Aaah yes, loving this ✨ religious trauma ✨ the most horrifying thing!

I yearn for these sort of values to be widespread

After thinking it over, I believe it will be easier for myself and most PB users if we stick to the seasonal readalong structure. That being said, we will be reading Pet by Akwaeke Emezi from the beginning of December 2025 to the end of Febraury 2026. Discussions about the readalong for this winter season should happen here, but discussions about the book should happen in the book forum. I will create a TW/CW list in the comments under this post for Pet. Please let me know if you believe I'm missing one under that comment as it's been a while since I've read it (and I'll be re-reading it with y'all).

In the future, I will be giving y'all a handful of books to vote from for the seasonal readalong with a variety of intensity. I also will be adding new books at the end of each yearly quarter, so expect to see 5 new additions at the end(ish) of March. If you have book recommendations, please put them in the book recommendations thread so I can keep them all tidy. Books get heavily vetted by myself to make sure 1.) it's queer and horror 2.) it's of decent quality 3.) I don't have too many of the same book rep in the quest (I have a lot of monogamous white sapphic books rn, so that's lower on the list but books of that category will still get added eventually).

LINK TO REC BOOKS FOR THE QUEST

Caitlin Starling's The Starving Saints would be a great addition here!

OMG this book is an unpleasant read so far. I understand that it’s meant to be morbid and grotesque, but it just makes me feel dirty as I read it and I don’t like that….

I’m gonna power through though bc I want to see what happens and it’s a quick read so far. I’m not finding the plot nor the characters too compelling, and it’s a little unclear whose POV I’m in most of the time.

So far it reads like a person who gets into a lot of twitter wars and had some bad experiences with TERFs there. It reads like someone is venting on a fanfic site. I think it’s supposed to be darkly humorous too, maybe sardonic, but it just reads snarky and judgmental so far…

I’ve been reading a decent amount of non-fiction lately, specifically non-fiction that touches on political issues. And don’t get me wrong, these books are incredible and absolutely worth reading, but they’re a bit depressing at the same time.

There’s a lot of people on here who read a lot more of these books than I do and I really admire that but like,,, howww? Do I just need to read more hopeful ones? Ones that offer an action plan for those of us who don’t have any real political or financial power? How do you be an informed citizen without being bitter and angry at the world? Or do you just have to embrace that?😞