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We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. – William Faulkner –

Hi, I’m Lucie Butler, a bookseller from B&N Athens. There have been two books published in the last year that really spoke to me. The first is Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven. The way Steven portrayed and wrote about love was so unique to me. I really appreciated the wide range of displays of love between humans throughout the thousands of lifetimes. She did a fantastic job of encapsulating love for people not based on appearances, but on their souls, and that really hit home. With Bury Our Bones by V.E. Schwab, I was able to get an early copy of it, and I’ve thought about this book every single day since I read it. I was enthralled by Schwab’s storytelling and the way she wrote a vampire story unlike any other I’ve read before. It was toxic, messy, dark, and sapphic, and I think it was the perfect blend of romance and fantasy combined into one beautifully haunting read. #readwithpride

Trois femmes. Trois lieux. Trois époques. Un jeu de miroir. Un fil conducteur : « Mrs Dalloway » de Virginia Woolf. Trois destins qui convergent. Une méditation sur l’amour, sur le temps qui file entre les doigts, sur la fragilité de nos vies, sur la valeur de nos vies. Michael Cunningham a tout simplement écrit le livre que nous rêvons tous d’écrire. Three women. Three places. Three eras. A mirror game. A common thread: Virginia Woolf's “Mrs Dalloway”. Three destinies that converge. A meditation on love, on time slipping through our fingers, on the fragility of our lives, on the value of our lives. Michael Cunningham has written the book we all dream of writing. - Phillipe Besson, author of In the Absence of Men #readwithpride

I first read Jeannette Winterson’s novel Written on the Body in 1995, after borrowing it from my hometown’s public library, and it was a revelation. The story of an unnamed and ungendered narrator who loves and lusts after a married woman named Louise, it was both brainy and erotic, and structurally adventurous. By my early teens, I already knew I wanted to be a writer and had loved many books, but had read few that struck that particular sense of I want to be able to do that on the page. This was one of the first. It has remained a touchstone ever since. I thought of it many times while writing The Dry Season, a book in which I wanted to vividly capture both the intellectual and erotic experience of a year spent celibate but in deep sensual connection with myself and the world. Deep House by Jeremy Atherton Lin From the author of Gay Bar, the gorgeous and sexy love story of Lin’s relationship with his now-husband interweaves with a scrupulously researched history of gay marriage in the United States—there is so much to love about this book, and I did all of it. It’s a book best read in both of its settings: the U.S. and U.K., but especially San Francisco. Stag Dance by Torrey Peters This novella and stories kept me rapt, and I’ve read few recent books that were quite as funny and devastating. Peters writes the most vulnerable parts of love and desire so well that it’s almost hard to take but also impossible to turn away from. For me, its pristine sentences and queer cringe make for a perfect beach read. - Melissa Febos, Author of The Dry Season #readwithpride

I first read "Becoming A Man" by Paul Monette when I was 20 years old and desperately trying to figure out how to come out of the closet. I recently re-read the book and was struck by Monette's candor, use of language, and above all, his ability to fight through fear to become his authentic self. - Jeff Hiller, Actress of a Certain Age #readwithpride

We MAYBE went a little too liberal with #takeyourdogtoworkday. Presenting our rebel dogs for our Young Reader June Pick I Am Rebel by Ross Montgomery. Publisher: Candlewick Press

Miss Major Speaks is a book that helped me not only see myself, but see my community in a clearer, brighter light. I'm lucky to call Miss Major Griffin-Gracy a friend, and this book captures her vibrant, joyful voice in conversation with Toshio Meronek. For those who aren't familiar, Miss Major is a trans elder who has led and shaped trans and gender non-conforming people's fight for a just, inclusive world in too many ways to count. There's something about a conversation that draws out voice – and story, and memory – in such a distinctive way, and I'm so grateful to Miss Major for sharing her wisdom with us all. —Tourmaline, author of Marsha and One Day in June

One of the first books in which I recognized my queer identity was the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles. While not overtly queer, the story told of the passionate friendship between two teenage boys, Gene, an introverted 16-year-old, and Phineas, his handsome, charismatic friend — ugh he was so hot. I wasn’t a big reader as a teenager, but next to A Catcher in the Rye, this was the first book to move me and give me feelings which I didn’t fully understand, but knew were rooted in who I truly was — a big ol’ man loving homosexual. Gene’s complicated love for Phineas perfectly captured my own hidden desire to have a special friend, who was more attractive and more athletic than I, but who loved me despite my limits. I wasn’t the only one to do a queer reading of the text, and in fact it was a book that has been banned for being highly sexual even though no sex is ever mentioned. I saw this play out at my high school in a more subtle way. We had a mid-year change of English teachers, and the new teacher felt the text of A Separate Peace was “inappropriate” and told us to stop reading it. I vaguely remember her grimacing with disgust. I still managed to finish it before it was taken away. The story always stayed with me and when I read it again later in life, the subtextual homoeroticism was still there, as was its emotional impact. I couldn’t believe how much I cried while reading it. - Blair Fell, author of Disco Witches of Fire Island #readwithpride

Okay, I’m not saying that I’m a necrophiliac cannibalistic serial killer, BUT—Exquisite Corpse blew my mind when I read it for the first time as a gay goth teenager. Up to this point, I’d understood that queerness was something we didn’t really talk about in polite society. And if there were gay stories, they should be as palatable as possible—a promise to straight people that we’re not really that bad, we’re just born a little unfortunate. Then came Billy Martin (writing then as Poppy Z. Brite) with his perverted, furious, unapologetic characters. Set against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis and writhing with inexcusable behavior, this book was so utterly shameless. I didn’t know you were allowed to write like that. I didn’t know you were allowed to be gay and also wield such a twisted, nasty imagination. It’s not a novel I’d recommend to everyone (and sure, it has its issues), but it changed my view of what was permissible, and I’ll always love it for that. —Jane Flett, author of FREAKSLAW

I read Maurice by E.M. Forster on my very first proper holiday: I was twenty-one, newly a student, newly the owner of a student loan that I put to the terrifying use that is a two-week stint in Tuscany. I’d never been away with a friend that long, never been to Italy, never quite done the summer getaway and had sky-high expectations and was surprised to find that I was, instead, quite sad. There was no reason for my sadness other than the heat, which I love, depressed me; the landscape, which was beautiful, made me feel impossibly alone in the world. And then I read Maurice. I recall finishing it at 3AM in the top bunk of a hostel bed, a flashlight in hand, facing a wide-open window that overlooked a mountain range. Lights blinked in the night, villages in the distance, I finished the novel and all at once I went from not feeling enough, to feeling everything. I think in Forster’s writing I found something that spoke to me as, yes, a baby gay in the make, but more primordially than that: as a big-time yearner. As someone who wanted to know themselves, who had to contend with the fact that the self was a forever changing thing and therefore unknowable in a static way, and as someone who yearned—for people, for friends, for a holiday as it exists only in the mind. The good house as it exists only in novels. For novels, as they only come to one rarely: a home, not a reflection of the self, but a place where one might find shelter. Yael van der Wouden – The Safekeep #readwithpride