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 

Book 43: Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

Final book club book of the year! A lovely little novella about a future version of California that has split off from the U.S., and the food service bots who form their own restaurant collective and build their own community of bots and humans. It's very sweet and enjoyable, with some fairly obvious but still effective allegories, and I enjoyed my time with it a lot.

Grade: B

Book 42: Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

An incredible book. I read this because I wanted to have experienced the book before I saw the movie, and the way the story is told in this medium is just a triumph. Agnes is such a fascinating, compelling character, but everyone we meet is; this is historical fiction that somehow fully conveys how foreign a land the past is while also reminding us of the fact that people have always been people. The slight of hand with the capital S Shakespeare of it all is expertly done, and the fact that I knew going in what would happen didn't affect how it landed for me at all. Just a book that made me remember why books are good, actually.

Grade: A 

Book 41: The Gentleman and his Vowsmith by Rebecca Ide

I confess that this was almost a DNF for me, but I decided that I wanted to know how it would resolve badly enough to stick with it. Do I regret that? A bit, but only because I am trying to become more ruthless in not spending my time with media I don't truly care about, because it turns out there is plenty out there that I genuinely love and why give my life over to things that don't work that well for me. It's a regency m/m romantasy and neither the romance nor the magic nor the setting really worked for me. Oh well!

Grade: C