my name is Oly Bliss this is my channel f#Bookdraw for those who don't
know I enjoy looking at queer fiction and occasionally I'll create images out
there today I'm doing a wrap-up from June where I was particularly focusing
on a lot of queer related books so the first one was the fifth season by
N.K. Jemisin so this is a kind of epic fantasy which is done across three books
and I did it as a not what you read which really father did however the only
criticism I would say with having an audio read before an epic fantasy there
is the benefit of that you all the world-building with anything kind of
fantasy or science fiction is usually something that takes a little bit of
time to adjust to but I was listening the glossary and like I know now that
there is this big glossary at the end where it can explain everything else and
so when I was first kind of going along with it it took me a little while to get
my head into some of the terminology that was being used the benefit of doing
audio is someone else is going through that terminology for you and you just
become more familiar with the sounds of the words and since because it was
something that I actually listened to at the beginning of the month I went back
to wiki you know some of the terminology and it's all there so if you are doing
it as an audio read you always have Wikipedia do you always have these
resources that's a hand so basically it's following three different main
storylines but then there's a whole series of other side characters which
are integrated into this but it's mainly three female protagonists and they live
in this world which is kind of like Pangea where we used to have all our
continents squished together into one supercontinent so they live in a world
which is like that and what's really interesting is the magic system is all
kind of based around the kinetic energy and magnaflow's of
the the continent and there are this group of people who can tap into that
where they can actually pull from the Earth's energy and they're called
Orogenes and and they have this ability the ability to manipulate the heat and
the energy flow but what's also kind of scarier is that if they can't withdraw
that this heat they as an energy source they can withdraw it from human beings
and so they freeze but every time the magic is used it's really beautifully
illustrated and you really go in through the eyes of the person who is casting
that magic so I really really enjoyed that part
what kind of clutched for me slightly is that one of the characters and some so
at the beginning she has two children one of them gets murdered and then the
rest of her journey is trying to search for her daughter and but for some reason
it like it's particularly when you were hearing yet it is doing it for a second
person narrative but and it really jarred with me because I was like what
me or I cuz also preserves listening to I was like it's you a character named
and there's like no no this is actually me and I am now this person so that
jarred with me a little bit but um you kind of get over it you guys just go
with the flow vignette yeah with a magnet flavor and micro flow and just go
along with the ride but the other characters I really really enjoyed or
particularly liked one of the characters called Simon I so syenite has this
ability rush um and she's got these four rings so that is a demonstration of her
kind of level of ability and she's brought together with alabasta who's a
ten rigueur so he's like super powerful and it's interesting to see the dynamic
of their relationship and how their relationship evolves through the course
of their time together and it quite goes into some polyamory
territory there which I actually really enjoyed listening to and how that was
kind of constructed and the roles of the relationship and that was the kind of
queer element within it as well but I believe that some of this queerness will
continue to expand through the rest of the trilogy from people that spoken to
but I just thought it was quite a refreshing tone in terms of the
relationships that were in there and what their roles were together I felt
like from reading it I was only really being introduced to what the rest of the
world is and so it's it's actually left me wanting more and I I would i really
enjoyed the ride with it the next one was what I was talk about is let's talk
about love which is by Claire Kann and let's talk about love because I love
this book I think this might be like a read of the year for me so this is all
about Alice and and she has just broken up with Margot and so she's actually
asexual and that was the kind of root cause of why they broke up and she's
working in the library which I also found really cute as well just because
you you kind of want to be there you able to be in the world that she's
living in and she's got this color code system where she kind of sees other
people and as a level of attraction to her and so previously like everyone's
been different shades of like yellow and green up to orange but then there's this
new guide to Kimmie who comes in to the library and she starts working with him
and she is like knocked off a socks off surrett across the floor she doesn't
know what's going on she doesn't know how to describe him like she's got all
the fields and so he becomes code black and she's like this guy is doing things
for her and she she is kind of a bit confused by what those feelings mean to
her so then she goes for a bit counseling and she gets them support
learning about the difference between attraction and desire
so and how they are actually separate entities to each other because I've
never really kind of considered it before or mold much on it and because
this book was introduced to me through ChrisVigilante own perpetual pages and
so Adriana today have like explained what it means to be asexual and because
I was finding it quite confusing and difficult to kind of grasp like that
some of the language in some of the how that feeling feels but reading about
this separation between attraction and desire really kind of spelled it out for
me so like in terms of for me personally
the realm to relate that to it's like I can see someone like Zac Efron is very
attractive like I think he's an attractive guy he's very pretty
but I there was just no desire there for me personally whereas if you can to
compare him with someone like Gerard Butler or Idris Elba
desire like I'm into that but I would see all of them as attracted people
attracted men but I like what gets me kind of going and gets me interested is
some of the attributes that both be able to display over someone like Zac Efron
so it kind of helped lock or unlock some things in my thinking as well and I
think that's why I appreciated this more so even if you're not someone who's ace
like there is a lot that you can get out of there and it was just it was fun it
was really fun and it was really endearing and sweet and joyous and I was
just wrapped up in it I you just wanted to chill out with her and just hang out
and oh yeah I'd love to know where she goes on what happens to them next and
and the ending is just the so super cute I was yeah I was really into this so the
next one in which oh and and red was the Brightsiders which was a part of the
readathon where they did a read along with and that was Theory Rogan and
Kathy and and I hadn't even heard about this book it was wasn't on my radar at all
what I particularly liked about this book is that it was really positive
about different forms of queer representation throughout the book so
the Brightsider is focusing on Emma King who is a bisexual female character
who's a drummer in a band and they're doing really really well and she's on
