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We've Always Been Queer

The podcast is Books That Burn because the original idea was "books that burn you", discussing fictional depictions of trauma. It's also an intentional reminder of the pile of burning books, you know the photo I mean, the one from WWII. It's a pile of books about queerness, gender, and sexuality. Just in case you don't know, the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) was headed by Magnus Hirschfeld.  It was a resource for gay, intersex, and transgender people, both of knowledge and medical help. It also helped the community with addiction treatment and contraception. It wasn't perfect and some of the ideas they had seem out of date now, the ones we know about anyway. But they were trying to make queer people's lives better, and they were a community resource at a time when people really needed it. Which is all the time, we always need these accesses. And the Nazis burned the whole library. It took days, they had to drag the books ou...
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The Skinjacker Trilogy: Everlost, Everwild, Everfound

I love books and series which establish rules early and then twist what you expect those rules to mean, without actually breaking any of them along the way. The Skinjacker Trilogy by Neal Shusterman is one such series. The trilogy takes advantage of unreliable narrators to create a world where dueling understandings and agendas weave together until each character knows exactly what they ought to in order for the story to progress. But, while a lesser story might let the reader sit smugly, knowing all, Everlost builds the rules Mary Hightower wants you to know, Everwild shows you what Allie the Outcast has managed to find out, and Everfound calmly takes your hand and says that it is more strange and wonderful than any of them could know. When I first read Everlost, when it was just a single book and there was no hint of a trilogy, it was a strange and beautiful book which moved me deeply. I wanted more, but wasn’t expecting it. Discovering over a decade later that there were more books coming, I was not disappointed. I’d be hard-pressed to declare this my favorite book/series by but that is only because his other works are deeply and differently moving, and I will be reading them, new and old, as I have the time in between life and our recording schedule.

CW for child death.

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