Book 4: The Larks Still Bravely Singing by Aster Glenn Gray

Set in the dying days of World War I, two former public school boy friends find each other again while convalescing from the front. One has lost a leg, the other an arm, and they begin to rekindle the romance that never quite bloomed while they were at school together. 

I really loved so much of this - it's an era that I keep going back to, in part because the brutality of that war destroyed so much and never quite got dealt with. That's a bit of an issue with this novel, for me. I appreciated the lack of a quick fix for either of them, but I also wanted an ending and a resolution that presented at least a clearer way forward, if not a complete emotional and mental recovery for both of them. I don't entirely know how to do that beyond a magical cure for PTSD before anyone really knew what that was, but I felt more off-balance by the ending than I had hoped.

Grade: B

Book 3: Deck the Halls with Secret Agents by Astor Glenn Gray

What a charming bite sized Christmas novella! This is actually much more in line with what I expected Honeypot to be like - it's two secret agents who have been secretly fucking whenever they encountered each other on opposite sides of the Cold War who find themselves without a clear purpose in the early 1990s. They've both been sent to an English country house to steal incriminating letters at a Christmas party, and wouldn't you know there's just the right kind of bed for them to fall into together. This had almost no real conflict and I had a great time reading it. 

Grade: A  

Reread: A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay

The last of my GGK rereads before I finally read his most recent two novels! This book is such a curious one - it takes place only fifty years prior to the events of Children of Earth and Sky, and it connects to them but in the kind of way where as soon as I finished this one I wanted to reread that one again, so I could better slot it all in. It's also curious in that it's deliberately to the side of major world events - the fall of Sarantium (aka Constantinople) and the remaking of the world's order, is out of focus while the almost petty citystate wars of Batiara (aka Italy) take center stage. This book takes a long time to fully immerse myself in the stakes of the story, and as soon as it does everyone is hit from the side by much more important developments. Which I suppose is reflective of living through the world in real time; I can formulate many reasons why a Canadian author might have written this in the aftermath of Trump's first election. It does however mean that it's the least sticky of all of GGK's novels for me, and while I had a lovely time becoming reacquainted with these characters, none of them burrowed deep into my chest as others have. It was still a remarkable book to finish while visiting Istanbul for the first time, however. 

Grade: B

Book 2: Honeytrap by Aster Glenn Gray

This is a gay romance novel that spans multiple decades and follows the romance of a soviet spy and an American spy who are partnered to solve a mystery of sorts and embark on a roadtrip across late 1950s America. It's both a charming romance in which both of them are hiding a secret (Gennady is supposed to be honey trapping Daniel, and Daniel has been demoted for having a gay affair with another FBI agent), and a look at how the closet hurts people's lives over many decades. I expected something different from this novel--less of a historical examination and more of a classic romance novel in which two characters decide their love requires them to risk it all--and it took me a bit to come around to the slower, more agonized love depicted. But maybe we need a slightly more honest version of this story right now. 

Grade: B

Book 1: A Physical Education by Casey Johnston

First book of the year! This is a memoir by an author whose lifting newsletter I've been a reader of for many years at this point. It's a really interesting accounting of how she came to integrate her sense of self with her sense of having a physical body as an adult. It's not a self-help book, but it's also a book that made me think a lot about my own relationship to my body, and how I do and don't consider it to be the same thing as Me. It's hard not to read a book like this without searching for the answer, for the key to fixing my own relationship to my body, and it's too honest to peddle that kind of absolution. I both respect it more for not and wish it had, for obvious reasons. But it did make me think that it's at least possible to change, which is worth a lot. 

Grade: A 

Book 45: The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

A delightful little novella about what happens with Queen Elizabeth II stops off at the lending library van near the palace and starts reading novels for the first time in her life. Involves a friendship with a gay servant from the kitchens who gives her reading recommendations and a discovery of what you can learn from books even if you've been everywhere and met everyone as a nation's sovereign. Just extremely enjoyable in the specific gay British way of Bennett. 

Grade: A 

Book 44: All of Us Murderers by KJ Charles

An absolutely delightful gothic manor house murder mystery with bonus gay love story book! I really, really enjoyed what this story did with the conventions of both genres, and how it both delivered on the promise of those kinds of stories while also deconstructing elements of it. Definitely among my favorites of this author's, who's long been a favorite of mine! 

Grade: A