#even in literal retellings of dramas like the great gatsby

[alexclaain]

im always on the search for good fucking queer books, but i feel like majority i encounter are just so "pure washed" to be the perfect representation so the is author un-shitstormable, that it makes me want to throw up a little in my mouth everytime

[sapphoslibrary]

possibly a weird request but do you have any discreet queer book recommendations? like nothing super gay on the covers or titles??

YES OF COURSE! these are all off the top of my head but there are way more out there. also, not all of these have discreet summaries so be mindful of that!

the invisible life of addie larue — V.E schwab (historical fantasy, bi/pan MCs and features the only good love triangle)

the house in the cerulean sea — tj klune (fantasy, gay MC. consider buying second hand though because author is garbage)

the chosen and the beautiful — nghi vo (historical fiction, queer great gatsby retelling except better)

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo — taylor jenkins reid (historical fiction and celebrity drama. the queen of discreet queer books because the title is literally the seven HUSBANDS)

the nature of witches — rachel griffin (YA fantasy. i didn’t even know this book was queer until i read it so it’s very discreet)

aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe — benjamin alire-sáenz (YA coming of age. there’s no actual romance until literally the last chapter but there’s a sequel coming out soon!)

we are okay — nina lacour (YA contemporary. adam silvera vibes but make it sapphic)

honey girl — morgan rogers (NA contemporary, easily the most diverse book i’ve ever read and so beautifully written)

malibu rising — taylor jenkins reid (also historical fiction and celebrity drama. not explicitly queer but one of the main characters is sapphic)

the priory of the orange tree — samantha shannon (a thicc NA fantasy which i am scared to read but i hear it’s sapphic)

as always you can find TWs for all of these books here!

[igsy-blog]

BBC 100 books (with commentary)

thanks for the tag @thegreatorangedragon  As an English major I was compelled to read a lot of these, and I may only have skimmed/read chunks of some of them if I could get away with it....

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen: not my favorite Austen, actually (Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility are 1 & 2) The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - OMG, SO many times. My siblings and I had rituals around the reading of LOTR.

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte.  Yes - it’s OK Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - Yes!  My kids grew up to them and the experience was almost as good as the books.  But I also really enjoyed watching Rowling mature as a writer over the course of the series.  I don’t ask for perfection from my writers, but warmth and growth.  :-)  Also, they got my stubborn non-reader sons to READ. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee  - like probably every other person who went to MS/HS in the US. The Bible - yes, and twice all the way through.  once at about 10, and then more recently along with Slate’s Blogging the Bible (ok it was just the Old Testament).  That was a stage on my journey to my current fallen-catholicness 
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - yes, but prefer the Pat Benatar song :D Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - yes and really need a re-read 
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - No, keep meaning to. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
.  Yes, and can I say I love Dickens - LOVE Dickens - but I hate this book.  I think it’s always assigned because it’s shortish.  I regularly reread the glorious messes that are Pickwick Papers, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, and my fav, the insane Our Mutual Friend (but ONLY the Lizzie Hexam/Eugene Wrayburn segments). Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - and the sequels.  I think Jo’s Boys might actually be my favorite. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
.  yes - I am pretty sure??? Catch 22 - Joseph Heller.  read enough of it to count Complete Works of Shakespeare - William Shakespeare; yes! my mom was a Zefferelli Romeo & Juliet junkie - we had the album of the film - and I must have heard it 3 dozen times before I was 7.  She bought a complete works and I read all of it over the years. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier. No 
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - Yes.  My husband’s favorite book.  And I really liked the Rankin-Bass film, when I was young.  Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk  No Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - yeah The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger  Realllly?  This is a good book but I’m not sure it belongs on this list.  First novel and feels fresh out of an MFA program.  My other complaints I won’t say here because I tend to get very snarky about this book. (Another book I read around the same time [mid-oughts] was Then We Came to the End, the debut novel of Joshua Ferris - much better, like DeLillo without the air of self-importance.) Middlemarch - George Eliot; love me some Eliot (but prefer Silas Marner, mainly because of a very good tv adaption). Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - Again: really?  I read this book because I spent the summer between HS and college in a really small town with a teeny library and I basically read my way through the fiction stacks.  Won’t say more than that, because I would get political. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald Yes, but not a favorite. Bleak House - Charles Dickens. A great, great book for which two amazing miniseries have been done in my lifetime.  But rightly criticized, IMO, for the annoying tone of its first-person narrator, Esther.  Dickens was dazzlingly, spectacularly wrong in writing about women.  Not to mention other groups.  But my god did he skewer institutions on behalf of the (British) poor - none better. This book wins for the Jo’s death scene and its sweeping, bitter, critique of church and state and society and everything - and so human.  “Dead!  And dying thus around us, everyday.”  I was 12 when I first read that, recovering from chicken pox, and I sat straight up in bed.  This is the book that made me a socialist. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy This is so horrible, but I haven’t! The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams.  Yes, fun, but not a favorite. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - No.  I started to and have a copy at work, for some reason I don’t even remember.  But not enough to county Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky  No :( Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck.  Yes, oh and my grandma’s family were Okies.  Everyone in my family has a copy of the Sacramento Bee front page story sneering about the dust bowl immigrants arriving in town and my great-grandmother is mentioned by name (though they mistakenly think she is her widowed father’s wife).  I love Cali, and Sactown, but we have a long history of being not-so-welcoming to everyone at certain times (was it in the 80s where the “Welcome to California, Now Go Home” bumper stickers were everywhere?).

Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - yes The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - yes but so long ago I don’t remember it at all Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy yes. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens.  Yes, not his best by far.  Another “easy” read like Great Expectations Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - and many other of his works, when I was trying NOT to be an atheist - Mere Christianity, his sci-fi trilogy and Til We Have Faces, a retelling of my favorite myth, Psyche and Cupid.  I like the more obscure books in this series best - The Silver Chair and The Horse and his Boy. Emma - Jane Austen Persuasion - Jane Austen - oh, here it is!


The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis .... uh, yes The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - was a group read at work a couple of years ago.  recommend. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - yes Animal Farm - George Orwell - another book I want to re-read. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - nope 
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez; YES A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving 
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ... did I?  I’m pretty sure. Or was it The Moonstone? Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery.  YES.  Anxiously awaiting the new adaption.  Why is it so hard to get Anne of Windy Poplars on kindle?  That is the funniest one.  And Rilla of Ingleside so heartbreaking 
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood, yes and ever so long ago.  Another book to re-read soon (haven’t started watching the series yet) Lord of the Flies - William Golding Atonement - Ian McEwan; LOVE this book and his writing in general.  He also wrote the screenplay, and the movie and the book are a perfect match in tone. 
Life of Pi - Yann Martel No, but on my list Dune - Frank Herbert - no Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - yes, Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - yay! 
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - my intro to Dickens, though not his best Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - starting to get depressed at all this dystopian fiction that needs to be re-read as a primer for the present times 
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - lives at my desk at work.  Not even a favorite book of mine, but I love diving into his words every once in a while Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov The Secret History - Donna Tartt The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold  - when I saw the movie it reminded me why I wasn’t into reading the book Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - plot better than the story 
On The Road - Jack Kerouac Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - yeah, I had to read so much Hardy Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - no, want to though 
Moby Dick - Herman Melville; I can’t even think about this book without remembering our class discussion of the “circle jerk” chapter.  I remember literally nothing else. 
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - meh Dracula - Bram Stoker 
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett  - an ALL-TIME favorite Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson Ulysses - James Joyce; all hail the master, and the bastard responsible for my sick dependence on the em-dash The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome Germinal - Emile Zola Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - unfortunately, yes Possession - AS Byatt A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens; of course Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell The Color Purple - Alice Walker - excellent The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry Charlotte’s Web - EB White: yes The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Yes.  I prefer Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter series hands-down, but despite her association with Tolkien, Lewis, et al, she got squashed between Conan Doyle and Christie.  Her Gaudy Night is one of my top five books.

The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - yeah The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery heck, yeah The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks Watership Down - Richard Adams yes A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - my kids read this book in HS, so I have a copy lying around, but have never read it A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas Hamlet - William Shakespeare - yes, probably too many times.  What are my favorite Shakespeare dramas?  Maybe King Lear, Richard III? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl. yes 
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo