This one also sparked my interest in that it’s actually from the perspective of the ghost, which is something we don’t get all that often. Ghost stories are scary because ghosts are unknown, and with that element removed, a ghost story turns into something melancholic rather than horrifying.
How did you feel about the way this book approached ghosts?
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: The Verifiers
Emily: Queer Girl Book Club is back in action, and this time we’re talking about the mystery novel The Verifiers by Jane Pek. The Verifiers is Jane Pek’s debut novel, introducing amateur sleuth Claudia Lin. Claudia is a mystery novel-loving twenty-something who's just been recruited by Veracity, a referral-only online dating detective agency. But when one of the agency’s clients goes missing, Claudia finds herself breaking the rules to dive deep into the secret world of people’s online lives and corporate deceit.
Some spoilers to follow.
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: The Memory Librarian
Kelli: Hello and welcome to an extremely belated edition of Queer Girl Book Club! This month (or last month? Or maybe the month before that, who is to say?) we read The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monae. The collection is an expansion of the Afrofuturistic universe Monae initially explored in their 2018 studio album, Dirty Computer, and features five stories written alongside five different collaborators: Alaya Dawn Johnson, Danny Lore, Eve L. Ewing, Yohanca Delgado, and Sheree Renée Thomas.
So, the obvious place to start is with Janelle Monae, right? How familiar are you with their work, and were you a fan of Dirty Computer? Bonus Q: have you watched any of the “emotion picture” released alongside the album?
(Note: Janelle Monae uses they/them and she/her pronouns. For the purposes of this article, we’ll be using they/them)
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: Fiona and Jane
Emily: It’s time for another installment of everyone’s favorite queer girl book club, Queer Girl Book Club! This time around we’re talking about Fiona and Jane, a sort of novel/sort of linked short story collection (we can talk about what exactly it is as we chat) about two friends. You guessed it. Their names are Fiona. And Jane.
So I chose this book because I typically enjoy linked short stories, and I love books about female friendship. Fiona Lin and Jane Shen have been best friends since the second grade. Both Fiona and Jane are Taiwanese American women growing up in Los Angeles with different but equally tumultuous family lives. As with most friendships, there are moments in time when Fiona and Jane grow closer to one another, and other periods of time where they drift apart.
SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body
Kelli: Hello friends! Welcome back to Queer Girl Book Club. For our first QGBC pick of 2022, Emily and I read Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body by Megan Milks. This book is a wild ride and I’m super excited to get into it, but first, a content warning: we will be discussing the book’s extensive exploration of disordered eating, so if that’s something you are uncomfortable with, maybe skip this one. Also: spoilers to follow!
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
Emily: Welcome to another edition of Queer Girl Book Club, which is now past its inaugural stages and is in full swing. We’ve read some great books, we’ve read some okay books, and we’ve read some really bad ones. So where does our latest one fall on the scale? This time, we’re discussing Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca. It’s a novella written all through e-mails and instant messages between two women who enter into a BSDM relationship with each other that’s entirely virtual. Agnes meets Zoe when she’s trying to sell her apple peeler on a queer message board. Agnes seems desperate to find connection, and Zoe… well, her motivations are a little less clear and something I think we should discuss. We also have a guest with us this time! So welcome Mary! What made you want to join Queer Girl Book Club for this particular book?
Mary: When you mentioned that y’all were reading this book, I knew I had to force my way into the discussion because I’ve been wanting to read it for a long time. I keep seeing posts on BookTok about it, and a lot of book influencers have talked about how shocking and horrific it is. Nothing gets me hooked more than something people are disgusted by–I just have to know what’s up. Also, I love an epistolary novel; the constraint required makes for a more interesting story, sometimes. I’m not ashamed to say I read this one in one sitting!
Emily: Well, this is interesting because I know Kelli hates epistolary novels so maybe we should start there and let y’all duke it out. Did this form work? What sort of constraints does this form put on the story, if any?
I should also say… spoilers to follow!
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat
This bookshelf exists too much
Kelli: Hello and welcome back to Queer Girl Book Club! I’m your host, Kelli. Just kidding, this is a blog post.
This month we’re talking about You Exist Too Much, the debut novel by Zaina Arafat. The story follows a Palestinian-American young woman as she navigates her twenties. Our narrator is never named, which I only noticed about halfway through the book. I thought to myself, ‘what’s her name again?’ and then flipped through for a while before I realized she didn’t have one. I was surprised, I guess because I felt like I knew her so well already. So I guess a good way to start this discussion is to ask: how did you feel about the narrator?
(Spoilers to follow)
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: The Upstairs House
Emily: Welcome to Queer Girl Book Club, friends! This time, we’re talking about The Upstairs House by Julia Fine. This one was my pick, so let me tell you about it and tell you why I picked it. This book is described as Shirley Jackson meets The Awakening, which… ok. This is the story of Megan who has just given birth to a human baby named Clara, which is enough to drive anyone over the edge, right? On top of that her husband Ben is out of town a lot, leaving Clara alone to care for the baby most of the time. Thankfully, she has the help of her upstairs neighbor who happens to be the ghost of Margaret Wise Brown (yes, the author of Goodnight, Moon.) Oh, and her lover, actress Michael Strange. Strap in for a wild ride.
Spoilers to follow.
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
Kelli: Welcome back to Queer Girl Book Club! This time we read Honey Girl, the debut novel from author Morgan Rogers.
Honey Girl follows Grace, a newly-minted doctor of astronomy who is unsure about her next steps in life after spending eleven years working towards accomplishing this goal. On a vacation to Las Vegas, she meets Yuki, a New Yorker, and they drunkenly get married that night. Grace decides that instead of heading straight for the career path she's been planning, she'll spend the summer in New York getting to know Yuki and avoiding reality.
Emily, I'm going to get this out of the way now: we both really wanted to like this book, and neither of us did.
Emily: Right. So you know, maybe just for the fun of it, before we talk about the myriad of reasons this book didn't work for us, should we maybe say a few things about what did work and why we were interested in reading it in the first place?
Kelli: Sure! Obviously, this is Queer Girl Book Club, and for me, the main draw here was the lesbian romance.
Emily: Yes, clearly part of the draw was lesbians.
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