🌈 Happy Pride Month!! 🌈
I’m so happy it’s Pride Month oh my GOSH it’s one of my most favorite reading times of the year I absolutely love reading queer books. I’ve set a really ambitious TBR, classic, because I just want to read so much queer rep.
But first - I did read six books in May!! It was such an awesome month for reading. I hosted the first Books with Pals steam and we yapped about Babel (and tons more) for sooooo long truly we could not stop talking about books. Plus I started my re-read of the Uglies and did two other buddy reads (one with stream teammates and one with friends) so it was really just an incredigble month for social reading.
Now, pride!!! I want to say thanks to the folks that suggested some book recommendations for me on Twitter, I have a few books on my TBR from your recommendations! The rest of my June books I found from book club suggestions or my super long TBR heehe.
May Reads
- Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao - ⭐ 4.5 Petal Pages buddy read
- Funny Story by Emily Henry ⭐ 5
- Babel by R.F. Kuang - ⭐ 5 May Books with Pals selection
- Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
- Uglies by Scott Westerfeld - ⭐ 4 re-read, Community Buddy Read
- Faebound by Saara El-Arifi - ⭐ 4.5 May Discord Book Club selection
May Numbers
📖 read: 2213 pages
what, no audiobooks? who is she??
June TBR
- Late Bloomer by Mazey Eddings June Discord Book Club selection
- Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas June Books with Pals selection
- Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown recommended by @enybub
- This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron recommended by @sweetxsage
- Homebody by Theo Parish recommended by @theprinceofgems
- Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon recommended by @taxingpoetic
- What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
- Pretties by Scott Westerfeld re-read, Community Buddy Read
Pride Month
June is LGBTQIA2S+ Pride Month! This is a great time to make sure your TBR is full of queer representation of several of the letters in the acronym! Here are some spots to find recommendations:
- Audiobooks by Trans Authors on Libro.fm
- LGBTQIA+ Authors on Libro.fm
- 60 LGBTQ+ Books That Reaaally Deserve a Spot on Your Shelf from Cosmopolitan
Petal Pages Summer Book Bingo
Join the Petal Pages stream team for a summer full of reading! We’ve got two bingo boards and $300 worth of prizes to give out to participants at the end of the month! I’ll be aiming to do as much of the bingo boards as possible and we’ve got a special place in the community Discord for trading book recommendations and setting up buddy reads (for fun but also to help with book bingo)!
Click the link above to get full details on the book bingo event and download the bingo boards. Happy reading!
Books with Pals Schedule
Catch Bella and our guest Cafe @caefnby (they/them) on Friday June 14th at 11am ET for our June Books with Pals stream! We’ll be discussing Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas and much more (like why queer rep in books is so important, what our favorite tropes are, etc.).
Check Discord ahead of time for a chance to suggest questions for Cafe!
Saint Martin’s Press (SMP) Boycott
Social media influencers who create book content are currently boycotting Saint Martins Press (SMP) in response to their lack of accountability after an employer made harmful zionist, islamophobic, and racist statements. Please read more about this boycott from the Readers for Accountability carrd. I encourage fellow book-focused influencers to join me in boycotting SMP!
More Book Stuff
You can watch the VOD of the December Books with Bella stream and keep an eye out for future streams on my Twitch channel. If you miss a Books with Bella stream you can catch up on all of them in this YouTube playlist. I also post regularly on my book-focused Instagram.