Reading Wednesday
Feb. 11th, 2026 06:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabby Just finished: Changelog by Rich Larson. I don't have much to add from last week other than, surprise surprise, the last few stories were also amazing. One of the ones towards the end, "You Are Born Exploding," is probably the best one? I don't know which is the best one. It's about a mother whose young son is dying while increasing numbers of people in her seaside town are turning into zombie sea monsters, some of them voluntarily. Look, you can read it for free!
Sequel: An Anthology, edited by Chenise Puchailo. This collection is a sequel to Spud Publishing's first anthology, Debut (okay I find this, and everything about the press, very adorable, like a little middle finger in the face of SEO), and features six new authors and five new illustrators in Canadian genre fiction. I'm just really glad this exists, you guys. It gives me hope. It's like, very scrappy and indie and most of its focus is on the Prairies and interior BC, which is deeply underrepresented in fiction generally and in genre fiction even more so. It's not out yet but it should be launching in the spring.
Currently reading: The Threads That Bind Us by Robin Wolfe. Look, there are about six or seven of you who need to drop whatever you're doing and read this immediately. I'd have binged the entire thing in one night except that I felt like that wouldn't do it justice and I needed to slow down and read it in two nights instead.
This is a collection of twelve memories from queer and trans folks, written in their own words, which Robin then illustrates with symbolic embroidered textile art pieces (and a brief explanation of how the final embroidery relates to the story). It's devastating. The first story is about a teenager taking care of his leather daddy's friends who are dying of AIDS. There are moments of grief, love, and startling joy. It's the kind of thing where I just start directly texting friends who need to read it yesterday.
My only regret here is that the shipping somehow cost more than the book so I bought it in ebook form, which is probably actually better in terms of my seeing the details of the embroidery, but I'm sure the hard copy makes for a stunning physical artifact.
Anyway I am blown away so far and need you to read it so we can scream together.
Sequel: An Anthology, edited by Chenise Puchailo. This collection is a sequel to Spud Publishing's first anthology, Debut (okay I find this, and everything about the press, very adorable, like a little middle finger in the face of SEO), and features six new authors and five new illustrators in Canadian genre fiction. I'm just really glad this exists, you guys. It gives me hope. It's like, very scrappy and indie and most of its focus is on the Prairies and interior BC, which is deeply underrepresented in fiction generally and in genre fiction even more so. It's not out yet but it should be launching in the spring.
Currently reading: The Threads That Bind Us by Robin Wolfe. Look, there are about six or seven of you who need to drop whatever you're doing and read this immediately. I'd have binged the entire thing in one night except that I felt like that wouldn't do it justice and I needed to slow down and read it in two nights instead.
This is a collection of twelve memories from queer and trans folks, written in their own words, which Robin then illustrates with symbolic embroidered textile art pieces (and a brief explanation of how the final embroidery relates to the story). It's devastating. The first story is about a teenager taking care of his leather daddy's friends who are dying of AIDS. There are moments of grief, love, and startling joy. It's the kind of thing where I just start directly texting friends who need to read it yesterday.
My only regret here is that the shipping somehow cost more than the book so I bought it in ebook form, which is probably actually better in terms of my seeing the details of the embroidery, but I'm sure the hard copy makes for a stunning physical artifact.
Anyway I am blown away so far and need you to read it so we can scream together.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-11 03:12 pm (UTC)I have two weirdly opposite feelings about the book, which is that part of me is like, “Holy shit, I got so lucky with the people who decided to donate their histories to me, look at these incredible memories.” The other opposite feeling is, “I didn’t get lucky: I found people, period. Everyone has an interesting story. Nobody thinks they’re special, but really they all are. Every person is.”
Jeremy - the first story in the book - I met in 2024 when I started attending the weekly leather socials. He’s one of the quietest people in the room. Once you get to know him he’s incredibly sweet and kind. Until this project, I never knew his story because he’ll happily spend all the hours listening to others and not saying anything himself. He’s just a normal-looking older dude, the kind you wouldn’t really notice if you passed him on the street because he doesn’t draw attention to himself. And yet he was the first to donate to my project, and I think it wasn’t even because he needed to get his story out in the world; I think it was because I was asking people to share their stories with me, and he could support me by fulfilling my request. As I’ve gotten to know him over the past eighteen months, I’ve seen that he wants to care for and support people because that’s who he is.
So that story wrecked me too. In the caring 50-something man that I know, I now also see the caring mid-teenager that tended to these dying men.
It is such a privilege for me to be trusted with these glimpses into people’s lives, their pain, their resilience. How beautiful they are. (How beautiful we all are.)
I hope that’s what people walk away from when they read it: that we are incredible and “everyday people” have compelling experiences. You don’t have to be a celebrity to be worth having your history preserved.
In a month or two, once all the services have finished reviewing it and put it up for sale, I’ll probably try to arrange a book launch somewhere and approach some independent bookstores to see if they might be interested in carrying a few copies. So if you do want a physical one, reasonably soon I’ll have copies that won’t have a steep shipping fee attached. :)
The Threads That Bind Us
Date: 2026-02-11 08:55 pm (UTC)This needs to go on my bookshelf beside _Travels in a Gay Nation-, after I read it and carefully dry it.