#Aminah Mae Safi

[thereadingchallengechallenge]

accidentally sapphic stack to get me started for June 👀 I'm not gonna only read LGBT+ books during Pride month but these will keep my queer lit cravings satisfied

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Travelers Along the Way | Author: Aminah Mae Safi | Publisher: Feiwel & Friends (2022)

[candlemystar]

Why do you hate Helen? You’ve made her the villain.

Perfect Helen of Troy. An ideal and a villain all at once.

Helen. Mythological damsel. She’s like a prop. You could replace her with a sexy lamp and the plot wouldn’t change.

Helen isn’t an object. Everyone just thinks she is.

She’s the most beautiful woman in the world. She’s the face that launched a thousand ships.

She isn’t just a face. Isn’t just the most beautiful woman in the world. She’s got thoughts and feelings and ambitions and drive. She’s got her own hopes, her own fears. The storytellers take away a lot of her agency, saying she ran off because a goddess cursed her with love. But she could have stayed. You always have a choice, no matter what you feel. She made the choice to leave it all behind. To do what was unsafe and unexpected. She decided to be selfish.

Aren’t all beautiful women selfish?

I can’t answer that for you. That’s a belief you’ve got. But it’s equally selfish to choose home and safety and the familiar as it is to choose love over duty.

She left her children. Helen had a little girl.

You can think that’s bad or wicked. Immoral, if you want. But there’s drama in that choice. You’re supposed to see your characters, even the ones you don’t like. You don’t just take away Helen’s agency because you don’t like her or don’t agree with her. I don’t think you want to take away Helen’s free will. Her ability to change the plot herself.

Helen of Troy is more than a plot device. She’s more than a beautiful stolen object that needs to be retrieved.

That doesn’t make her good.

I never said she was good. I said she was human. Flawed and real and flesh and blood. Barely older than us and scared out of her mind. Don’t make Helen perfect. Make her real.

If Helen gets to tell the story, she’s not an object. I mean, also, she’s still your idea of who she is. But Helen has always been that way. Does she run off with Paris? Is she abducted? Seduced? Does she ascend to Mount Olympus in the end? Regret her choices? Hate Paris? Love him? Happily resume the role of wife and queen and mother of Sparta? The only thing anyone can really agree on is this—Helen was found missing from her husband’s home and then her husband started a war. That’s it.

Spartan. That was the word. From Helen’s original homeland, Sparta. Utilitarian. Neat. Militaristic, even. The beautiful girl from the most warmongering of the ancient Greek states. If Helen of Troy had really existed, she would have been raised to fight, raised for war. Now she was known for being so pretty, she’d started a global conflict.

She thought of Helen of Troy like everyone who had written her before, and most of those everyone were men.

Her will would have had Helen be the victim. The villain, even. The instigator of all of this unnecessary war, unnecessary evil. Her idea for the whole narrative was to have Cassandra be the tragic, truth-telling protagonist. Worse, she knew she had been right to pull Helen forward. She hadn’t been interested in making the most beautiful woman in the world into the most fascinating woman in the world. But this was different. She had pulled on the thread of Helen’s humanity. She had found what makes any character relatable to so many people—her imperfections. Helen here was vain, but also trying to be brave. She was selfish, but also living in a world that had made her be selfless since childhood. She was a woman trying to walk her own path in this world, despite there being no such thing for her.

- Tell Me How You Really Feel, Aminah Mae Safi

[pithia]

[T]hat is when my heart reminds me that each of my friends has their own home to get to. Their own story that they live. Their own life, in which I am possibly a passing player. A mere line in an otherwise long and epic verse.

from Travelers Along the Way by Aminah Mae Safi

[books-to-add-to-your-tbr]

Title: Fresh Ink

Author: Lamar Giles, Nicola Yoon, Malinda Lo, Melissa de la Cruz, Sara Farizan, Eric Gansworth, Walter Dean Myers, Daniel José Older, Thien Pham, Jason Reynolds, Gene Luen Yang, Sharon G. Flake, Schuyler Bailar, Aminah Mae Safi

Series or standalone: standalone

Publication year: 2018

Genres: fiction, anthology, contemporary, LGBT+, fantasy, romance

Blurb: Careful, you are holding fresh ink - and not hot-off-the-press, still-drying-in-your-hands ink. Instead, you are holding twelve stories with endings that are still being written, whose next chapters are up to you, because these stories are meant to be read and shared.

