I haven't done one of these since March, so this is catch-up from that. I only just realised Don Quixote shouldn't be on here, but I'm not fixing it. It's been a rough few months for reading, with migraines and insomnia keeping me off new books for the most part, so the vast majority here is Twitch reading (either actually on stream, or seeing if a book would suit), but I got two SFF m/m romances in!
“…O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!“
https://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again
Inspired by Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes. Thank you to @karisa and @cbee for reminding me of this. My heart hurts this week.
#haikuhive #haikuaday
pickUNPUTDOWNABLE histfic read that takes you back to the heart of the Harlem Renaissance, highlighting the life & legacy of Jessie Redmon Fauset—a literary powerhouse often overshadowed by the very writers she helped shape. She played a pivotal role in discovering and promoting legendary voices like Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Nella Larsen.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #historicalfiction #HarlemRenaissance #harlemrhapsody
#2025reads #Fiction
This is a beautiful read in how it shows a complicated dynamics between race and personal identity. All the way through I could see something dreadful was ahead, and then it happened and I had to pause, recollect myself before carrying on.
so-so
🌈Something Human is an m/m romance set in secondary world loosely based on ancient Rome etc, and it worked well enough but I'm not sure I'll try anything else by AJ Demas.
🌈Harlem Shadows is a poetry collection by a probably bisexual Jamaican-American. 2w
Cowie's Printer's Pocket-book and Manual (1830) by George Cowie
Bartender's Manual (1888) by Theodore Proulx
Women Compositors: A Guide to the Composing Room (1880) by HGB
I ended up finding and reading that last one because I couldn't understand half of what Cowie said and needed an introduction to the terms, and most of the trade jargon hadn't changed yet (later books were less helpful). 2w