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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 It wasn't perfect and some of the ideas they had seem out of date now, the ones we know about anyway.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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Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children, #1)

Every Heart a Doorway is cold, strange, dark, beautiful, and deathly. If this is the start I can’t wait to see what the series goes on to be. I loved every second, I have the feeling that I've glimpsed my door, or one close enough that leaving it aches. 

The characters are vibrant and unique, and the premise of the worlds gives language to describe the variety in a general way even if we didn't learn every possible combination in this, the first book. It deftly handles what could have been a lot of heavy explanation with just enough to be a guidepost, a scaffold for future books. There’s a great balance between explaining the rules of the world, or at least the guidelines, while offering a taste of the myriad other places future stories might go. I love the plot, the writing, just all of it. The setting evokes the feeling of many of the weird and wonderful books I’ve loved before, but it stands on its own without relying on me to be nostalgic for other stories. Seanan’s writing consistently speaks to something in me, I’ve barely finished this world and I miss it already. 

CW for murder, dismemberment, gore, major character death. 

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A wooden door stands halfway open in the middle of a sunlit forest

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