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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 It wasn't perfect and some of the ideas they had seem out of date now, the ones we know about anyway.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 Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2)

Percy meets one of his half-siblings and has to deal with more implications of his immortal parentage. Grover's search goes awry, Clarisse's quest is similarly troubled, and Percy is failing at his efforts to be innocuous.

I enjoy the dynamic between Percy and Tyson. Not where it is at the start of the book (Percy had to work through some things), but I like where it ends up. Grover's captivity is VERY stressful, and as much as I wish he'd gotten his answer, his quest is too big to be solved in book two, so I think that was the right choice.

There's a lot of terror and pain in this one. These are books for kids, but they are pretty deep. A lot of the depth and complexity comes from understanding the implications of various plot points, but there's enough detail that it's clear that it was on purpose. This applies to everything from Percy's mom's dynamic with Gabe in the last book (a very abusive relationship with her as the victim), to the little hints of her moving on that we get in this one. These books aren't about her, but it feels like she's a full person who just isn't the focus, rather than having thin characterization.

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