#Idlewild Books
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earlier today i was thinking about how interesting it is that i saw the tv glow is a piece of media about fandom but it's entirely grounded in the real world instead of the internet (like there's no mention of either character visiting forums for the pink opaque or anything which probably would have existed in-universe even if it's the 90s) and also how i bet there was some really killer lesbian fanfiction about tara and isabel and then i was like WAIT i can think of a piece of media with somewhat similar vibes that is indeed All About the internet
#idlewild isn't a horror novel though but it is also about repressed trans identity/fandom/formative friendships#and made me. sad.#idlewild#i saw the tv glow#lulu speaks#lulu watches things#lulu reads idlewild#lulu watches i saw the tv glow#movies#books#lulu reads
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am I a freak if I say these James Frankie Thomas tweets are House-coded
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I saw the tv glow for men who are on they computers
#Idlewild#james frankie thomas#idlewild book#fanart#book art#illustration#illustrator#favourite book
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books i read in 2024:
“idlewild”
james frankie thomas
rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
genre: literary, contemporary, coming of age, lgbt, transgender
synopsis:
James Frankie Thomas’s Idlewild is a darkly funny story of two adults looking back on their intense teenage friendship, in a queer, trans, and early-Internet twist on the Manhattan prep school novel.
For two Idlewild outcasts, 9/11 serves as the first day of an intense, 18-month friendship. Fay is prickly, aloof, and obsessed with gay men; Nell is shy, sensitive, and obsessed with Fay. The two of them bond fiercely and spend all their waking hours giddily parsing their environment for homoerotic subtext. Then, during rehearsals for the fall play, they notice two sexually ambiguous boys who are potential candidates for their exclusive Invert Society. The pairs become mirrors of one another and drive each other to make choices that they’ll regret for the rest of their lives.
Looking back on these events as adults, the estranged Fay and Nell trace that fateful school year, recalling backstage theater department intrigue, antiwar demonstrations, smutty fanfic written over AIM, a shared dial-up connection—and the spectacular cascade of mistakes, miscommunications, and betrayals that would ultimately tear the two of them apart.
#idlewild#james frankie thomas#aesthetic#moodboard#litedit#book moodboard#booklr#books and reading#book recommendations#lgbt books#transgender books#trans books#transgender#literary fiction
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I'm currently devouring Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas. It's in part a novel about being best friends who are a single entity in high school, constantly either together physically or conversing from afar. Obsessive friends who search all text for sexual subtext and who write fic together. I recognize my high school best friend and myself in so much of this novel.
These characters are about 7 years younger than we were, though. They have the internet. They have Livejournal, and AIM. One of them haunts Willow/Tara forums, and the other reads Holmes/Watson slash. They rp and write fic together.
Oh, to have been a teen at that time.
(Except that I'm SO glad that much of my bestie's and my content -- the self-insert bandom fic, the long notes speculating graphically about the private lives of our teachers and classmates, the wacky AU fic about people we knew, the use of phrases like "throbbing manhood" or "steel-hard rod sheathed in velvety skin" -- was never posted online.)
Anyway, even though I'm nowhere close to finished, I feel confident that this book will probably be of interest to many people in fandom, especially folks old enough to remember 9/11 (the high school part of this book takes place in 2001-2002 NYC), folks who were queer but nervous/confused about it in high school, folks who have long been obsessed with two dudes doing it, and anyone who was ever hive-mind close with a friend.
#idlewild#books#fandom life#toasty recs#this book makes me want to get back in touch with my high school best friend#op#50
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Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas
James Frankie Thomas’s Idlewild is a darkly funny story of two adults looking back on their intense teenage friendship, in a queer, trans, and early-Internet twist on the Manhattan prep school novel.
Idlewild is a tiny, artsy Quaker high school in lower Manhattan. Students call their teachers by their first names, there are no grades, and every day begins with 20 minutes of contemplative silence in the Meetinghouse. It is during one of those meetings that an airplane hits the Twin Towers.
For two Idlewild outcasts, 9/11 serves as the first day of an intense, 18-month friendship. Fay is prickly, aloof, and obsessed with gay men; Nell is shy, sensitive, and obsessed with Fay. The two of them bond fiercely and spend all their waking hours giddily parsing their environment for homoerotic subtext. Then, during rehearsals for the fall play, they notice two sexually ambiguous boys who are potential candidates for their exclusive Invert Society. The pairs become mirrors of one another and drive each other to make choices that they’ll regret for the rest of their lives.
