rough month for movie watching—with moving and kids being out of school + the sun going down later + new kid bedtime strategy, evenings have not been the prime, movie-watching time slot they used to be. so. mostly have the things we watched with the kids, plus Disclosure Day !
reading, on the other hand, has been going great—both in time for it and the delight found in all these various queer books i encountered. some new favs, some disappointments (but still enjoyable), and all in-between.
BOOKS
Canon (2026), Paige Lewis
A fantastic start to my pride month reading. A wonderfully, deeply queer book that has its queerness just baked into and intertwined with all the other wild, wacky, weird, WONDERFUL stuff going on. The juxtaposition of Yara and Adrena as our two alternating protagonists is really fruitful for moving the narrative forward while also deepening what the book is doing thematically.
The narrator’s voice and presence is quite delightful and brings a lightness and silliness to the whole thing (enlivened even more after attending paige’s reading at prairie lights and hearing their voice and cadence in the conversation there, and then hearing that in a slightly different register for the narrator—delightful).
a queer terry pratchett-esque mashup of epic poems and the biblical story of deborah/jael (which i happened to read in some of our children’s bibles to our kids in the midst of reading paige’s novel, thanks to “come follow me” which is maybe one of the best things cfm has enabled in my own personal life haha).
in other words, this was a book made for me. and i LOVED it.
it’d be a new tippy top tier favorite (as opposed to a new top 100 favorite) if it was a bit more dispositionally sincere and the irony/postmodern sensibility was dialed back a tad, but that’s just personal preference. still, a delight to read and one that will certainly be a joy to revisit.
You Should Be So Lucky (2024), Cat Sebastian
Delightful and gay. Had a great time. also, very here for the you gotta strive and keep trying, “fool’s hope” energy that comes through explicitly in the last chunk of the book.
Love and Other Disasters (2022), Anita Kelly
fun! a little bit of a soapbox about being nonbinary sometimes and the characters are a bit “one key trait” instead of fully fleshed out people, but a fun queer rom-com
Boyfriend Material (2020), Alexis Hall
took me a bit to settle into this one (luc, our narrator/protag was incredibly unlikeable to me at first), but it is quite funny and silly and has some heart. both luc and oliver are big dummies [affectionate] which isn’t my favorite sort of character to read about, but again, very gay, some nice found family flourishes, and interesting-ish other stuff going on around the central romance. but mostly, funny
The Unbroken (2021), C. L. Clark
LOVED this. will absolutely be reading the rest of the trilogy. takes a little bit to really get things going, but the characters are compelling and complex from the jump. playing with a really fascinating world and time in that invented world, with interesting stuff going on in terms of magic and religion and politics and all of that. and fun to have everything be in this queernormative setting.
there’s just so much richness in Tourraine and Luca as characters and the way they play off each other and drive the action forward. rad. had a GREAT time with this one.
The House in the Cerulean Sea (2020), TJ Klune
hard to separate this from the expectations built up by all the praise i’ve seen over the last 6 years for it.
which is to say that it’s in that unfortunate place of being well-liked and good, but falling short, for me, of the “among the best books ever!” status it seems to hold for so many. it is certainly cozy and lovely and mostly a delight to read. it has kind of a YA feel (particularly in the structure of one of the central ‘mysteries’ which did not feel that mysterious if you’d read a book before).
anyway—i liked it! has some good x-men vibes, some enjoyable queer characters and queer allegories, and may have been more transformative/impactful had i encountered it earlier in life, alas, it wasn’t written then. but could be fun to share with the kids someday in the future!
The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (2017), Margaret Killjoy
a fun, pulpy, not that good, lil book that seems to care more about expounding its ideology of a particular brand of queer, punk anarchism (which, to be clear, i dig) than writing compelling characters in a compelling story
but ya know, fun to spend a couple of hours with these queer utopian punks fighting off a demon (!?!) deer
The One Hundred Nights of Hero (2016), Isabel Greenberg
lovely and tragic and beautiful and gay! the art is great, the font/lettering is fun, and overall, this is just a delight to revel in and enjoy. great folk tale energy. lacked that little magic something to really sing for me, but well worth the read and absolutely one to remember for the kids when they’re older
Stitched (2026), Eli McCann
this was light, cozy, and fun. had kinda comfort, background tv vibes. the prose is serviceable—not bad and not quite lovely. really enjoyed the utah setting with mormon characters just living their lives sprinkled in among these other folks and that you have gay characters there too and no angsty mormon-gay drama. loved that.
also thoroughly enjoyed the aside relatively early on about matthew coming out to his mormon parents and them putting up a noah’s ark deal, complete with rainbow, to signal their support in whatever kinda awkward, halting way they could.
