meme_of_bilitis | I have doubts that [a femslash meme] would be very long-lived

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From: (Anonymous)

Femslashy books you've always loved, femslashy books you've read recently, books you wish WERE femslashy, and more, all ITT

From: (Anonymous)

Femslashy books I love:
-Steerswoman series (especially books 2 and 4)
-Six of Crows duology (Nina & Inej get to interact and bond over shared trauma and it's great)

Still wish the ending to One Good Knight by Mercedes Lackey was... not that. A crossdressing female knight and a princess, up against ("against") a couple of dragons... and everything about the ending felt like a cop-out.

From: (Anonymous)

Steerswoman series is GREAT! I went to Worldcon two years ago and she read a bit from Book 5. Hopeful that we'll get to see it soon.

From: (Anonymous)

AYRT

Hi anon! I feel like we might have talked about this before, but I feel like Steerswoman is one of my new favorite series! I feel like when I try to describe it, it sounds super boring-- academic discussions of how magic works, a blend of science fiction and fantasy, figuring out cultures from the outside-- but it's super fantastic and Rowan is an amazing POV character.

From: (Anonymous)

I barely finished the first Six of Crows book and didn't pick up the second, over a variety of issues but mostly Nina's pining romance for a guy who believes in genocide of people like her, met through attempting said genocide of her + her people, and on days when he's not happy with her he contemplates it some more even after his "redemption," with vivid descriptions of how much he wants to strangle her.

Not hating on your tastes, just kind of a warning for other nonnies that this book is not f/f, and maybe they do some gal pal bonding in book 2 but both of them had clearly telegraphed canon het ships, one being the one I just described, and the other ending the first book in a damseling for her male love interest's angst. The characters are both nice on their own and they're an aesthetically pleasing couple, but boy I wouldn't rec the canon for anything f/f. (There is some m/m, which is awkward for other reasons but anyway.)

From: (Anonymous)

AYRT

Well, I did say femslashy, not with canon f/f! But yes, YMMV on the duology-- some people really love it (like me), some people hate it because the characters are (purposefully) unlikeable. I found that Matthias (Nina's love interest) was actually more forgiveable due to his arc than Kaz (Inej's love interest) who I was super bored of, but I really did like Inej and Nina's friendship and I also really liked the heist aspect of the books.

From: (Anonymous)

"with vivid descriptions of how much he wants to strangle her."

What the fuck.

Re: Books

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-09-05 08:59 am (UTC) - Expand

From: (Anonymous)

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland would have been so much better if the two girls had kissed, instead of having a throw-away conversation (that could have literally been completely excised from the book with no one the wiser!) about how one of them fancies girls and the other fancies no one.

From: (Anonymous)

Oh, this book looks interesting. Apart from that frustrating thing, is it good?

Re: Books

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-08-08 06:47 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Books

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-08-08 06:51 pm (UTC) - Expand

From: (Anonymous)

Haven't read, really want to:

The Lily and the Crown by Roslyn Sinclair
The Salbine Sisters by Sarah Ettritch
Lady Knight by L.J. Baker
Sword of the Guardian by Merry Shannon

Read recently and liked:
The Queen of Ieflaria (Tales of Inthya Book 1) by Effie Calvin

From: (Anonymous)

Oooh, The Queen of Ieflaria looks very RTMI.

Re: Books

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-08-09 12:23 am (UTC) - Expand

From: (Anonymous)

I read the fic version of Lily and the Crown and really dug it, though I kind of liked Truth and Measure better, maybe because secretary/boss hits my id better than privileged space lady/dangerous slave.

From: (Anonymous)

I am prepared to be very disappointed because I feel like a "we don't get along at all and are totally different but you're charming and a dude so it's already obvious we're endgame" character has just been introduced, but Endling: The Last was really good for my shipper heart in the meantime. Eventually two female mains (one being the main/POV character) and three male mains in the group, but the two girls... Ugh, I love them.

SOME SPOILERS BELOW, but they're of the tropey types that might lure some people in, so...

Byx is a fantasy race that's very furry/xeno; she's like a talking dog, except is usually bipedal, can talk, has opposable thumbs, also has a pouch and skin-flap "wings" like a flying squirrel's, and can detect lies. She's also potentially the very last of her race (the endling!) after her entire pack and family are killed for political reasons. Khara is a human girl who is in disguise crossdressing as a boy because it's easier and opens up more doors for her, and who is from a very important family and has a magic sword of legend, which is another good reason for her to be undercover as all get out. Khara saves Byx's life-slash-abducts her to take her to somewhere she believes might be safe, against Byx's will but with good intentions. When that falls through, she becomes fiercely devoted to Byx; whereas certain people will kneel to Khara if they know who she really is, she looks to Byx and dedicates herself to Byx's quest to see if they can find more of her people, and becomes her unswerving ally in the politically motivated mess that threatens the world.