[darkliterata]

Lovely haul for the New Books shelf!

[littlereadsandteas]

The first time Sana Khan asked out a girl–Rachel Recht--it went so badly that she never did it again. Rachel is a film buff and aspiring director, and she’s seen Carrie enough times to learn you can never trust cheerleaders (and beautiful people). Rachel was furious that Sana tried to prank her by asking her on a date. But when it comes time for Rachel to cast her senior project, she realizes that there’s no more perfect lead than Sana--the girl she's sneered at in the halls for the past three years. And poor Sana--she says yes. She never did really get over that first crush, even if Rachel can barely stand to be in the same room as her. Told in alternative viewpoints and set against the backdrop of Los Angeles in the springtime, when the rainy season rolls in and the Santa Ana's can still blow--these two girls are about to learn that in the city of dreams, anything is possible--even love.

Storygraph Fable

[reviewsthatburn]

TRAVELERS ALONG THE WAY takes place during the Crusades (just as in the original Robin Hood tales), and features characters whose archetypes and circumstances are recognizable, but don’t require that similarity to be enjoyable. I like Rahma, and the generally breezy rapport between the party members. There are moment of tension, especially related to the actual war which is the whole reason Rahma and her sister are here in the first place. My favorite bit is the sequence with the Templars, and I like how the whole thing wraps up. 

Full Review at Link.

[margaretthotcher]

Queer Book Recommendations

It's pride season in Wellington, New Zealand and my local library has published its second "Teen Staff Picks" zine! In that spirit, I bring you, a collection of lesser-known queer books featured in the two that have been released so far! I've narrowed the lists down to books that have 1000 or fewer reviews on Goodreads as of posting (though I actually use Storygraph personally). I haven't read most of these, they're new to me as well but looking forward to getting into them.

Sapphic

Trouble Girls - Julia Lynn Rubin

Planning Perfect - Haley Neil

Improbable Magic for Cynical Witches - Kate Scelsa

The Meadows - Stephanie Oakes

Never Trust a Gemini - Freja Nicole Woolf

This Is All Your Fault - Aminah Mae Safi

The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet - Jake Maia Arlow

Youngblood - Sasha Laurens

In the Role of Brie Hutchens - Nicole Melleby

Achillean

We Are Totally Normal - Rahul Kanakia

Two Can Play That Game - Leanne Yong

Blaine for the Win - Robbie Couch

I Like Me Better - Robby Weber

The Language of Seabirds - Will Taylor

The Feeling of Falling in Love - Mason Deaver

Charming Young Man - Eliot Schrefer

Emmett - L. C. Rosen

Pages I Never Wrote - Marco Donati

Trans Characters

Across a Field of Starlight - Blue Delliquanti

Welcome to St. Hell: My Trans Teen Misadventure - Lewis Hancox

The Borrow a Boyfriend Club - Page Powars

If I Can Give You That - Michael Gray Bulla

Transmogrify!: 14 Fantastical Tales of Trans Magic - G. Haron Davis

Jess, Chunk, and the Road Trip to Infinity - Kristin Elizabeth Clark

Magical Boy - The Kao

Kisses For Jet: A Coming-of-Gender Story - Joris Bas Backer

Between Perfect and Real - Ray Stoeve

Featuring Queer People of Colour

Ander & Santi Were Here - Jonny Garza Villa

The Loophole - Naz Kutub

Spell Bound - F. T. Lukens

Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues - H. S. Valley

Rise to the Sun - Leah Johnson

Never Kiss Your Roommate - Philline Harms

Rainbow! - Bloom & Sunny

Other Ever Afters: New Queer Fairy Tales - Melanie Gillman

Anne of Greenville - Mariko Tamaki

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🩷 Sapphic BIPOC Books for Sapphic September

💜 Too often, books by authors of color get shelved out of view in favor of books written by well-known, already-established white authors. No more! In this amazing era of writing, there are more sapphic books by authors of color (about characters of color) than ever before! Here are a few sapphic BIPOC books to consider adding to your TBR! Spread the word about these books to give them the attention they deserve.