Upright Women Wanted (2020), Sarah Gailey
fun! will almost certainly check out the next thing in this world that Gailey writes. characters are engaging, world-building is fun, and neo-western, queer anti-fascists are awesome. a pulpy good time.
Mistakes Were Made (2023), Meryl Wisner
A sapphic romance that is certainly sexy and nothing else gets too in the way of that, but also doesn’t elevate it beyond that.
FILMS and TV
Moana (2016)
so good. head and shoulders above Frozen and Tangled (those three are always grouped in my head for whatever reason).
particularly struck this time through on the ways that moana returns to a different, forgotten/ignored piece of her tradition(s) to remake their life and the ways that that compellingly marries the power of tradition and the necessity of reinvention
and her slow-mo walk to te ka/ta fiti always makes me weep
movie night with the fam
The Birdcage (1996)
a heartfelt, often silly, always engaging delight
so funny
love it
Hercules (1997)
been ages since i saw this and fun to revisit with the kids. the art style is wacky [complimentary] and the music is top tier. the third act smashes a lot in and things resolve a bit too quickly one after another, but still, herc goes to the underworld and beats death for love! awesome. the movie as a whole doesn’t quite ascend to the top of my ranking, but it’s still a great time
movie night with the fam
The Prince of Egypt (1998)
such a joy to look at!
movie night with the fam
Disclosure Day (2026)
*****************SPOILERS AHEAD***************
wowowowow
loved it
lots of threads and pieces that i can’t totally pull together but every bit of it was rad and compelling and wild and i’m here for it
really fun to think about alongside spielberg’s other alien movies, perhaps especially Close Encounters where the call from the aliens is disruptive and breaks the family apart whereas here the call is to understand and listen and love and to bring people back together, to restore right relationships
LOVE that queer elder colmon domingo is the one that sees, that hears, this possibility and the one to guide the world towards this possible harmonious future built on love and understanding and cooperation and trust
happy pride baby!!! bring on the aliens!!!
**************************SPOILERS ENDED**********************************************
The Lion King (1994)
a scar appreciation:
- fantastic character introduction--getting the reveal of who he is and what he looks like bit by bit as he grabs and plays with the little mouse-thing
- “be prepared” is a top-tier villain song (maybe *the* top tier disney villain song?)
- scar’s mane--a thousand kudos to the animator(s) behind scar’s mane always billowing and flowing in the wind, particularly during “be prepared” and the final showdown with simba
- the incredibly queer way that scar moves and dances, especially his drama queen sashay throughout “be prepared”
- scar kicking one of the hyenas out of the way, off the pedestal during “be prepared” (excellent foreshadowing that i don’t think i’ve ever noticed before)
- and of course glasses raised to jeremy irons’ delicious vocal performance
movie night with the fam
The Normal Heart (2014)
not a *great* movie, but a pretty good, melodramatic one. the characters are all pretty interesting, complex gay men, though the relationships between them are not as developed, which hinders some of the interesting thematic stuff the movie is playing with
raises some interesting questions and is illuminating for thinking about the gay political movement pre- and post-AIDS
and ya know, always here for mark ruffalo as a curmudgeonly quasi-journalist, doggedly in pursuit of truth and defending the oppressed/marginalized
I meant to ask you your thoughts about Canon this weekend and never did so I’m happy you posted this! I’ve been reading Paige Lewis’s poetry collection Space Struck and they definitely feel like literary siblings. Which, obviously, same author, but across genres their voice is definitely still consistent.
I’ve been meaning to read the Cat Sebastian, good to see it was a good time!