Also there's lots of angst, because it's K.A. Applegate. It's great.

From: (Anonymous)

The title confused me a bit because I was like, how did I miss an entire K.A. Applegate series? But apparently "the Last" is just what they named the first book. Anyway, I'm super there for f/f loyalty kink!

From: (Anonymous)

I’ve asked this before on meme to crickets—maybe I’ll have better lunch here, or maybe it just doesn’t exist!

I’m looking for tropey and escapist but well-written historical f/f with a focus on the romance. I’ve enjoyed the Alpennia series and Sarah Waters in different ways, but I’m looking for something that’s more tonally similar to what KJ Charles and Tamara Allen are for m/m. Mystery or SF/F subplots welcome. Any recs, meme?

From: (Anonymous)

*better luck here. I can manage lunch fine on my own

From: (Anonymous)

I'm afraid that I'm still only dipping my toe into the world of f/f published fiction, but here's some decent goodreads lists that I've been working off of, less because I trust GR recs and more because it's nice to have recs in one place.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/108614.Regency_Victorian_and_Edwardian_WLW
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/4541.Best_Lesbian_Fiction

And Lesbrary is decent for reviews, and has a tag for historical fiction:
http://lesbrary.com/tag/historical-fiction/

From: (Anonymous)

Have you tried Jeanette Winterson? She's not super tropey but I really like her writing, and some of her novels are SFF-like. From what I can remember: The Powerbook, Lighthousekeeping, The Stone Gods, Sexing the Cherry, The Passion and Gut Symmetries might interest you. I am pretty sure they all have FF.

From: (Anonymous)

Some classic lit favourites of mine -

Oranges are Not the Only Fruit. A bit angsty but the narrator has a marvelous voice, and it's so vivid.

The Price of Salt/Carol. Nobody dies! No tragedy! Amazing!

Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith. Yes, these are the OTT lesbian historical novels Waters got famous for, and I still love them. The Paying Guests and Night Watch are also good, but pretty traumatic.

Desert of the Heart, Jane Rule. Basis for the early FF movie Desert Hearts, also non-tragic, very well-written.

Mrs Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, by May Sarton, also made into a really good indie movie https://vimeo.com/ondemand/mrsstevens/169453929

Torchlight to Valhalla/The Strange Path by Gale Wilhelm - I found this through a booklist. It's beautifully written but apparently she decided to stop writing after she turned 40, which is really a bummer.

You can try to pry Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe from my cold dead hands.

Patience and Sarah, ditto. I picked this up at a young age and it really stuck with me.

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins - usually Emma Donoghue is too grim for me (Frog Music, NO) but this is one of the first "reimagined fairy tales" books I read and it still really holds up.

Olivia, Dorothy Bussy - I got this from a booklist too. It was dedicate to Virginia Woolf and published by the Hogarth Press. It was a little slow going, but beautifully written. Reminded me a lot of Colette.

From: (Anonymous)

After watching The Handmaiden I now want an Asian drama version of Tipping the Velvet.

From: (Anonymous)

I found this very overwhelming Metafilter post while browsing the archives lately:

https://www.metafilter.com/147521/The-humble-quest-to-read-all-things-lesbian

So much to put on my list...

From: (Anonymous)

I always get so excited about lesbian or f/f book lists and then disappointed when I realize that my library has none of the ones I'm interested in/haven't already read. :(

Re: Books - the quest to read all things lesbian

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-08-27 04:30 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Books - the quest to read all things lesbian

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-08-27 05:01 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Books - the quest to read all things lesbian

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-08-30 04:01 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Books - the quest to read all things lesbian

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-08-30 04:01 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Books - the quest to read all things lesbian

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-08-30 06:23 am (UTC) - Expand

From: (Anonymous)

For other Italian-speaking nonnies - I just finished reading La vita a rovescio, a historical novel about Caterina Vizzani, a real person who lived dressed as a man for eight years. I enjoyed it but didn't love it. The historical facts made it inevitably a bit of a downer, but the author paid off in the ending a lot of things that she'd set up earlier about the historical and literary figures that Caterina/Giovanni looked to and the women who were influential in his/her life, and I was legitimately pretty moved. I think my biggest disappointment was that I wasn't convinced by the final romance; I'm not totally sure I was supposed to be, but even if I wasn't, it nonetheless struck a sour note, I'd have wished that the last one was a good one.