Discover new books on Goodreads

Meet your next favorite book

623 ratings (3.89 avg)
612 reviews

Ditte

Add friend

https://linktr.ee/booksaboveeverything

https://www.goodreads.com/booksaboveeverything

Ditte’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (0)
currently-reading‎ (2)

read‎ (682)
did-not-finish‎ (2)

2024-tbr‎ (0)
favorites‎ (0)

Stats | More…

Ditte is Currently Reading

Ditte is currently reading

The Charioteer

by Mary Renault

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in October 2024

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Ditte said: " ~THE CHARIOTEER by Mary Renault is a beautiful, complex, queer must-read!~

Cat Sebastian's We Could Be So Good is why I bought this book and I'm so glad I did because I ended up LOVING The Charioteer. I had the best time reading and analysing the boo ~THE CHARIOTEER by Mary Renault is a beautiful, complex, queer must-read!~

Cat Sebastian's We Could Be So Good is why I bought this book and I'm so glad I did because I ended up LOVING The Charioteer. I had the best time reading and analysing the book with Cody.

The Charioteer is a queer 1953 novel set during WWII. It's one of the first queer books with a happy ending which in itself makes it a key part of queer literary history, but it's also an incredible book in itself. It's about Laurie who was wounded at Dunkirk and who's recovering at a hospital in England. Laurie soon finds himself in a love triangle where he's struggling to choose between two very different men and the lives they represent.

This book was just. Wow! Unlike any I've read before and it's left me completely unmoored. The Charioteer is a book written in subtext, ellipses, and between the words on the page. Its usually more about what's left unsaid than what's said. It's such a fascinating, but complicated, book to read.

And Laurie? That meme of a dog in a burning room, ignoring the roaring fire, going "it's fine"? That's Laurie Odell, disaster gay, and love of my life who I frequently wanted to smack upside the head for being delulu. Laurie is one of the OG unreliable narrators. This man is on the struggle bus, he's often lying to himself and the reader just to cope which means you have to really pay attention when reading.

I don't usually like love triangles, but I didn't mind it in this book. It both uses the common idea and tropes of a love triangle but it's so much more than that, too!

The Charioteer is about queer love, truth, deceit, betrayal, and self-acceptance. It's about society's ideals and norms in a time where being queer was illegal and viewed as obscene, and how that affects and influences a queer man's ideas of himself, the world, and the queer community.

Authors who're fans of Renault and/or whose work contains parallels or references to Renault's writing include C.S. Pacat, Alexis Hall, Alice Winn, and of course Cat Sebastian. ...more "

progress:

(70%)
"Laurie is a true gay disaster! What an absolute icon!!" — Oct 20, 2024 08:28AM

Dec 14, 2024 02:51AM · see review

Ditte is currently reading

Heated Rivalry (Game Changers, #2)

by Rachel Reid

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 4th time

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

progress:

(8%)
"This time I'm doing the German audiobook! Trying to brush up on a language I'm rusty in with hockey smut and my fave boys ❤️" — Jun 30, 2026 01:21PM

Jun 30, 2026 01:21PM

Ditte’s Quotes

“And he did not want to be loved as a second choice, as a surrender. He had spent his whole life not being loved at all, and he had thought being loved enough would satisfy him. It would not. He did not want to be loved enough. He wanted to be loved overwhelmingly. (...) He had never been chosen, so he had never had a chance to know this about himself before now: he wanted to be chosen first.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

tags: commitment, love

98 likes