I am a very slow reader.
Every now and then this is a helpful thing. Like when a new Harry Potter book comes out and everyone else finishes it the night they got it and then it’s over, whereas I will still be enjoying the thrill of that first read five days later.
The thing is, there hasn’t been a new Harry Potter book for four years now.
So I have had few occasions in which to relish my slow-reader status. In fact it’s quite the opposite. The more I immerse myself in the YA readership world, the more my slow reading becomes a pain in the ass. My TBR list grows and grows into infinity, and yet I keep hearing about new books coming out that OMG I MUST READ NOW OR I WILL DIE. Etc.
2011 was the first year I ever set out to track the books I read, which has resulted in making me that much more conscious of my reading speed fail, especially compared to my universally-much-better-read friends. I can look down the list of titles and dates and confirm that indeed, is not at all uncommon for it to take me two weeks to finish reading one book. Or three. Or even longer. No matter how much I enjoy the book (see above re Harry Potter), I just can’t force myself to read any faster.
But tracking my reading has also enlightened me to something else I might not’ve noticed otherwise: I am not reading enough books about queer people.
I just added a new column to my book-tracking spreadsheet (I have spreadsheets for everything, it’s kind of a problem) to denote queerness, and therefore discovered that out of the 27 books I’ve read so far this year (I know, it’s pathetic), only 5 had queer characters. Three books had queer protagonists, and 2 had queer side characters. So, 18% of my reading thus far in 2011 has involved some sort of queerness, and only 11% has involved significant queerness.
Given that every book I’ve written and every book I’ve ever wanted to write has had at least one queer protagonist, something seems off here.
Granted, 8 of the books I read this year were either published or set before 1970, back when queerness was That Thing We Don’t Speak Of, unless we were speaking of it this way:
And of course much has been made lately of the fact, best demonstrated by Malinda Lo, that even today, queer characters in mainstream YA are few and far between.
All I can do now is try to make up for it over the two months left in this year. I’ve also been failing miserably in my goal of reading 10 books published in 2011 while we are still actually in 2011 (though I read 2012’s Born Wicked twice this year, does that count?). So I guess that means reading as much queer-inclusive stuff published this year as I can get my hands on. Happily, right now I’m reading Lauren Myracle’s Shine, which has queer secondary characters, and my Kindle already houses Brent Hartinger’s Shadow Walkers, Brian Farrey’s With or Without You, Alex Sanchez’s Boyfriends with Girlfriends, and Scott Tracey’s Witch Eyes. (And now I’m realizing how incredibly heavy my reading list is on the queer boys rather than girls ― but, well, that’s still very disproportionately what’s out there. And anyway, all these books look awesome.)
So, are there any other circa-2011 queer YAs I should add to my list? (For the record, I’ve already read I Am J and Beauty Queens.)