🩷 Girls of Paper and Fire -Natasha Ngan 🩷 You Should See Me in a Crown - Leah Johnson 🩷 Once Ghosted, Twice Shy - Alyssa Cole 🩷 Cinderella Is Dead - Kalynn Bayron

💜 Friday I'm in Love - Camryn Garret 💜 The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali - Sabina Khan 💜 Wild Beauty - Anna-Marie McLemore 💜 Last Night at the Telegraph Club - Malinda Lo

🩷 Gay the Pray Away - Natalie Naudus 🩷 D'Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding - Chencia C. Higgins 🩷 The Good Luck Girls - Charlotte Nicole Davis 🩷 Clap When You Land - Elizabeth Acevedo

💜 The Midnight Lie - Marie Rutkoski 💜 Tell Me How You Really Feel - Aminah Mae Safi 💜 We Set the Dark on Fire - Tehlor Kay Mejia 💜 The Henna Wars - Adiba Jaigirdar

🩷 All of Us with Wings - Michelle Ruiz Keil 🩷 How to Find a Princess - Alyssa Cole 🩷 Cinderella Is Dead - Kalynn Bayron 🩷 Sorry, Bro - Taleen Voskuni

💜 Wish You Weren’t Here - Erin Baldwin 💜 Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust 💜 We Didn’t Ask for This - Ali Alsaid 💜 The Grief Keeper - Alexandra Villasante

🩷 Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Really Feel - Sara Farizan 🩷 Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me - Mariko Temaki 🩷 It’s Not Like It’s a Secret - Misa Sugiura 🩷 Everything Leads to You - Nina LaCour

💜 You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat 💜 The Skin and Its Girl - Sarah Cypher 💜 Hijab Butch Blues - Lamya H 💜 Roses in the Mouth of a Lion - Bushra Rehman

🩷 Faebound - Saara El-Arifi 🩷 Legendborn - Tracy Deonn 🩷 The Weight of Stars - K. Ancrum 🩷 Dread Nation - Justina Ireland

💜 I’ll Be The One - Lyla Lee 💜 Not Your Sidekick - C.B. Lee 💜 Honey Girl - Morgan Rogers 💜 Every Body Looking - Candice Iloh

[thereadingchallengechallenge]

TRCC's Backlog Books of 2024

so one of my reading goals this year is to work through the books that have been on my TBR the longest. I struggled a bit with this goal last year because it was hard to quantify what counted as "longest". so this year, I'm just gonna be upfront with my list

Seven Devils by Lam & May

Delilah Green Doesn't Care by Ashley Herring Blake

Kings, Queens and In-Betweens by Tanya Boteju

Bruised by Tanya Boteju

Afterlove by Tanya Byrne

The Nesting by CJ Cooke

Breaker by Kat Ellis

I Killed Zoe Spanos by Kit Frick

Payback's a Witch by Lana Harper

A Dark and Starless Forest by Sarah Hollowell

Hideous Beauty by William Hussey

Hani & Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

The Lucky List by Rachael Lippincott

The Arrival of Someday by Jen Malone

Nightrender by Jodi Meadows

The Love Song of Ivy K Harlowe by Hannah Moskowitz

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen

This Is All Your Fault by Aminah Mae Safi

Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi

Edie in Between by Laura Sibson

The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling

Starling by Isabel Strychacz

Coming Up for Air by Nicole B Tyndall

The Bone Spindle by Leslie Vedder

Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

The River Has Teeth by Erica Waters

Briar Girls by Rebecca Kim Wells

[llycaons]

tagged by @neixins and @wutheringheightsfilm to share my 2024 faves!

