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Maya

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Maya is Currently Reading

Maya is currently reading

Guitar Notes

by Mary Amato (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading, middle-school

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"Another book I loved in middle school. Aw cute throwback. Not feeling a lot of nuance in the world around them but the protagonists are cute." — Feb 08, 2026 01:08PM

Feb 08, 2026 12:15PM

Maya is currently reading

Annie on My Mind

by Nancy Garden

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

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Maya said: " Here’s a paragraph I wrote when I was 18 about the first crush I ever had on a girl:

Then around 4:30, she emailed me, and I read it immediately and at 4:40 I was just sitting hunched over my desk, head in my hands like this, and I was thinking “ooh

Here’s a paragraph I wrote when I was 18 about the first crush I ever had on a girl:

Then around 4:30, she emailed me, and I read it immediately and at 4:40 I was just sitting hunched over my desk, head in my hands like this, and I was thinking “oohhhhhhhhhhhhh. i’m in love with her. i am in LOVE with a GIRL” I didn’t even know her. I was realizing I’m just that much of a disaster lesbian. I was sitting there with my head in my hands just thinking over and over “she is so smart and funny and such a great writer and I’m in LOVE with her.” By 5 I was lying on my floor with my guitar singing Fly Me to the Moon. Thank god my roommate wasn’t there just...imagine the embarrassment. “Hey, what’s going on up there. I’m just here lying on the floor crying about how gay I am. When did I start talking to her? Today.

Annie on My Mind is such a classic and important book that there's nothing I could really say about it that matters at this point, but I liked the moments where it was clearly about the love between two seventeen year old girls. They sing lullabies and call each other "my love" and make instant coffee in the kitchen together. This is the biggest thing in the world to them, and the way Nancy Garden wrote about that felt intimately and almost a little exposingly familiar.

I do think that this book does derive a lot of its value from being this book at the time it was written, so there were some points where it felt like it sort of had to be having the most basic discussions about lesbianism, since it was one of the first YA books to do it. Like, there had to be the section about their feelings about physicality and them breaking down how they shouldn't feel dirty touching each other, and in the later section of the book, it sort of felt like it was telling you, and here's how a parent could take this, and here's how a seemingly-open-minded friend could turn, and this is what it could be like to look into yourself as a lesbian in this moment. I don't think that's a bad thing, because education was clearly one of the reason Nancy Garden wrote this book. The way things fall apart in the end was at times a reminder, even to me, of the queer history that we just sort of try to ignore in this brighter today. So this isn't to say that the story feels cut and dry, I just found it interesting, since I haven't read many queer books from this era. And besides, calling this story "the most basic lesbian romance" would be saying that Annie and Liza felt flat, which is the exact opposite of true. One thing I'm always saying about sapphic YA books these days is that even though I'm thankful for the representation, I really wish that the girls had characters and you could understand better why they connected as two people. Liza and Annie, for being the first lesbians that a lot of readers got to read about, are two very defined and quirky characters who interact in silly ways and fall in love extremely. I kept honestly being surprised by how far they were from the least common denominator. I love that they fall in love after roleplaying knights and princesses. I love how carefully Garden led us through the stages of their relationship. I love that this was the lesbian book! ...more "

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(page 4 of 234)
"Already tearing up LMAO. Every time I think about all the lesbians who came before me I unravel so quickly" — Feb 02, 2026 01:04PM

Oct 26, 2022 03:11AM · see review