My feed has been filled with badge announcements today. Congratulations on your badge(s)! May I just say how much I admire everyone for getting a head start? Really, absolutely, positively could not be me.

I’m curious how everyone picked their choices for their advance reads (if this was intentional and not already a read book) and what motivated you to get started so quickly. Especially for the Pride books, I’d prefer to read in June.

Anyway. Hope you guys enjoy the rest of the events and the books you read. Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈💖🏳️‍⚧️

I picked this book because in Spanish the title (bad translated) is "El gato que amaba los libros" in English "The cat who loved books" and I have a cat who loves books, literally he sits or lies down on them while I'm reading and purrs. It's so cozy to read this one with my cat trying to steal it.

Why is she a prude? Because her eyes widened when you made a blowjob joke? To a woman you still don’t even really know like that? Did a man write this book?

convince me to keep reading? i don’t feel like i’ve got far enough to give it a fair assessment, and it’s not particularly egregious or anything, i’m honestly just kinda bored :/

I have never read a cowboy romance before, and to be honest I'm kinda shocked at how violently* American the language is. I wasn't expecting to read a contemporary book and be struggling with reading the language as if this were a classic!

(* just to avoid confusion, I mean the 'intensely & unapologetically' meaning of the word 'violently', not that the words are violent themselves)

I'm sorry, but "curry power" is such a funny typo. Please tell me it's in every edition of this book.

this chapter on catnip is so cute! I love the little illustration, I never knew why cats liked catnip so much, I'm going to have to treat my cats to some later now too 🥹🥺

But what I've been noticing about people I haven't invited into my queerness is that it introduces a barrier between us. What do I talk to these people about? How do I share feelings and intimacies without revealing this huge part of myself? Who am I without this queerness that now pervades my life, my politics, my everything?

I couldn't have put it better myself. Queerness isn't superficial, something without which you would still be the same person, something that only affects your sexual preferences or your gender identity. Queerness often deeply affects one in so many ways, influencing one's taste in music, films, books, art, one's politics, fears, joys, even things such as one's speech and mannerisms. There are so many times where I can't tell someone what book I'm reading or what movies I've recently watched because I'm not out to them, and I can definitely feel that there is a wall between us because I can't share even these simple every-day things with them. Queerness isn't just one small part of one's identity, it truly permeates someone's entire identity, and not being able to share it makes it incredibly hard to have authentic relationships. I truly wish straight people would understand this more instead of being like "Ugh why do you make being gay your entire personality 🙄"