the cusp of like going to start to explore what it would be like to sing
and there is all this kind of ongoing media based drama where she's kind of
fallen a little bit off the rail and she's trying to rectify some of the bad
things in her life and I particularly thought was great as Emma's not the most
self-confident character but she has a level of self-awareness and she knows
some things in her life aren't right and it's through her friendships and the
conversations that she has she's able to actually say no this isn't actually
right and there are things that are wrong in my life which I need to sort
out and an alter so there was some really positive messaging particularly
for awhile a novel which I've just really appreciated the only kind of
criticism against that is that a lot of it's attached to wealth so because she's
in this position of being a superstar she has a lot more privilege and freedom
and when she's struggling she basically hops on a plane it goes to Hawaii and
chills out and can get her headspace sorted so in terms of how that relates
on a day-to-day basis for the rest of us you kind of just have to go okay we're
living the super-rich lifestyle right now and if you had all the positions of
wealth and privilege this is how it go you're in a position
of complete control so there was something slightly jarring for me about
that but pulled me out so for the next one which want to read and I just want
to gush about is the queer a graphic history so this is a graphic novel which
takes you through all the different thoughts and theories surrounding queer
theory as a structure and I just found this book fascinating sorry graphic
novel fascinating
so this is by Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Julia Scheele one of
the most interesting parts for me was talking about 'Performative Gender' so in
terms of how when we present ourselves to other people in society we are all
active and we are all acting I mean we're of that kind of concept of we are
all acting like the stage and stuff but this is really talking about how gender
is really specifically performative and how some people can react against
wanting to perform in a certain way because it doesn't necessarily sit well
with them and how there is expectations about those gender roles in which you
experience and you act out on a day-to-day basis
oh I didn't realize is that this there are all sorts of books and maybe I'll add
this as a picture on the side which go into swathes of other thinkers so
there's a whole thing on Jungian theory and Falcault and satire and psychology and
and and just like mania I just want the entire catalogue of this stuff because
it's super easy to digest and really quick and easy consumer or introductions
to quite heavy material so the next one and was a buddy read which I did from
Adam from mementomori and Shawn the book maniac and was going alongside a heap
load of other people it was it was like the biggest
but II read that I've been involved with but there's that too kind of spearheaded
the idea and I um I was just impacted in by Shawn and so I don't know anything
about Muriel Spark before this point and this is her first book that she wrote
and Shawn was just like do you want to take part yeah sure why not kind of
going outside of what I was trying to achieve with my Pride Month but then it
turned out that had a quick character and and the way in which they were
discussing the characters and the uncle who is gay it was that quite like
preparing to me in some ways because there is lots of things within this
which are wrapped up around religion and So Mureil Spark's lead character Caroline is
kind of I would say like Caroline kind of ears morose bark within this but her
character is aware that she's in a book or she becomes aware that she's in a
book and the other people around her are kind of characters within this crime
strict and she's working out how she thinks and feels within that narrative
and what it means to her and there's a lot of metaphysical fiction at play
within this book which really pickled my brain and as I was going through it and
because I didn't have some of the context of who she was and what she was
about and actually Adam was really really helpful in terms of providing
this breadth of context which helped me just lock in and understand who she was
but she's quite playful and devious with her to have perceptions of religion and
her relationship and so she she converts to Catholicism but she's also quite
cynical and highlights the hypocrisy now exists within religion but she has this
kind of develop faith and anything that you think that were hurt really was
she's having this conversation with the young core and it concludes with her
saying but it there's something I'm denying wrong with a person being gay in
terms of through scripture or interview what's outlined in the Bible and it's
something that she can't argue against and for me someone who is really
questioning what religion means and was quite playful and provocative with it
within the book who can kind of reveal things and look at things in a queen of
quizzing a fun light-hearted way and kind of poke holes and but was led to
the conclusion that still someone who was gay was wrong
that that hurts that
hurts that someone has that mentality but then further on down the book she
later says 'that other people may have problems with you but I don't'
so instead of me interpreting what she was saying that like you can't deny what
is written in the Bible itself but it's not something that necessarily affects
her and she doesn't see you and actually a mementomori was am saying how she
ends up living with women for the last part of her life and so potentially she
might be a bit queer herself and pursue that because it was it kind of was a
book which I really like grappled with and conceptually and there's so many
layered different bits within this book that it's well though it's quite it's
light it's doing a lot and it was doing a lot in a quite playful way but in a
really unexpected way and having the insights of everybody else apart from
that who are a part of that group really added to the depth of the experience of
reading it like I would not have got as much out of this book had I read this in
isolation by myself if you want to do a group read on a book
this is a book which I really encourage people to explore collectively rather
than in isolation because the thing you could look at it in quite a narrow and
quick way but if you actually give it time and actually pick some of the
things that being told within this story it just adds a lot more layers to it and
it became quite a rich read for me by the end which I just wasn't expecting I
thought it would be kind of quick and frivolous and it turned out to not be
and to be really epic and cool in the end
so those are all books which I read
in the month of June I know this probably a bit late I seem to be like
telling you a month later what happened in the previous month on a regular basis
and we just kind of go with that as a theme showing but I have loved this
month in terms of the reading that I've done all the stories there has not been
a bad read this month it's been so good so good and like that the queer history
is something that I will be dipping back into just to kind of remind myself of
some of those concepts and kind of making me look at the world more
critically critically in terms of what are you all doing here
why are we behaving in this way but anyway this is enough for me I've had a
really good time telling you about this update and I'll see you again real soon
okay
Bye
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