The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

25.4 Truitt_T’s Task: It’s a Riot!

June 28 of this year will mark the 55th anniversary of what came to be known as the Stonewall Riots. NYC police raided a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, on Christopher Street. Raiding a gay bar and hassling members of the gay and lesbian community was not unusual, but the riots and protests lasting until July 3 were. What began as the annual commemoration of Stonewall has evolved into a month-long celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride in the U.S. and other countries around the world.

This is a gross oversimplification of the impact of Stonewall and the evolution of Pride Month, but there are plenty of resources out there for anyone interested in learning more.

This is a two book task, with a combined 500 page minimum. While children’s and middle grades books are NOT allowed, a book with MPG Graphic Novel(s) MAY be used for one book. One book MUST be nonfiction.

Choose two options and read one book from each.
Required:: state which options

Option 1: Read a book that is MPG LGBT and/or Queer AND one of the following:

Biography
Fantasy
Graphic Novel(s)
Historical/Historical Fiction
History
Humor
Memoir
Mystery/Cozy Mystery/Mystery Thriller
Nonfiction
Science Fiction

Required: state the qualifying MPGs.

Examples:
The Guncle Abroad MPG LGBT & Queer AND MPG Humor
The Hands of the Emperor: MPG MPG LGBT & Queer AND MPG Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Cozy Mystery
Gay Bar: Why We Went Out: MPG LGBT & Queer AND MPG Nonfiction, Memoir, History, Biography, Historical
The Third Person: MPG LGBT & Queer AND MPG Graphic Novels, Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography
A Lady for a Duke: MPG LGBT & Queer AND MPG Historical, Historical Fiction

Option 2: Read a book for which the author’s initials may be found in STONEWALL RIOTS. Letters may only be used as often as they appear in the phrase. Middle names and/or initials may be ignored. For books with multiple authors, all author first and last initials must be found.

Option 3: Read a book from one of the following lists.

60 LGBTQ+ Books That Reaaally Deserve a Spot on Your Shelf: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertai...
111 Queer Books Recommended by Librarians, Booksellers, and Authors: https://lithub.com/111-queer-books-re...
The Ultimate LGBTQ+ Pride Book List by PRH Editors: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/th...
The 2024 Goodreads Pride Reading List: https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/2...

Required: state the list

Approved books/authors:

Option 1: Read a book that is MPG LGBT and/or Queer AND MPG from the allowed list.
Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography - LGBT, Ninfiction, Memoir, Humor
Freakslaw - Queer and Fantasy
All Fours - LGBT and Humor
The Raven and the Reindeer - Queer and Fantasy
Cut & Run - LGBT and Mystery
The Lake House - LGBT and Mystery Thriller
Orphan Number Eight - LGBT and Historical Fiction
Rebel Rising - LGBT and Biography

Option 2: Read a book for which the author’s initials may be found in STONEWALL RIOTS.
Em X. Liu

Option 3: From the Lists:

******************************************
Clarification re: poetry and plays
******************************************

The official rule:
Only 2 plays or 2 books of poetry may be combined to reach the 100 page minimum. Other genres of books must meet the 100+ page requirement on their own.

For this task:

Option 1: Two plays or two books of poetry may be used to meet the single book requirement, as long as BOTH meet the MPG requirements.

Option 2: Two plays or two books of poetry may be used to meet the single book requirement, as long as BOTH meet the author initials requirement.

Option 3: Two plays or two books of poetry may be used to meet the single book requirement, as long as BOTH apprear on any of the given lists. They do not need to be on the same list.

I'm listing all the books from the 4 lists I've given as options for Option 3. I hope everyone will look at the actual lists, which have great infomation about the books, but I thought this would be helpful for easy reference. This is NOT a massive approved list. *****NOTE***** I have NOT confirmed the page count of every book below. Please confirm page count!



Option 3: Read a book from one of the following lists.


60 LGBTQ+ Books That Reaaally Deserve a Spot on Your Shelf: Except that there are only 40.....
Your Driver Is Waiting
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Great Believers
Detransition, Baby
The Song of Achilles
Here Comes the Sun
I Wish You All the Best
Call Me By Your Name
A Little Life
Like a Love Story
All the Things We Don't Talk About
Greenland
The Color Purple
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Night Sky with Exit Wounds
If You Could Be Mine
Felix Ever After
White Houses
Red, White & Royal Blue
Under the Udala Trees
Southernmost
The Boy with a Bird in His Chest
Last Night at the Telegraph Club
The House of Impossible Beauties
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
The Henna Wars
You Exist Too Much
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
Blue Skinned Gods
Something to Talk About
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
High-Risk Homosexual
They Both Die at the End
Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story
They're Going to Love You
Little & Lion
Tipping the Velvet
Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family
Middlesex
This Is How It Always Is