thank you jana and vero!!! I posted full reviews earlier and will link them in each section, but here's the short version :)

🪷 TV Shows 🪷

The Double (2024)

Dungeon Meshi (2024)

Black Doves (2024) - only here bc I watched so little tv this year that it got a place on the podium despite being kind of forgettable lmao. fun but nothing extraordinary

🪷 BOOKS 🪷

Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Travelers Along the Way: A Robin Hood Remix by Aminah Mae Safi

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Babel by R.F Kuang

🪷 MOVIES 🪷

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)

I, Tonya (2017)

The Color Purple (2023)

Pride (2014)

thanks so much for the tag! I'd like to tag @tothepond and @ankhisms and @kelvintimeline and @harrykim and @torsamors and @trans-yllz and @lesbianstorm and anyone else reading this feel free to consider themselves tagged as well as if you want! I've gotten to this a bit late anyway 😭 love and light and happy new year!

[lgbtqreads]

do you have any sapphic ya contemporary romcom book recs? i'm currently on a binge & i've already read i kissed shara wheeler, 6 times we almost kissed, hani & ishu, never ever getting back together & imogen, obviously. would love more books with similar vibes!!

Heh, kiiiinda my expertise, in that I've written three of them - Cool for the Summer, Home Field Advantage, and Going Bicoastal, which I think you'll prob like if you liked those, especially the first one. Also definitely check out Leah Johnson's You Should See Me in a Crown, Jennifer Dugan's Some Girls Do, Kelly Quindlen's She Drives Me Crazy, Rachel Hawkins' Her Royal Highness, Lyla Lee's Flip the Script, Christen Randall's The No Girlfriend Rule, Aminah Mae Safi's Tell Me How You Really Feel, Ciara Smyth's Not My Problem, Jake Maia Arlow's How to Excavate a Heart, and coming in the next few months, Sophie Gonzales's The Perfect Boyfriend Doesn't Exist, Erin Baldwin's Wish You Weren't Here, and Jennifer Dugan's Playing for Keeps.

[pithia]

She must feel it, this grief and rage. She must release such feelings back into the wild, where they belong.

from Travelers Along the Way by Aminah Mae Safi

[bensbooks]

TRCC Readathon - Day Three

Another great reading day! I may not be able to read as much tomorrow so I'm glad I got in some good pages today.

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson - 32 pages.

The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies - 60 pages.

This is How We Change the Ending by Vikki Wakefield - 115 pages, first time reading. This book is really interesting so I'll aim to finish it tomorrow if I can.

Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi - 210 pages, finished. I rated it 2.5/5, it wasn't really my thing but there were some good moments.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - 69 pages.

None Shall Sleep by Laura Giebfried - 88 pages.

[bookshelvesandtealeaves]

✨ JULY WRAPUP ✨

Total books finished: 25

DNF’s: 4

Pages read: 8,686

Hours listened: 70.98

[instagram]

Currently reading:

🎧 Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall (37%)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

-Lover Birds by Leanne Egan

-The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee (reread) 🎧

-Novel Problems by Elizabeth Luly

-The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

-The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (reread) 🎧

-Ghostsmith by Nicki Pau Preto

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

-The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa

-A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ Charles

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25

-Eleanor Jones Can’t Keep a Secret by Amy Doak

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

-Moonstone by Laura Purcell

-Sucker Punch by Kayla Faber

-Pit Stop by Ellis Mae

-The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

-The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

-Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater

-The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

-Mistress of Lies by KM Enright

-Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

-Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon

-Bonesmith by Nicki Pau Preto (reread) 🎧

-The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

-What’s Murder Between Friends by Meg Gatland-Veness

-The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons

-Goddess of the River by Vaishnavi Patel

-Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore

DNF

-Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell (35%)

-Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid (27%)

-The Gaps by Leanne Hall (47%)

-Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi (28%)