#Annie on My Mind

[merp-blerp]

Happy Pride to my random niche sapphic ships that never get any canon and/or fanon content about them and always end up my favs (yeah, I’m cursed, what about it?)

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Fiction Free-for-All Book Bracket Tournament: Round 2A

Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:

Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden

Endorsement from submitter: "Classic YA lesbian novel. Absolutely brilliant."

This groundbreaking book, first published in 1982, is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings.

From the moment Liza Winthrop meets Annie Kenyon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she knows there is something special between them. But Liza never knew falling in love could be so wonderful . . . or so confusing.

Coming of age, romance, young adult

Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland

Avra Helvaçi, former field agent of the Araşti Ministry of Intelligence, has accidentally stolen the single most expensive secret in the world―and the only place to flee with a secret that big is the open sea.

To find a buyer with deep enough pockets, Avra must ask for help from his on-again, off-again ex, the pirate Captain Teveri az-Ḥaffār. They are far from happy to see him, but together, they hatch a plan: take the information to the isolated pirate republic of the Isles of Lost Souls, fence it, profit. The only things in their way? A calculating new Araşti ambassador to the Isles of Lost Souls who’s got his eyes on Avra’s every move; Brother Julian, a beautiful, mysterious new member of the crew with secrets of his own and a frankly inconvenient vow of celibacy; the fact that they’re sailing straight into sea serpent breeding season and almost certain doom.

But if they can find a way to survive and sell the secret on the black market, they’ll all be as wealthy as kings―and, more important, they’ll be legends.

Fantasy, humor, adventure, secondary world, queernorm, adult

[queer-media-tourney]

[contortedmind]

Despite the fact that I watched dead poets society and enjoyed it, I find my opinion about poems remaining the same.

I really HATE poems. Something about them has always seemed so pretentious and people tend to try too hard to make a meaning out of nothing. Recently though, I have found a few poems (some might just be short little writings, I dont know if they count as poems.) that I don't hate.

Here are the favorite poems of someone who despises poetry:

Someone please tell me how to arrange pictures nicely on mobile lmao.

[shorthairedbrownqueer]

Petition to get publishers to release closeted friendly versions of queer books with like puppies on them 🥲🌈

[bluedalahorse]

Vacation - (Stella x Fredrika)

Thank you for your request! I’ve never had a chance to write stedrika before. I thought about their New York trip and decided to have them interact with one of my favorite books by Nancy Garden, hope that’s okay.

Tagging @youngroyals-events because this drabble challenge was their brainchild.

Letters From Annie and Liza (link to AO3)

Read any novel in English this summer. An assignment from another teacher, before Hillerska. Fredrika chooses Annie on My Mind and wonders, later, why it made her chest ache.

Until Stella kisses her.

Fredrika rereads Annie and Liza’s love story en route to New York. A plan takes shape in her mind. A date, copied from the book. It’s the kind of sincerity neither she nor Stella easily expresses.

Her stomach tightens as they enter the Cloisters. What if…?

Then, standing before of the unicorn tapestries, Stella breathes out:

“…so beautiful.”

Maybe they can wear their hearts openly after all.

[whilereadingandwalking]

First, a quick spoiler: this book is groundbreaking because it was a YA novel featuring two queer girls who get a happy ending. I know, I'm sorry to spoil it, but it's vital. In our age of blossoming queer YA contemporary, it's important to see why Annie on My Mind was so important, and so controversial, given a past where the only gay books permitted were those with unhappy endings.

In this book by Nancy Garden, two girls from across New York City meet at the Met and begin to have feelings that they don't, at first, understand. And when they are caught, their academic careers, friendships, and family relationships are all put at stake. This novel is simple, and to those who grew up with all kinds of queer novels around, it might feel outdated. It reads as historical fiction, with the sheer shockwave the adults in the book feel at finding lesbianism in their elite school. But there's nothing wrong with that, and it's a great book about a time when queerness was ok if it was just experimenting, or secret, or hidden, and where two girls are determined not to let go of each other, no matter the cost. A really good, quick read about coming-of-age queer and finding acceptance within yourself.

Content warnings for outing, homophobia, lesbophobia, ableism.

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]

[shutuplook]

[lovers-instead]

Sapphic YA Book Rec: Good Moon Rising by Nancy Garden

1996 follow-up to Annie on My Mind, this time featuring 2 girls who compete for the lead role in their high school theater department.

Links to download:

Internet Archive (to borrow)

Anna's Archive

Z-Library

[groovy-lady]

Woooo I got The Green Witch’s Guide to Herbal Magick: A Handbook of Green Hearthcraft and Plant-Based Spellcraft by Annabel Margaret and I ordered the lesbian novel Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden!! I tried to find Sappho’s poetry, but I’ll have to order that from Amazon.

[mccoppinscrapyard]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge July

Day 18: Well-Loved

My collection of old-school mass-market paperbacks! I got all of them (with the exception of Annie on My Mind) from a local used bookstore.

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Fiction Free-for-All Book Bracket Tournament: Round 1A

Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:

Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden

Endorsement from submitter: "Classic YA lesbian novel. Absolutely brilliant."

This groundbreaking book, first published in 1982, is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings.

From the moment Liza Winthrop meets Annie Kenyon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she knows there is something special between them. But Liza never knew falling in love could be so wonderful . . . or so confusing.

Coming of age, romance, young adult

The Book of Love by Kelly Link

Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.

With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance—and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks; while they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. In the end, there will be winners and there will be losers.

But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo grapple with the pieces of the lives they left behind, and Laura’s sister, Susannah, attempts to reconcile what she remembers with what she fears, these mysterious others begin to arrive, engulfing their community in danger and chaos, and it becomes imperative that the teens solve the mystery of their deaths to avert a looming disaster.

Fantasy, contemporary, mystery, magical realism, adult

[queer-media-tourney]

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Book names + authors under the cut

Annie Kenyon/Liza Winthrop- Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden

Marshall Seo/Benedikt Montagov- These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

Rosemary Harper/Sissix Seshkethet- The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Jack/August- The Wicker King by K Ancrum

[lgbtqreads]

YA eBooks on Sale for Under $4