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@maaads.reads

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(update 2!! back in stock!! i’ll be re-stocking them in smaller batches weekly!! ok bye) (❣️update❣️ i had to temporarily cap orders so i can catch up on the orders that have already been placed. y’all are fucking incredible. we raised over $800!!! i'm truly blown away. this serves as a bit of light in these dark times. it means a lot to get to channel my anger into creating these bookmarks & support the work that the ilrc is doing to help immigrants - this donation literally wouldn’t be possible without y’all. i’ll be restocking as soon as i’m caught up on this first batch. thanks so much for caring 🫂 there’s still so much good out here, y’all. thank you thank you thank you)

i am, and how ready i am to hi 🍃 i hope everyone is staying safe n warm!!!! i made new bookmarks 🔖 100% of proceeds will be donated to the immigrant legal resource center. thx 4 looking 🫂 by @maaads.reads

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9 months ago

hi bbs!! 💓🌈🫂 hope everyone is having an eezy breezy summer. i’ve been bad about posting but i say that every time ! will she ever be good !!

i’ve read 26 books so far this year, which means i’m technically 2 books behind schedule to meet my goal. whack! but oh well i’m having fun.

of the 26 books i’ve read so far, i only own 10 of em, which i always find v interesting. as a physical media lover, it’s an every day battle to not buy a dozen new books at a time, but i’m doing my best 🥺 out of the other 16 reads, 6 have been digital arcs (💘) and 10 have been library (💘) and/or kindle books. despite being behind schedule, i’m still feeling v solid in my progress!! lfg!!

my favs of the year so far:
🏘️ nova scotia house by charlie porter
🌊 the seduction by sara torres
🦠 the stand by stephen king
🐈 kitten by stacey yu
📓 mrs. s by k. patrick
🐄 the whirlpool of lebanon by will pass

i’m also reading ‘the disappearers’ by marlon james rn (out sept 1) & i reckon it will be a fav as well!!! but i have ~360 more pages to go so let’s not get ahead of ourselves 🙂‍↔️🤧

anyway, that’s all for now! time to catch up on all the books y’all have been reading + recommending & frantically update my tbr 🙂‍↕️ ok bye!! love u!! by @maaads.reads

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3 months ago

happy (belated) pub day to this lovely lil read — and happyyyy frickin pride month while we’re at it 🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈

‘girl’s girl’ by sonia feldman was such an unexpected lil treat for me. as someone who has spent most of my life in trio friendships, there was so much in these dynamics that felt so deeply familiar, esp as it related to the messy intensity of teenage emotion. feldman explores the added complication of romantic feelings within that kind of friend dynamic, which i’ve never experienced firsthand, but boy did it make me appreciate just how much that can muddy the already delicate ecosystem of young female friendship!!!

‘girl’s girl’ was funny, poignant & incredibly precious. it left me feeling nostalgic for my teen years, tender towards my teen self. it perfectly captured so many emotional textures of girlhood: the friction, the devotion, and all the ways we hurt & grow alongside one another.

i especially loved mina, and found a lot of myself in her. margaret and eleanor both got under my skin at times, but in a way that made them feel all the more authentic, like real teenage girls, imperfect & complicated, doing their best to figure everything out.

big thanks to random house for the arc, and congrats on yesterdays release 🥳💗 if queer coming-of-age is your jam, i highly recommend picking this one up !!

(bonus slide of queer book recs bc i simply can’t go a pride month without it 🏳️‍🌈🤝🫂❣️ ok bye love u guys!!) #madsreviews by @maaads.reads

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4 months ago

howdy friends ! bad about posting, only slightly better about reading 🤠

been on a bit of a short story kick lately 🦵🏽 one of those stretches where i don’t wanna commit to any one thing.

finished ‘bad behavior’ by mary gaitskill & jumped into ‘man hating psycho’ by iphgenia baal right after. both are the quietly detonative sort, where not much ‘happens’ & the plot just kinda stands there, but you still walk away feeling a lil rearranged.

‘bad behavior’ is grimy, razor sharp, acclaimed for a reason. v sexual, v feminist, all about power & mess & the ways people use each other.

