Sometimes when I’m scrolling on social media, as I do, I come across creators or users who start a video by saying “I read 100 books this year”, or “All the books I read this month”, and it’s something diabolical like seventeen, and they’re all more than 700 pages long. And then I’ll end up thinking to myself, wow, I really am a terrible reader, for someone who thinks of themselves as a reader, anyway. I only read X amount of books this year, and it’s already December. Phoney.
I’m sure this is a familiar feeling to all you readers out there. But fear not. I’m here to tell you that actually, I’ve decided that the numbers don’t matter. What reading is about is the quality, not the quantity. It’s about what the books made you feel, who the characters reminded you of, what niche micro-obsession they sparked. And once you realise that, no one on the internet who supposedly read 100 books this year is allowed to make you feel bad about yourself.
In the interest of this novel (ha) metric, this “quality”, I’ve compiled a list of what I would describe as the best queer and queer-leaning books I read in 2024 (and a few I read before that, in the interest of transparency).
Go forth and read, readers. And remember, it’s not a race.
Continue reading here.
julia kittelty 