Hi and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit! It’s a new dawn, it’s a new decade, it’s a new season of book previews.
You don’t need to read a book a week. But you probably do need to read more books in translation.
Memes are a new kind of formalism.
What would happen if you weren’t productive?
These book reviews are vicious.
Tiffany Midge, author of Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s, talked to Electric Literature about how indigenous writers should get more credit for being hilarious, the role of humor in literature, funeral humor and more:
“I’d like to say that no subject is taboo, or no topic is too profane to joke about. But of course, that’s not true. It can be a thin line. Writing humorously on topics like grief or loss come very naturally for me—the humor is where I always end up, it’s a way to cope, distract myself, and to process. And sometimes responding in ways that are inappropriate becomes the joke in and of itself. People will laugh about how uncomfortable they are, how awful such and such a situation or joke is. The situation or joke is funny because it shocks or surprises. It occurs to me that I use a lot of funereal humor, probably because I’ve been to so many funerals. I must have been unconsciously inspired by that Mary Tyler Moore episode where Mary and company goes to a funeral for Chuckles the Clown and Mary struggled to stifle her laughing during the eulogy. “
Read 18 books that defined the 2010s. Read these eight cute queer romances. Read these seven books about mental illness from 2019. Read these essays and short stories on home. Read these 15 books about loneliness. Read these eight fantasy novels by trans and nonbinary writers. Read these 20 queer YA books forthcoming this year and these Latinx fantasy novels. These books are already the best books of 2020.
I want to read those 8 cute queer romances.