Looking back on these events as adults, the estranged Fay and Nell trace that fateful school year, recalling backstage theater department intrigue, antiwar demonstrations, smutty fanfic written over AIM, a shared dial-up connection—and the spectacular cascade of mistakes, miscommunications, and betrayals that would ultimately tear the two of them apart.
#idlewild#james frankie thomas#transmasc#trans book of the day#trans books#queer books#bookblr#booklr
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Idlewild (2023), James Frankie Thomas
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christopher korkian i want to save you
#though he should probably save himself first#still though i feel bad for him#poor dude first he ends up in this weirdly codependent relationship with this straight(?) guy who's probably a sociopath#then gets fanfic written about him and said sociopath and when he calls out one of the vreators for it she gets upset at him#and even 15 years later he's still somehow living with that guy#i like to think he's still living a (somewhat) happy life though#🫰#post#idlewild#james frankie thomas#books#tag lore
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lesbian reading wrap up 2024 part 3
october cont.
greta & valdin by rebecca k reilly
this book is full of so much love & warmth and i loved reading it so much. it's so funny and heartwarming and i can't wait to re-read it. when i read this my brother was studying abroad at the university of auckland, which is where this book is set, and this book is about the sibling relationship between greta & valdin, so it made me think of him and was very good timing for me to read it then. i really really loved this. i also loved the part early on in the book where greta forgets that she's gay and goes on a date with a man. so true queen. everyone should read this book !!!! also all the side characters felt very well drawn and distinctive to me. and the authors film podcast is very entertaining.
in the dream house by carmen maria machado
ok obviously this book is extremely popular and influential. i thought it was as good as everyone says it is but to be honest i don't have like an original take to contribute about this book. but i read it in one sitting it was extremely gripping. and also i thought the form of different horror tropes suited the content extremely well.
rainbow black by maggie thrash
this book is sooooo romantic to me actually. gwen and jo are in love even though theyre fighting <3 and this book was extremely extremely entertaining. i repeatedly found myself very surprised by the direction the book took. i also loved the first person narration. yeah i had a lot of fun reading this.
idlewild by james frankie thomas
ok i have more complicated feelings about this book. first of all in some ways this book more closely captures my high school experience than anything i've ever read. it certainly captures my intiail coming out experience more closely than anything else will- when i read that part of the book i was like damn this is me word for word pretty much. but i feel like nell deserved better </3 at the end of the book we see fay on the brink of a realization that will bring her meaningful change and growth. we see nell still struggling to be in a relationship or like be at peace with herself. i know that the author clearly relates more to fay's experience than nell's but i wish the narrative had more empathy for nell.
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just dropped everything on my tbr to read Idlewild and Daria Morgendorffer is brought up on page 14, making it, already, a perfect book
Fay's chapters are in ao3 formatting!!! i'm screaming
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random thoughts i've had about idlewild by james frankie thomas while standing at the bookstore cash register in a lull between christmas shoppers (spoilers below the cut)
fay's dysphoria not just manifesting as discomfort with his* body (see: attempt at deepening voice for iago role + wearing a binder near the end of the novel) and the suicidal ideation on the roof with theo near the end but also the inability to, like, imagine a future life because what fay really wants is to live life as a gay man and can't envision going through life as a woman and that's what results in fay essentially being stuck kind of emotionally/physically in the end of high school? (like even having the same jacket)
fay's obsession with gay murderers because he's gay and is drawn to that vs. theo's obsession with gay murderers because he has a manipulative/cruel hidden side? and they both don't understand why the other person is fascinated by that archetype?
i think nell's ex-girlfriend kiley named for author kiley reid who has a blurb on the back and was in the iowa writers workshop where thomas wrote idlewild lmao
rip the f&n unit you would have loved these violent delights by micah nemerever
i kept imaging as a thought experiment what this novel would be like if it took place ten years later in the early days of tumblr and i think it would just be filled with cringe and anguish in a different way
some reviews don't like the adult framing device but i actually loved the characters going "i know differently now but had i known this in high school i don't think it would have actually changed how i acted though" because i think felt very real (from the f&n unit's excusing of the creepy tech guy behavior to fay's gender identity)
the bit when nell remembers the fight about smith as her saying "well, they're all lesbians and you wouldn't fit in" while fay remembers it as "you're not gay, so…" which mean SUCH different things to them. ugh when the unreliable narrator hits, it hits!
i need someone to do a study of seemingly normal phrases that are nonetheless very associated with the language of fanfiction (like "tongues battling for dominance" is silly and very associated with fanfic, but "carded his fingers through his hair" is a phrase used in the faunfic that is not weird or cringey and yet has very strong fanfic connotations to me
genuinely this novel has taught me that inducing secondhand embarrassment in the reader is a skill and one that can be perfected
i wonder what fay and nell would have thought if they read twelfth night in high school
the ending of this novel is so bleak and i know that's the point. however someone should still write fix-it fanfic because i think that would be a fascinating exercise
*i know fay is referred to by she/her pronouns in the narration by nell in the past timeline but idk if i should do that outside of the story?
these are not particularly coherent thoughts and this is not a review but just random things i have thought about while chewing on this novel for the past couple weeks
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John William Polidori: What was the last book you finished?
