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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 It wasn't perfect and some of the ideas they had seem out of date now, the ones we know about anyway.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

Holding Back the Dark by John David Bethel

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.  

DNF 10% in. This is a political thriller/murder mystery which is detail-laden in an attempt to give context, but I don’t care enough about the political machinations being described in order to devote the mental energy to piecing together their importance. Also there’s a weird thread of subtle misogyny which isn’t confined to any one character but feels like a problem with the book as a whole (at least the part of it I got through). The police procedural bits were the most interesting so far but the prose even in those sections was so flat that it felt like it was trying to be boring on purpose and the conversations were closer to dialogue transcripts than full scenes. This might be for someone, but it’s not for me.

CW for sexism, sexual violence (not depicted), gore, mutilation, blood, death.

End of year-a-thon: Recently acquired

A person in a hoodie walks down a street lit by a single streetlight.


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