‘man hating psycho’ leans more into loneliness + selfishness in the modern age. people also seem to be using each other quite a bit in this one.

next up is ‘the week of colors’ by elena garro, which seems like it might tilt a lil more surreal - garro’s been called the ‘cursed mother of magical realism’ & i’m v into that energy 🙂‍↕️ can’t wait to get into it soooon.

what about u - have you read any of these? did they land for you? do u ever fall into short story spirals like this? tell me more 🫧 by @maaads.reads

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5 months ago

uhhhh holy slow burn❣️❣️

i’m easy ok, any book centered round sapphic yearning is usually an immediate yes for me. but i’m happy to report that this one didn’t disappoint.

‘the seduction’ by sara torres (translated by mary faye lethem) was frustrating, to say the least (and trust!! i mean that as praise). the tension between our protagonist & her object of desire, an older writer who she’s been hired to photograph at her catalan home, was damn near suffocating. theirs is instantly the kind of closeness that never quite tips, just lingers in an unbearable almost, stretching thinner & thinner without ever properly snapping.

while reading this, i kept thinking about how the book maps longing not as a straight line but as a loop, something that keeps folding back on itself, replaying, intensifying, distorting everything around it. it felt less like watching a relationship unfold & more like being trapped inside a circling fixation, the kind of hunger that sharpens everything.

i can see this one being a lil polarizing, especially if you’re not in the mood to sit inside that kind of slow burn, but i’m confident that those that get it… will get it.

‘the seduction’ was gorgeously written & agonizingly paced. suffice it to say, i read most of it in one sitting & was immediately hungry for more, even as it was actively driving me insane. which i think might’ve been exactly the point.

god bless being gay as fuck 🫡 and god bless atria books for the advanced read ❤️‍🔥 this one’s out in early june!! #madsreviews by @maaads.reads

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7 months ago

books were just lookin v cute this morn 🥺💗 by @maaads.reads

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8 months ago

“…destroying it all in the way that only a true beginning can destroy.”

ok 🥵 i’m finally ready to talk about this weird fuckin book!!!! personally? i loved it. devoured it! but i am a weird book lover through and through, so take that with a grain of salt.

‘dengue boy’ by michel nieva takes place in a dystopian argentina that feels v uncomfortably plausible. the year is 2297 & the ice caps are gone, the planet is burning & the ultra-wealthy are lounging on beaches while everyone else suffers through the End Times™️. corporations are literally profiting off pandemics, creating the disease & the cure in one go. cool! great!

at the center of it all is our beloved dengue boy (dengue girl, dengue void… iykyk), a mosquito–human hybrid bullied for his disturbing physique & his poverty. i won’t give too much away, but let’s just say dengue boy snaps. rightfully so!! and what follows is a chaotic, violent, very satisfying ride through the lives of the elite unlucky enough to have landed on dengue boy’s shit list.

this book has it all: late-stage capitalism, classism, climate collapse, global pandemics, virtual realities, and a whole lotta rage. it’s gross, funny, sharp, honest, and unsettling in the very best ways. if you like your dystopia a lil unhinged, i reckon this one’s worth your time 🙂‍↕️🤝

second slide is for the books i read last month! v different vibes but it’s feb 3 so i had to mention them. more about those another time i’m sure🙂‍↕️🤝 ( #madsreviews ) by @maaads.reads

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8 months ago

uhh, did i mention y’all are amazing??? 🥺🙏

finally finishing up the first batch of bookmark orders today - should be able to ship em all tmro & early next week!

the funds hit my account this morning & i was able to make donations to both the immigrant legal resource center AND anera for palestine relief, since many of y’all purchased those bookmarks too.

in the face of so much fucking evil, this has been such a solid reminder of how good humans can be. we’ve gotta keep fighting the good fight, however we can & with all we can muster. it’s a small act in the grand scheme but i am so so so grateful to be able to make bookmarks towards these causes - it’s a labor of love & i hope y’all feel that love & know that none of this (the love) would be possible without you❣️

i’ve also restocked these bookmarks in my shop - though i am going to have to do it in limited batches for the time being, likely restocking weekly 🌈🫂 oh and in case you’re new here, fuck ice 🙏 by @maaads.reads

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9 months ago

‘and this is the important thing. it wasn’t queerness in opposition to straight people. it wasn’t about trying to find a place within straight society at all. it was queerness for and of itself, and it was fertile, creative, it was bounteous. really it was glorious.’

this book!!! aw man, this book. my first read of the new year and i feel v good about that - albeit a lil achey 🤕❤️‍🩹

‘nova scotia house’ by charlie porter follows johnny grant across past and present, centered on his relationship with jerry, an older man he meets at just nineteen, in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. jerry is dying, and from the start their love carries that unbearable weight with it.

