(These notes are late but deadlines are an ableist construct by people who just want my money.)
There were so many of us! We had to move downstairs! It was a melée of book worms! A veritable bookclub of bookworms! 🥰
We're coming for you
Anyway so we did not have time to do anything other than talk about the best books we read last year. At the end I just shared Frog and Toad stickers because I had forgotten to bring bookmarks as usual.
Frog and Toad are Friends!
I originally in tended to add all the books we loved and hated last year but then I thought: do I want to expose all our thoughts to a random maybe stranger audience who might judge our bullet pointed thoughts and further do I wanna type all that no so I'm tl;dw all that.
The Books We Loved in Queer Reads Bangalore for 2025
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado --- we loved the structure, the lore, the story, the writing! I blame this book for how much horror we read this year and thus my insomnia too. Carmilla by J Sheridan LeFanu --- we didn't love the sexism and homophobia in the narrative, but we did love the queerness and the horror!Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe --- we loved Gender Queer's clean and clear style, but also struggled with the depth of Americanness of the exploration of identity. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel --- with Gender Queer, a book mentioned bceause it offered a new perspective on what a graphic novel could be --- serious, grounded, set in reality.It Has No Name by Payal Dhar --- our answer to Gender Queer's Americanness, because how Indian and delightful was this! Indian queer YA! We talked about so many things for this novel. <3 The author is a member too so please, see m y smug face: 😏Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield was probably the most mentioned for best book of 2025. The love, the creep, the slow horror, the sadness!
And — the book we broadly agreed was not what we wanted it to be
Interstellar Megachef by Lavanya Lakshminarayan --- this SFF novel is so ambitious, talking food, food politics, business, politics, privilege, immigration, sekrit identities, technology and a philosopical exploration of what experience even is. I will try the sequel, to see how it rounds out the events of Interstellar Megachef, but most of the rest of us won't. Side note: why is there a doughnut on the cover. There is no doughnut in the novel! As an aside, Lavanya Lakshminarayan also has some excellent short stories out, which is the reason we picked her novel.
What We're Reading Next Month
February 21st | 6 PM | Atta Galatta | The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
