As usual for Tuesday posts, when I’m less interested in a prompt, I’ll do one of my own. Here in Minnesota we are rapidly approaching hot-cocoa season! I thought I’d share ten books with main characters who are unrelenting rays of sunshine and goodness. If you like your protagonists with a helping of moral bankruptcy, there’s a list for that too. Interestingly, four of these are novellas and three are cat squashers, leaving a lot fewer ‘normal-sized’ novels on this list than I was expecting.
I tend to focus more on the speculative fiction side of my reading on this blog, but I’m also an avid Romance reader! I decided to be a little cheeky today and go for a pun instead of something properly Autumn themed. I decided that I’d like to share some of my favorite genre-romances. It was surprisingly tough to narrow down my list, and I erred on excluding a few of my favorites that felt too close to some of the others here. For those new to my blog, the vast majority of these are going to be gay (all except the first, in fact). I do read Romance outside m/m, but it’s a lot fewer and tend to have less of an impact on me.
I have excluded hybrid stories that also focus on other A-Plots in addition to Romance, such as Captive Prince (Military Fantasy), The Darkness Outside Us (Existential Thriller), or How To Survive this Fairytale (The Messy Process of Healing from Trauma). Also, happy endings are guaranteed! Most of these I don’t have longform reviews for, but the covers will take you to their goodreads pages!
I’m thankful for a lot of things about my relationship with the r/fantasy and r/QueerSFF subreddits, but one of the biggest has been their insistence on highlighting self-published and small press books. There’s dedicated communities hyping stories that nobody has heard of, a recurring self-published/small press squares both sub’s yearly reading challenges, and a willingness to talk about books that get no press in many other spaces.
Since I’ve started tracking my reading, lots of these books have ended up as personal favorites. So here are 10 Self-Published and Small Press books I’m obsessed with that I think everyone should consider reading.
As a homebody, I don’t feel the need to travel often, especially since it can be expensive once you get a pet. He’s the light of my life, but he’s also a money pit. Anyways, instead of talking about places I’ve visited, I thought it would be more fun to focus on speculative worlds that I’d enjoy visiting instead!
Unfortunately, most of the worlds that I categorize as cool are also terrible places to live. Fantasy and Science Fiction loves dystopian societies, and usually the cooler the world is, the worse it would be to live there. However, there are some truly delightful settings out there that I wish I could step through a portal and live for … well in some cases forever.
It has been interesting to see how my reading habits have shifted the more I read. Used to be that I read 20 books on a good year, and I would read series back to back if they were out. Now I’m probably going to top 200 reads this year, and it feels painful to devote time to a sequel when I could be discovering something new. It’s increased my preferences for standalone books and duologies, and my interest in long series has dwindled.
Some of these I’ve left behind for so long that I’ve forgotten important details, while others are new discoveries that I know I plan on continuing. For each, I’ve put the cover and link for Book 1 in the series.
Ten years ago I’d just gotten out of college, was gearing up to be a student teacher, and was grappling with independent adult life for the first time. I also hadn’t done much pleasure reading for years; being a college English major really kills your drive to read for fun, and I had a lot of trouble getting back into my old habits. I owe Brandon Sanderson a lot for being the on-ramp back into reading. I don’t pick him up much anymore, but I’ll forever have a fondness for the sparks he lit back inside me for books.
I did my best to find the exact books I was reading on August 11 for the past ten years. Many of the earlier years are estimates, as I don’t have exact data. However, they’re certainly books I was reading that year, even if not on August 11 exactly.
I am so bad at this! The more I read – and I’m reading more than ever before – the more I feel like there are so many great books that I haven’t gotten the chance to touch. These are books which I immediately wanted to read, but which have ended up languishing on my bookshelf. I’m limiting myself to physical books
As a 6th grade English teacher, one of the first units I teach every year focuses on characters. We do a recap of things they should have learned in elementary school, how to cite textual evidence, and a few other basic skills they’ll need in middle school. My favorite part of the unit, however, is showing them stories where the main character isn’t necessarily a ‘good’ person. While I love a protagonist I can unapologetically root for, I’ve found that I often can’t stop thinking about characters who are a bit more complicated.
So, here are some of my favorite characters that kept me up at night. They’re complex, charismatic, and addictively readable. When thinking about my all-time top 10, four currently appear on this list. You’ll find redemption, unapologetic villainy, and everything in between.
Valentine’s Day has never particularly interested me. I like anniversaries much more to celebrate a relationship. When I was single it felt stupid and corny, and when partnered I found that anniversaries felt more meaningful. It helps that anniversaries (usually) don’t involve fighting with a bunch of other couples for a restaurant reservation. As I started reading more Fantasy and Science Fiction, I quickly discovered that most books with Queer protagonists tended to focus on romance plotlines, Achillean books even moreso. As an avid Genre-Romance reader, I’m a big fan of love stories, but I also love seeing books about Queer folks living life, tackling evil dictators, and doing grand acts of magic.
This is a list of Queer books I love that don’t feature major romance plotlines. Some of these might feature established relationships, others may have romantic elements that don’t have a traditional happy ending (or are so minor to be unremarked on), or are unconcerned with romantic bonds altogether. You’ll find everything from popcorn action stories to thematically ambitious literature here, so hopefully you find something interesting if you’re looking to scratch your anti-Valentine’s day itch!
For the past three years, I’ve taught middle and high schoolers classes on reading and creating comics and graphic novels. What started as an impulsive decision quickly spun into a rekindling of my childhood love of sequential art. I grew up reading manga (unsurprisingly, I read a fairly equal balance of Shoenn and Shoujo; truly we gays get the best of both worlds) and finding my footing in what I like and dislike as an adult has been a fun adventure. Around November, I realized it would be pretty feasible for me to complete a bingo card comprised entirely of graphic novels. Some of these I read for school, others for personal enjoyment, and a few to explore things outside my perceived comfort zone.
Reviews are organized according to vibe so you can find the type of comic you’d enjoy, with my favorites within each category further towards the top. I anticipate that this is a challenge I’ll continue to pursue, though I think I’ll probably just read what’s interesting and see where the pieces fall for future years. Enjoy!
Continue reading “r/Fantasy 2025 Bingo Card #2 – Comics and Graphic Novels”
