If you’ve ever listened to the podcast, you know me, but you may or may not know that I have a PhD in English with an emphasis on disability studies and children's literature. That all means that I spent a lot of time thinking about how fat bodies are represented in literature for young people, which led me to so many great resources!
Read moreIt's Time to Revisit Red Clocks
Red Clocks by Leni Zumas (Little Brown) By the way, this is the best abstract illustration of a vulva on a book? Right? The cover was designed and illustrated by Lauren Harms and I’m obsessed.
Since the Supreme Court draft opinion was leaked at the beginning of May, showing the court is posed to overrule Roe v. Wade any day now, I can’t stop thinking about a book I originally read when it was published in 2018.
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: The Mercies
Emily: It's round 4 of lesbian books for lesbians. JK lesbian books are for everyone.
Kelli: It's true. Today we are talking about my pick, The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave!
(Spoilers ahead… or should we say spoilers ahoy?)
Read morePromising Young Woman Isn't What I Expected — It's Even Better
Promising Young Woman is a movie I’ve been looking forward to since I first saw the trailer in theaters, a memory which seems like worlds away from where we are now. Starring the always good Carey Mulligan and billed as a black comedy thriller, it’s the kind of movie I would have bought tickets to see opening weekend, and which on a big screen would have delivered a strong enough gut punch that instead of immediately pushing my way out of the chaos of an emptying theater, I’d have actually sat through the credits.
Unfortunately, most of us won’t get to see this film on the screen it deserves. This past weekend, the 2020 film became available to rent on demand, and so I watched it on my living room sofa with my best friend and our cats. Watching Promising Young Woman in the theaters would have accentuated its luscious visuals and punchy soundtrack, but as it turns out, there’s something to be said for watching it in the company of a person you would absolutely commit murder for.
(Spoilers to follow; CW for sexual assault and suicide)
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: Plain Bad Heroines
We’re back for the 3rd ever QUEER GIRL BOOK CLUB, friends! And this time, we’re reviewing Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth. This book is described as: “A highly imaginative and original horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls—a wickedly whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit.” Yes. 1,000 times yes.
Please know that spoilers will follow after the cut, and because we compare the narrator of this book to Gossip Girl (xoxo), we will be using Gossip Girl gifs to help us narrate our review. Please enjoy! Sort of like we know you’re enjoying this image of a little kitten next to a big book.
Read moreBSG #46: Super Into Twins / The Vanishing Half
BSG #46: Super Into Twins / The Vanishing Half
Join the #BookSquad for a chat about Brit Bennett’s newest novel, "The Vanishing Half." We discuss memory and time, identity and choice, and performance, as well as our favorite stories about twins. Next, we read some listener feedback on "Magic for Liars" and "We Set the Dark on Fire" and catch up with what’s on the #BookSquadBlog, including a spooky movie series and book and TV reviews. Watch "The Haunting of Bly Manor" on Netflix for our next #Othersode on October 19, and read along for our next #Bookpisode on Paul Tremblay’s "Survivor Song" on November 2. Send your feedback to thesquad@booksquadgoals.com!
Click through for summary, table of contents, and show notes!
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: The Color Purple
Kelli: It is September, and time for our second ever Queer Book Club meeting!
Emily: How fun. It's officially a thing now because we've done it two times.
Kelli: Yay us!
Kelli: So, the point of doing this club is to expose ourselves to more queer lit. I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do in terms of queer literature, and while I am obviously into reading more recent stuff (like we did for our last post), I also wanted to take this opportunity to fill in a very important blind spot for myself: The Color Purple by Alice Walker.
Not only had I never read The Color Purple, but I also had no idea that it was even queer. I knew it was a huge touchstone of Black literature as well as southern literature, but that was the extent of my knowledge of the book. Then Emily told me I should read it, with the caveat that it is epistolary, a word I just had to look up how to spell.
Emily: Haha. Yes, Kelli famously hates epistolary novels.
Spoilers to follow for this book from 1982.
Read moreBSG #45: Baby's First Rebellion / We Set the Dark on Fire
BSG #45: Baby's First Rebellion / We Set the Dark on Fire
Throw on your resistance gear and join the squad as we rise up against The System with a discussion of Tehlor Kay Mejia’s We Set the Dark on Fire. We talk about the book’s real life parallels to the broken immigration system in our country, how the novel handles the patriarchy of it all, and of course, most importantly, the ROMANCE PLOT. After our ratings, we get into what’s on the blog, and then prep you for our upcoming episodes. We’re covering Netflix’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things for our next othersode (9/21), and for our next bookpisode (10/5), we’re reading The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. Please follow us on social media @booksquadgoals, check out our latest blog posts at booksquadgoals.com/blog, and send any and all feedback you have to thesquad@booksquadgoals.com!
Click through for summary, table of contents, and show notes!
Read moreSilvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic: What Did I Just Read?
You might remember your friends here at #BookSquadGoals reviewing one of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s previous novels, Gods of Jade and Shadow, in a podcast episode. This book… is not that book. This one is very different.
One of the things that is so intriguing to me about Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s work is her willingness to try different genres. Gods of Jade and Shadow is a play on Mayan mythology set in Mexico during the jazz age. Earlier this year, she came out with a thriller novel called Untamed Shore. And in this, her SECOND novel of 2020, Moreno-Garcia taps into gothic horror.
But was it any good? And what does it mean for something to be Mexican gothic? And can I manage to talk about this book without spoiling anything? And what the heck did I just read?
My answers to follow. And yes, I am going to try to avoid spoilers here. Wish me luck.
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Emily: Okay hello. Welcome to a new blog series which we have named... what did we name it again?
Kelli: Girl and Girl on Girl on Girl.
Emily: 4G for short.
Kelli: JK I think we’re calling it Queer Girl Book Club.
Emily: We're workshopping this as we go, people.
Kelli: Mostly because I wanted to focus on queer women/NB people, but we'll see what choices we make moving forward!
Emily: Yeah who knows. We might throw some dudes in there. But like... we may never. That's our prerogative. This is our blog.
Kelli: Also, we're girls, so the name still works.
Emily: Anyhow. For our inaugural Queer Girl Book Club blog post, we're talking about Carmen Maria Machado's memoir In The Dream House.
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