Books I speed read
I’m going to start this post off with a sentence that I
thought sounded equal parts smart and pretentious, but in reality, is probably
neither of those things. To quote Tiffany Pollard, “It’s nothing of the sort.”
So… My lust
for reading is multi-faceted.
See? Didn’t
that sound both smart and pretentious. But I meant what I said. My lust for
reading is multi-faceted in that sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s
not. And sometimes I’ll see someone on Twitter or Instagram who has somehow
managed to read 70 books in a year and I just wonder how they’re always
reading and just how fast they’re reading. Because I’m not a fast reader
by any means, but there have been books that I’ve speed read, but they
don’t come all that often. And I also sometimes find myself feeling bad when I
have a book that I’ve been wanting to read for the longest time, but when I do
read it, I just struggle.
I’ve
particularly found that I tend to speed read books that (for the most part) are
more grounded in reality. There are exceptions to this rule, obviously, but I
usually find myself struggling with fantasy. I don’t mind fantasy; I
just don’t think I’m the biggest fan of high fantasy – even if it’s gay. I’ll
happily read a high fantasy book, but I think I’d just prefer something closer
to reality. I love a high fantasy RPG game – I’m (not right this moment)
currently playing Dragon Age Inquisition on PC and I am into that.
Now, that
fantasy tangent has been said, here’s a post about books that I’ve speed read.
First is Simon
vs the Homo-Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. So, I will say, for most of
the books I’m going to mention, I’ll have just read them in my bedroom. But for
this one, I remember that I was going on holiday, and I had taken this book
with me. Did I read the book on holiday, however? No, I did not. I read the
book in two sittings, within twenty-four hours, in the hotel by the airport
before we even flew. And the only reason it was in two sittings was because I
had to go to sleep, otherwise I would have missed my flight. I remember that I
ended up buying this book after one of my friends sent me the first trailer for
Love, Simon and I, somehow, found out it was based off a book. That was
literally it. That was that story. It was nothing exciting, but I love this
book, and Love, Simon is my favourite movie, I have no shame in saying
that.
Darius
the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram. I know that I’ve mentioned this
book before in at least one other post on here. I know it was in my top books
of 2020, and it might have been somewhere else. But I’m going to mention it
again, because it’s one of my favourite books of all time – and I should say
it. I’m likely going to rehash what I said about this book in my other post(s?)
but that’s just because what I said still stands. After loving the first Darius
book, I was surprised that I loved the second one way more than the
first, and I’m fairly certain that’s because Deserves Better gave me
more of what I loved about the first book, dealings with mental
health/depression/anxiety in daily life, and then what I secretly wanted in the
first book – gay. But I ended up speed reading this one because Darius may be
the character that I have found the most relatability in as a character. I just
loved him, and I didn’t want to stop following him around (in a non-creepy
way). It was everything that I loved about the first Darius book, and it also
happened to be gay. Win-win.
How it All Blew Up by Arvin Ahmadi is next. I’m pretty sure that this one was in my top books of 2020 post as well, but oh well. This is my blog, and you can’t stop me from incessantly posting about my favourite books. How it All Blew Up follows Amir after he runs away from home and goes to Rome and lives a gay little life (as one does, casually) before he has to come home. And then the whole story is essentially told through TSA interrogations, because racism after Amir’s family got into an argument on the plane back to the US. I don’t know what it was I loved about this. Other than the fact I loved Amir, maybe it had something to do with the fact that I had never read anything that was even set in Rome and Ahmadi did a wonderful job of showing me this city that I’ve never visited. Like, I’d seen pictures of Rome, obviously, but other than that, Ahmadi was just leading me around the city. And I only have one word: Wig.
So, Geography Club by Brent Hartinger is the last one I want to mention. Now, Geography Club was actually the first (for lack of better phrasing) gay book that I read. As in, it was the first book I read that centred around a gay character. And now because I love a terrible pun, you could say it was my gay-teway into queer literature. Yes, I am smiling about having made that pun and no I’m not sorry. This is probably the shortest book on this list, but that doesn’t mean anything. I ended up reading it in one sitting because it was the first gay book that I read, and there was a part of me that was like, “You can write books like this???” and it just meant so much to me.
Now, I purposefully cut that paragraph about Geography Club short because as I wrote it, I realised that I think I want to dedicate a whole post to it, since it was the first gay book I read, and also, I have a weird, roundabout way of how I even discovered it that I want to mention – but just in a different post. So, I’m going to leave this post here. Wow, what an ending.
Okay, bye!
Comments
Post a Comment