111 Queer Books Recommended by Librarians, Booksellers, and Authors: I've left off the children's books, which are not approved for this challenge.
Trash
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Giovanni's Room
Nightwood
Ruby Fruit Jungle
Stone Butch Blues
Maurice
The Price of Salt, or Carol
A Single Man
Angels in America
Carmilla
House Rules
Notes of a Crocodile
Confessions of a Mask
Chocolates for Breakfast
Kiss of the Spider Woman
After Delores
The Color Purple
Lolly Willowes
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Orlando
Patricia Wants to Cuddle
Light from Uncommon Stars
Our Wives Under the Sea
Nevada
Bestiary
Edinburgh
The Hours
Disoriental
This is How You Lose the Time War
Acts of Service
Pizza Girl
I'm Not Hungry But I Could Eat
Cleanness
The Line of Beauty
The Prophets
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
Outline of My Lover
As Meat Loves Salt
Panpocalypse
Detransition, Baby
The Subtweet
The Prettiest Star
Afterparties
The Freezer Door
Filthy Animals
Bath Haus
Indecent
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
I Remember
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex
Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime
Abandon Me: Memoirs
Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa
The Queer Art of Failure
Derek Jarman's Garden
How We Fight For Our Lives
The Letters of Thom Gunn
Gender Queer
Gay Bar: Why We Went Out
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
In the Dream House
Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
When Brooklyn Was Queer
The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison
The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination
Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993
If You Knew Then What I Know Now
Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much
Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration
Anybody: Poems
For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology / Para las duras: Una fenomenologia lesbiana
Inheritance
Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems
The Complete Works of Pat Parker
Illuminations
Cool for the Summer
Cinderella Is Dead
Sasha Masha
In Other Lands
Love Is for Losers
The Heartbreak Bakery
Annie on My Mind
Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating
Ask the Passengers
The Magic Fish
Ash
Here the Whole Time
Man o' War
The Stars and the Blackness Between Them
The City Beautiful
Surrender Your Sons
Cold
The Days of Bluegrass Love
Hell Followed With Us
The Summer of Everything
Nothing Burns as Bright as You
Bestiary: Poems
As She Appears
Crush

Books on the Lists, continued....

The Ultimate LGBTQ+ Pride Book List by PRH Editors:
We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride In The History of Queer Liberation
Giovanni's Room
Fairest: A Memoir
How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir
Countries of Origin
The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays
Gay Science: The Totally Scientific Examination of LGBTQ+ Culture, Myths, and Stereotypes
Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing
Lavash at First Sight
All My Mother's Lovers
Your Driver Is Waiting
Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality
Cinema Love
The Stonewall Reader
With Teeth
First Time for Everything
Oye
Untamed
Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story
Rainbow Milk
The Guncle Abroad
Small Joys
The Spear Cuts Through Water
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Exhibit
The Skin and Its Girl
Body Grammar
I Will Greet the Sun Again
Pretty: A Memoir
Queer Love in Color
Our Colors
The Prophets
But How Are You, Really
The Late Americans
When Katie Met Cassidy
Nightcrawling
Experienced
Detransition, BabyRight Where I Left You
The Rules Do Not Apply
Tripping Arcadia
Four Squares
Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life
Right Where I Left You
Last Night at the Telegraph Club
Little Rot
A Brief History of Seven Killings
All Down Darkness Wide
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us
Hombrecito
Horse Barbie: A Memoir of Reclamation
A Visible Man: A Memoir
How to Survive a Summer
Do Something: Coming of Age Amid the Glitter and Doom of '70s New York
Juliet Takes a Breath
Quietly Hostile: Essays
Death in Venice
Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant . . . and Completely Over It
Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family
A Dash of Salt and Pepper
Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity
All the World Beside
Vagabonds!
The Paying Guests
The Grief Keeper
Perris, California
Congratulations, the Best is Over!
Bath Haus
Prudence
The Prospects
All This Could Be Different
Boy Meets Boy
A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir & Manifesto on Reimagining
Cantoras
We Do What We Do in the Dark


The 2024 Goodreads Pride Reading List:


The 2024 Goodreads Pride Reading List:

Option 1
MPG LGBT and/or Queer AND one of the following:

So these means
Queer and one of the following works

LGBT and one of the following works

Both and one of the following works (like your examples)

Is that correct?

Afternoon.

Can you confirm Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography for Option 1 - MPGs include Nonfiction, Memoir, Humor and LGBT if you click “more” (just want to check you can see LGBT)

And then I'm thinking The Death I Gave Him for Option 2, as if I ignore the middle initial, then Em (X) Liu are found in stonEwaLl.

Thanks.

Susan A wrote: "Option 1
MPG LGBT and/or Queer AND one of the following:

So these means
Queer and one of the following works

LGBT and one of the following works

Both and one of the following works (like your ex..."

You've got it!

ETA: It MUST be one of the additional listed MPGs.

Trish wrote: "Afternoon.

Can you confirm Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography for Option 1 - MPGs include Nonfiction, Memoir, Humor and LGBT if you click “more” (just want to check..."

Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography is approved for Option 1 - I see LGBT as the last MPG.

Em X. Liu is approved as an author for Option 2. I hope The Death I Gave Him is better than the ratings; I really enjoyed the author's If Found, Return to Hell.

Thank you.

