As Far As You’ll Take Me by Phil Stamper
Marty is suffocating in his conservative hometown in Kentucky. His religious parents can’t offer the support he needs. Instead, they urge him to pray the gay away. Determined to live out and proud, he tricks them into believing he’s earned a place at a prestigious music school in the UK. In reality, all he’s got is a one-way ticket to London, but there are some things you simply can’t run away from. This story will resonate with many queer people who have swapped a small town for a big city. It deals with all the highs, lows and in-betweens that come along with it.
The 13.5 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers
The most singularly chaotic book one would ever read, and a German cult classic. The book follows an orphan bear and his various exploits across the land of Zamonia, including being rescued by mini-pirates, stuck inside an eternal whirlwind, travelling through the head of a cyclops, and vying for the title “King of lies.” It’s like if Douglas Adams wrote the Moomins, but German. The perfect read-aloud for groups of any age!
After the Tampa by Abbas Nazari
The tension levels in this gripping tale of escape from the Taliban and then adrift at sea, will leave one with a new appreciation for a completely uneventful lockdown. A must-read for everyone.
Busy, Busy World by Richard Scarry
Like all Scarry books this is full of illustrative hustle and bustle, and what’s more, this one is all about the busyness of day-to-day life. Could induce an appreciation for the tranquility of lockdown.
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
If you’re sickening of your own solitude then this book will remind you of the hegemony and bullishness of the crowds; the bad breath, the viciousness, the filth, the rawness, the animal mob. Read it and be glad you’re at home.
Temporary by Hilary Leichter
#millenniallife gig economy writ large and draped with a veil of peculiar magical realism – Leichter’s prowess as a celebrated short story author is clear in her debut novel.
Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury by Sigrid Nunez
Not quite your conventional “hustle and bustle” but have you ever imagined what it would be like to be a fly on the wall within the Woolf’s household, or better yet … her marmoset? This is a sweet and tender quasi biography of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, the Bloomsbury twilight years, days and nights out with T.S Eliot and Vita Sackville-West, and all from the vantage point of a “sickly pathetic marmoset” named Mitz, who saved the Woolfs from the Nazis and even brought one of their demonstrations to a halt – so cute, “das kleine liebe Ding”.
Things We Lost To The Water by Eric Nguyen
This title is on Obama’s summer 2021 Reading list but I think it’s a good one for queer (or not) folk stuck in isolation. New Orleans 1970s, 80s, 90s – new smells, language, thoughts, desires, feelings. There’s much to say about this beautiful book. It leaves you in awe of those first encounters, a bit nostalgic, because there is nothing like a night out on town and the way a night’s adventures linger on your way home.
After the Storm by Emma Jane Unsworth
Brand spanking new from the phenomenal author of Animals is a uniquely frank essay on Unsworth’s experience with post-natal depression and the wilderness of new motherhood. Although motherhood is less hustle and more bustle and slightly repetitive … it is exceptional and at times despairingly laugh out loud (both the book and new motherhood).