Thanks for the ask, and sorry for the slight delay in answering!
John William Polidori: What was the last book you finished?
Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey. I’m currently reading its sequel, Not Like the Movies.
I kinda wish I had a more intellectual-sounding answer to that question, but I read this one because I wanted a cheerful, chill romcom (partially because I’ve also just started A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, so I need to be reading something lighthearted, too, to counteract it…). In fact, I deliberately chose one of the most funny- and lighthearted-looking books from my TBR. It was pretty decent!
[Classic Author Asks]
#thank you for the ask!!#in case you were curious the SECOND-to-last book i finished was ‘idlewild’ by james frankie thomas which was EXCELLENT#possibly one of the best books i’ve read this year#10/10 would recommend#ask#answered#dragoneye01#books#currently reading#waiting for tom hanks#not like the movies#a little life#idlewild#classic author asks
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Title: Idlewild Author: James Frankie Thomas Publication Year: 2023 Publisher: The Overlook Press Genre: fiction, queer lit
I thought Thomas did a phenomenal job capturing the messiness that comes with being in high school, especially while queer. To be more specific, if you happen to be from the US (bonus points if it was the Northeast) and attended middle/high school in the early to mid 2000s (i.e., post-9/11), Idlewild is going to be a trip down memory lane.
To return to the point about growing up queer, the exploration of queerness was really well done. Thomas was thoughtful in exploring the complicated mess of it all, especially the sense of feeling as though you're in the wrong space and body. It gets more complicated when you consider the time this book was set in, too.
That being said, I cannot emphasize enough that this book is probably going to hit harder for queer white people who spent their adolescence during this period, as the book very much centered white voices. This isn't me throwing rotten tomatoes at Thomas or anything, but the whiteness of this book was something that frequently came to mind as I read. Not in a good or bad way; just that it was what it was, and it was very clear to me that Thomas was writing with personal experience in mind to a certain extent.
Overall, though, Idlewild was packed with emotions. It was tough being queer back then. It's still fucking tough being queer now. I'm grateful that Thomas approached these difficulties the way he did: funnily and heartbreakingly.
Content Warning: racism, fetishization of queer people, elements of a toxic friendship
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4, 11, 16? 👀
hey mar!
4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year? YES. Petra Erika Nordlund (Tiger, Tiger), James Frankie Thomas (Idlewild), Rosemary Valero-O'Connell (Don't Go Without Me), Rich Larson ("Quandary Aminu vs The Butterfly Man").
11. What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read? Hmm three-way tie between City of Bones by Martha Wells (the first edition >>> revised version; the latter filed down the mc's teeth to make him more palatable. Bitchy Khat they could never make me hate you...), Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (never tried it until this summer because I don't really read YA anymore BUT EVERYONE'S RIGHT IT'S SO GOOD), and Tiger, Tiger (which I actually came across in high school but bounced off of for some inexplicable reason).
16. What is the most over-hyped book you read this year? A Song of Ice and Fire lmao. I tried to read the whole thing this year. I generally don't love the way George R.R. Martin writes women but A Game of Thrones is a strong start to the series (especially the Daenerys chapters). But after the first entry, I'd argue there are STEEPLY diminishing returns, even if there are some great moments sprinkled throughout the following books.
#books#tiger tiger#idlewild#don't go without me#quandary aminu vs the butterfly man#city of bones#the legendborn cycle#a song of ice and fire#fantasy#science fiction
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How successful would Halloween (Idlewild by Nick Sagan)…
Would you like to submit a character? Click this link if you do!
#could they be a pro wrestler#Halloween#Nick Sagan#idlewild#Edenborn#everfree#science fiction#sci fi#book characters#book poll#literature#science fiction books#Idlewild book#Halloween Idlewild#idlewild Halloween#book series#2000s books#happy halloween#tumblr polls#polls#character polls#fandom polls#wrestling#poll time#wrestling polls#hyper specific poll#poll game#wwe#professional wrestling#pro wrestling
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just finished one of those books where the only thing i can do now is sit and stare at a wall as i try to process what i just read.
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