If Found, Return to Hell is also on this list for this SRC - the author is up for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer at the World SF convention in Glasgow in August.

The option 2 book doesn't necessarily have to have an MPG of LGBTQ, right? Just the initials in the phrase?

Jen B wrote: "The option 2 book doesn't necessarily have to have an MPG of LGBTQ, right? Just the initials in the phrase?"

That's correct. I'd certainly encourage it, but it's not required. :)

Please can you lock in Genres for

Freakslaw Queer + Fantasy

and

All Fours LGBT and Humour


and The Raven and the Reindeer Queer + Fantasy
thanks

FYI- for message 4 note at the bottom:

Actually, Crush is in GR. However, most copies seem to have 62 pages or others <100. Since it's poetry, it could usually be used with another poetry book to make the page minimum.

So, I guess you should go ahead and make a ruling; does the second poetry book also have to be on the list or any of the lists to count? I see there are some other poetry books you marked that they weren't eligible, but thought you might as well make a ruling in case someone wants to go that route and read two.

Marie (UK) wrote: "Please can you lock in Genres for

Freakslaw Queer + Fantasy

and

All Fours LGBT and Humour

and The Raven and the Reindeer Queer + Fantasy
th..."

Done! I don't know how I missed seeing your post sooner. Sorry!

Kathy KS wrote: "FYI- for message 4 note at the bottom:

Actually, Crush is in GR. However, most copies seem to have 62 pages or others <100. Since it's poetry, it could usually be used with another poetry book to ..."

Thank you, Kathy - I conflated the rule about shorter page length books being limited to 5 and 10 point tasks with the play and poetry rule. Sorry - I'm still fairly new to the Challenge and I appreciate the assist.

******************************************
Clarification re: poetry and plays
******************************************

The official rule:
Only 2 plays or 2 books of poetry may be combined to reach the 100 page minimum. Other genres of books must meet the 100+ page requirement on their own.

For this task:

Option 1: Two plays or two books of poetry may be used to meet the single book requirement, as long as BOTH meet the MPG requirements.

Option 2: Two plays or two books of poetry may be used to meet the single book requirement, as long as BOTH meet the author initials requirement.

Option 3: Two plays or two books of poetry may be used to meet the single book requirement, as long as BOTH apprear on any of the given lists. They do not need to be on the same list.

Please confirm Cut & Run for MPG LGBT and Mystery. Thanks.

Truitt_T wrote: "Marie (UK) wrote: "Please can you lock in Genres for

Freakslaw Queer + Fantasy

and

All Fours LGBT and Humour

and The Raven and the Reindeer ..."

thats Ok Truitt I am in no hurry

Lauren wrote: "Please confirm Cut & Run for MPG LGBT and Mystery. Thanks."

I read this one not long ago - I hope you enjoy it.

Done!

can you verify the genre

LGBT . Its the last on the list.

thanks! :)

JennRenee wrote: "can you verify the genre

LGBT . Its the last on the list.

thanks! :)"

JennRenee - which book needs verifying? I think I've verified all that have been asked about, both in the thread and up in Message 2.

Or was this a not a Mod question, but a question for you? If it's the latter, you didn't post a book. :)

Truitt_T wrote: "JennRenee wrote: "can you verify the genre

LGBT . Its the last on the list.

thanks! :)"

JennRenee - which book needs verifying? I think I've verified all that have been asked about, both in the ..."

It would help if I post the book.

The Lake House

for thriller and LGBT. sorry about that. :)

JennRenee wrote: "Truitt_T wrote: "JennRenee wrote: "can you verify the genre

LGBT . Its the last on the list.

thanks! :)"

JennRenee - which book needs verifying? I think I've verified all that have been asked ab..."

Mystery Thriller and LGBT confirmed! And no problem, lol.

***Mystery is the key MPG - Thriller MPG wouldn't work. But you're fine for this one.

Truitt_T wrote: "Kathy KS wrote: "FYI- for message 4 note at the bottom:

Actually, Crush is in GR. However, most copies seem to have 62 pages or others

Thank you, Kathy - I conflated the rule about shorter page ..."

We were all newbies once!

Kathy KS wrote: "Truitt_T wrote: "Kathy KS wrote: "FYI- for message 4 note at the bottom:

Actually, Crush is in GR. However, most copies seem to have 62 pages or others

Thank you, Kathy - I conflated the rule ab..."

Thank you for your kindness!

Please can you approve this book for LGBT + Historical Fiction

Orphan Number Eight

Marie (UK) wrote: "Please can you approve this book for LGBT + Historical Fiction

Orphan Number Eight"

Very belatedly approved!

Sorry I missed this.

can you verify the genres lgbt biography.

thanks
Rebel Rising

JennRenee wrote: "can you verify the genres lgbt biography.

thanks
Rebel Rising"

Approved!

Truitt_T wrote: "Em X. Liu is approved as an author for Option 2. I hope The Death I Gave Him is better than the ratings."

It was okay. Trouble was, I know Hamlet too well, so I knew who was going to do what to whom, and it had some very odd moments. I preferred If Found, Return to Hell.