November Reading Wrap Up
The year is going by so quickly! I am wearing a Christmas jumper while sat down to write this, which both simultaneously feels too soon and super exciting.
The last couple of weeks of November had me suffering from a cold, but I was still able to fit in a theatre trip and a trio of Just Like Us school talks into the month before that which I’m happy about.
I recently also set myself a challenge to do at least one solo adventure each month because I love going on special outings on my own, but I haven’t done any in a while due to not feeling 100%. During November I went to one of the Crystal Palace Subway open days and explored this Victorian subway which was cool. I ended up talking to a woman and her dog on the bus ride there, and then to one of the volunteers in the subway. These were such lovely social interactions, and overall it was a really nice day.
As well as all of that, I also continued to read books worth talking about! I read two fiction books for my two book clubs and a couple of nonfiction reads, one of which contains some poignant and stunning writing, this being one of my favourite quotes:
“Crip time is time travel. Disability and illness have the power to extract us from linear, progressive time with its normative life stages and casts us into a wormhole of backward and forward acceleration, jerky stops and starts, tedious intervals and abrupt endings”
– Ellen Samuels in Disability Visibility
Wow, I want to be able to write like that!
The book Disability Visibility is one I will not be forgetting any time soon. It’s a collection of essays from various disabled writers - some of which I connected with or made me emotional in that “I feel seen” way, and others that highlighted perspectives I had not thought of before. I highly recommend this book (and one of my loved ones may be getting a copy of this book for Christmas – it’s that good!)
.
Airborn by Kenneth Oppel ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This is a fun adventure story I read for my science fiction book club. It reminded me of books I loved as a teen, such as Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve.
The book is set in an alternative history where airships are the main form of travel. We follow Matt Cruse, a fifteen-year-old cabin boy on the airship Aurora who only really feels at home in flight. During the two crossings depicted, Matt helps to save a ship in distress, meets the adventurer-to-be Kate and discovers a curious new species with her, helps fight pirates, and saves the Aurora from being shipwrecked.
Those of us at book club all agreed it was a quick read that often felt more as if we were watching a movie than reading words on a page! I am not the target audience for this book, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This book caught my eye as I was shelf tidying in the library one day.
The book touches on some important topics around book banning, intellectual freedom, how libraries choose books, the process of objecting to a book, and if it's ever okay to remove a book from library shelves. The author clearly has a lot of knowledge in this area, so I would have loved for the book to explore these topics further and explain the mentioned processes in more detail than it did.
This book, for the most part, is a memoir of Jones' experience of being a librarian targeted and harassed online for speaking out against book censorship. We also follow her journey in suing her harassers and joining and building a community of librarians fighting back against book bans in the States.
I did find the chapters quite repetitive and think there were a few anecdotes too many. I feel the book could have been shorter and still have said as much. But I am glad to have read it, and it got me thinking about my own role in the library system (as a library assistant in the UK).
Second Chances in New Port Stephen by TJ Alexander ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Chosen for our final book club meeting of 2025, this is a mlm romance set at Christmas.
Eli, a trans man, returns to his hometown in Florida after his career has fizzled out. He ends up bumping into his high school ex, Nick, and the two of them realise their love for each other never really went away.
Eli has avoided coming back before now because of how Florida treats trans people in law and from what he's heard. In the book itself, most of the characters aren't queerphobic in any way. As talked about at book club, the setting of Florida could have been explored a bit more - either demonstrating the hostility, or making a point of Eli realising queer people do live and survive in Florida and not everyone there is bad.
But I do think the trans rep was good! There was a cute scene when Nick is explaining to his 4-year-old what transgender means. It's done well and demonstrates to the reader how you can bring up these topics to children in an age-appropriate way. We also see Eli's dynamic with his parents and, by extension, his thoughts on childhood photos and being back home post-transition.
There were disagreements at book club about whether the sex scenes were good/fit the book. I think it was very sex positive with communication and exploring how sex can be many things.
The ace rep (demisexuality) was limited to one conversation and then a brief mention later, but I didn't mind that, particularly as the potentially-ace character chooses to not really use labels.
Overall, I found this entertaining and enjoyed the queer representation.
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century edited by Alice Wong ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This essay collection by people of various disabilities super resonated with me! It also taught me so much about other experiences and really made me think. I was tearing up at parts, and I think it's so good I've brought a copy as a Christmas present for someone I know will get lots out of it too.
There are so many chapters I will remember going forward, including:
Imposter Syndrome and Parenting with a Disability by Jessica Slice
Why My Novel is Dedicated to My Disabled Friend Maddy by A. H. Reaume
Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time by Ellen Samuels
On the Ancestral Plane: Crip Hand-Me-Downs and the Legacy of Our Movements by Stacey Milbern
There is also a chapter on the intersection between disability and asexuality, which, again, rung true to my own experience.