the book reads like a love letter, a eulogy & a queer manifesto all in one. it’s about home in every sense: the literal houses we live in, the people who become places, the way community can feel like safety, like shelter. it explores queerness as resistance, as magic, as power. and it sits with grief: the heaviness of it, the devotion inside it, the way love doesn’t disappear just because a body does.

porter’s writing style is singular & intimate. once you get into it, it almost feels like johnny is sitting right across from you, trusting you with his story & jerry’s. you feel all the love & urgency & heartbreak between them.

books about the AIDS epidemic will always feel essential to me. as a queer person, they remind me of everyone who fought & loved & lived before me. who lost their lives doing so. ‘nova scotia house’ doesn’t let you forget that history - it insists on remembering, and on loving anyway.

this is such a special lil gem of a book & i’m so grateful to have read it. if you’re looking for a gentle heartbreaker that’ll stick with you, i highly recommend checking it out 🫡💗 #madsreviews by @maaads.reads

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9 months ago

hi friends! 🌈🎄 only a few more days left in 2025 & i really can’t say i’m mad about that!! i know time is a man-made construct etc etc but what can i say!!! i like to let myself feel a lil hopeful for the new year!!!! sue me!!!!

at 63 reads, i was 2 books shy of meeting my goal this year which is ok because reading goals are also man-made constructs. but i also read a lot of books i didn’t love this year, which was lame! in the new year i’d like to deprioritize the ole quantified reading goal & just focus more on having good old-fashioned fun 🤩

aside from life kinda kicking my butt this year, a big reason i didn’t read more is because i wrote more!! like way way way more. i fell back in love with writing & i reckon thats a fair trade 🙂‍↕️🤝

anyway 🌷here’s what i intend to finish 2025 with: a graphic novel! because they are fun & thats the point! really loving the heck out of ‘baby blue’ by bim eriksson. it takes place in a dystopia where civilian mental health is relentlessly policed. it’s queer & inventive & the illustrations are so dang fab. needless to say, fun is being had.

what are u ending the year with? tell me what’s on your nightstand / kindle / libby app / heart rn. any reading goals (or rebellions against them) for 2026? 🤗👹🕺🏻💅📚 by @maaads.reads

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10 months ago

some pix of me being sweaty & disheveled & book-drunk as ever 🕺🏻 in chicago earlier this week, courtesy of my sweet perfect talented partner. i don’t know how to pose but she is so skilled at snapping pix that it doesn’t even matter!!! 🌞💗 (@tetley.tv ) by @maaads.reads

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a year ago

with the pub date right around the corner, i’m finally ready to talk about this book 🥹 i wanna preface by saying u should only read this one if ur looking to be chewed up & spat out in the span of 200 pages ❤️‍🩹 i read this back in march & i’m not kidding when i say i still think about it at least once a week. it’s a book that has stuck with me profoundly & will prolly kinda haunt me for a while. so if you’re not in a good headspace for something like that, pls tread lightly!!!

‘dogs’ by c mallon follows 5 friends in the small, tragic town of carbon, bonded together through their shared love of wrestling 🤼 the story primarily takes place in one day, where hal, our quiet, sensitive observer & his friends explore a wide open evening, seemingly like any other, following wrestling practice. i’m gonna leave the summary at that lest i spoil it, but i Will proceed to tell you what i loved about this book (everything).

☁️ the pacing. the build-up is chilling & consuming, insanely atmospheric. i felt nervous & didn’t know why, til i did. i am so impressed by the way c mallon let the story build up & burst open.

☁️ the writing, though it prob won’t be for everyone. its unique & unflinching, tender & troubled. i loved the world through hal’s lens, the brutality, the honesty of it. the absolute perfect voice for this story.

☁️ the characters (most of em). primarily jaded ole hal & his precious bestie, cody john. this book explored both the machismo & softness of this group of boys & what sounds like it could fall into easy tropes did the opposite - every character felt multi-dimensional.

☁️ the setting - greasy, gritty hometown vibes. i loved learning the bleak history of the city through hal’s recounts, the myriad messy characters that filled each location & the subtly unnerving energy that followed the boys everywhere they went.

☁️ the themes, even when they felt impossible to look at straight on. trauma, love, identity, loneliness. ‘dogs’ perfectly captures the tragedy of being a living breathing loving thing in a ruthless world. big TWs & again, this is Heavy w/ a capital H so pls be careful w/ it !! (cont’d in comments 🤼) by @maaads.reads

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a year ago