Eco-criticism

More queerness and manta rays: June 2025 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Climate Fiction, Creative Non Fiction, Eco-criticism, Graphic Novels, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature

Mimosa by Archie Bongiovanni

One of the things I enjoyed the most about this graphic novel is how it focused on queer characters in their thirties/forties. A lot of queer literature tends to have a focus on coming out stories, normally featuring younger characters – but I’m often eager to find more literature written about middle-aged queer people and old queer people too!

In this story, the four protagonists (Chris, Elise, Jo, and Alex) are struggling with many different things, from divorce to single parenting to dating in your thirties (when you may feel the extra pressure of having it all ‘figured out’) to looking for a job that feels meaningful and so on. One of the best moments in this story is when the characters decide to put all together a new club night for older queers (that they call ‘Grind’), so the club scene is not only dominated by the younger generation.

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Futures, the spirit world and bodies: February 2025 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Climate Fiction, Creative Non Fiction, Eco-criticism, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Horror, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature, Science-Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Thrutopia

Any Human Power by Manda Scott

This is, probably, one of the books I enjoyed the most this year because I keep thinking about it even months after finishing it. This is a thrutopia, that is, it imagines ways in which we could navigate an uncertain future (considering how things are going right now in 2025, I think we all know what an ‘uncertain future’ feels like).

The start of the book is interesting: we get introduced to Lan, an old woman on her deathbed. Lan is a queer scientist and an English shaman (in that she uses dreams to travel to the ). As she says goodbye to her family, she promises her grandson that she’ll take care of him.

We move forward, and Lan is the Otherworld, enjoying her existence there but somehow unable to cross to the land of the dead as the promise she made to her grandson is somehow keeping her in a sort of limbo (which seems a chill place where she can enjoy wild nature and even the company of a mysterious dog, but still, she’s on her own). Suddenly, she gets pulled back into the world of the living (as a ghost) because her grandson, now a young man, is asking for her help. And from then on, Lan will need to do everything in her power (as a ghost, so she can’t even communicate with the living unless she uses the dreamworld) to save her family, who is about to undergo a perilous time.

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Best Reads of 2024

Book Review, Climate Fiction, Creative Non Fiction, Crime Fiction, Eco-criticism, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Horror, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature, Science-Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Thrutopia

2024 was another good year for reading – even better than 2023, it turned out. I feel I have successfully developed a good reading habit again and nothing makes me happier these days than sitting down with a coffee and a book to lose myself in it. This year I did a lot of international adventures – including two transatlantic trips (California and NYC), long car journeys into the far north (the Highlands) and the far south (Cornwall) and crossing Europe by train – and books kept me company all along. 

I’ve also realised that many books in this year’s list (almost half) are written by trans and non-binary authors and almostall books are queer in some degree or another – something that I wasn’t necessarily actively pursuing but I suppose reflects some (internal) journey I may have gone through in 2024!

Here is a selection of what I enjoyed the most this past year.

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Indigenous horror and a certain French flavour: November 2024 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Climate Fiction, Crime Fiction, Eco-criticism, French, Horror, Indigenous, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature

Never Whistle At Night edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

Version 1.0.0

This was a highly anticipated collection for me – as soon as I knew it existed I went to get a copy.

In this book, indigenous authors use elements of their own cultural background to revisit and reinvent many tropes and archetypes commonly found in horror fiction.

As this is an anthology by many authors, the tones, approaches and styles vary enormously from story to story. In fact, one of the best things about this collection is that it’s allowed me to discover writers I’m now very curious about and would love to read more from in the future. Here there is a short list of the stories I enjoyed the most:

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Some dark retellings: October 2024 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Climate Fiction, Creative Non Fiction, Crime Fiction, Eco-criticism, Graphic Novels, Horror, Queer Literature, Speculative Fiction

Diaries of War by Nora Krug

I love Krug’s graphic novel memoir Heimat, which is a fascinating meditation on the value of historical fiction, not only for the descendants of those who have been treated unfairly but also for the descendants of those who perpetrated violent acts or allowed them to happen because they benefited them in some way or another.

It is clear that Krug is interested in the consequences of war and conflict – and how people deal with them. So Diaries of War is a bit of an experiment (and an interesting one at that). Right after Russia attacked Ukraine and a war between these two countries started (an ongoing conflict) she contacted two people she knew from the arts and literary industries. One was a journalist in Ukraine, and the other one was an illustrator in Russia. She proposed them she’d get in touch once a week to ask for updates on their daily lives as the conflict progressed – she’d then illustrate these to create a book that captured perspectives from both sides.

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Thrutopias: May 2024 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Climate Fiction, Creative Non Fiction, Eco-criticism, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature, Science-Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Thrutopia

None of the Above by Travis Alabanza

This year I’m doing a lot of reading around gender (starting with books I really liked, such as A Real Piece of Work by Erin Riley and Disphoria Mundi by Paul B. Preciado). I was very excited to find this book at the university library because it is written by a non-binary author, which is a perspective I haven’t encountered all that often.

This was an entertaining book I read very quickly, each chapter centring on a specific theme around Alabanza’s experience of transness, queerness and being non-binary. It was thought-provoking – for example, their experience of being harassed in the street because of the way they look was painfully shocking. It made me think of the many ways appearances are policed, specifically when it comes to how appearances fail to fit the idea of ‘womanness’ ingrained in our society. For example, Alabanza’s anguish of showing themselves as someone who is femme but also has hair in their legs or even facial hair reminded me of a similar anguish I feel as someone who is femme and has hair in all these places but is not supposed to show it when being out in public.

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