Good Lesbian Books

reviews and resources

Posts tagged good lesbian books

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Two New Lesbian Posters

Two new artworks in the GoodLesbianBooks Zazzle store this week! The posters are linked below, but you can find the designs on lots of different things.

Lesbians in Space (Blue Galaxy Version) Posters 

Lesbians in Space (Blue Galaxy Version) Poster 

This one was inspired by the Lesbians in Space book list, a mix of starry eyed and starry skied romance, and slightly over the top science fiction. Basically, while it’s not obviously ‘bookish’, it was probably what I’d paint for the cover of the genre.

Rainbows In Her Hair Posters 
Rainbows In Her Hair Poster 

This was a more graphic design-ish work. Rainbows for LGBTQness, and a quill for writing with. 

You can find more lesbian themed posters from across Zazzle and Amazon here.

Filed under artrage lesbians lesbian art lesbian posters posters zazzle science fiction artwork good lesbian books

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Anonymous asked: Are you willing to do a review of a new lesbian book?

Always! But please, please don’t expect to see a review for a couple of months. We get 5-10 books sent to us a month, and we’re lucky to get eight reviewed on average, not counting all the library books and second hand books and books we actually buy for ourselves.

It must be published, and if you don’t send us the final copy, prepare to be criticised on the problems left in the version you send. We are reviewing for our readers, the author selling stuff and getting useful feedback is entirely a bonus, so if we have problems with the book we will say so. But we do try and consider that some things are simply a matter of taste.

Also, too many of the ‘please review my new book’ books we get are in desperate need of an editor. There are a few obsessive authors who clean up carefully, and get it proof read all over the place, and we love them for it. And there are a handful of decent publishers who vet and advise and edit and we love them for it. But far too many books suffer from a) inexperience, b) self publishing or crappy publishing companies, which means lower standards of editing and writing, which is a horrible thing to see dragging down a perfectly good story. (On the plus side, it means more lesbian fiction than ever before, of all kinds, is actually making it to publication. Which is awesome. But on an individual basis, it can be very frustrating).

And while we’re on this topic, bisexual stuff is absolutely welcome and we’re even interested in trans books as well. There just has to be a major female identified or female bodied attraction to other female persons present. ‘Lesbian’ is just a handy catchall, for the sake of actually writing sentences shorter than a paragraph.

Books with very minor lesbian content will be greeted with ‘…did you even look at our site?’ While we do occasionally review books that aren’t particularly ‘lesbian’, we usually review them because we picked them up expecting them to be lesbian, and we feel it’s only fair that we warn others. 

You can email a file of it (for a Kindle, so mobi/text files of some kind preferred), or a download link for it to goodlesbianbook [at] gmail.com (do not expect us to pay actual money in order to review it for you, or say ‘you should check this book out’ and then expect us to rush off and buy it). If you’re feeling particularly awesome, or have an awesome publisher, we adore actual paper copies - they’re much easier to read, and to pass between both reviewers. But we understand that shipping around the world can be a bit too pricey to be worth it.

Any other questions?

Filed under lesbian books book reviews self published lesbian fiction good lesbian books faq

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GLBooks Activity Jan-April 2012

This seemed like a good point to look back over the first third of the year, and see how many and what books we actually reviewed, (not just ‘everything we posted’ as that included a fair few other things, like book lists and award round ups).
Looking back, I now realise that this dreadful sinking feeling that has been haunting me is not because we are reading and writing less, it’s because we are being buried under more books!
Top Picks of the Year So Far (links to Amazon, reviews below)
Close runners up are:
Books reviewed in the first four months of 2012 
(links to reviews)
January
February
March
Guest reviews in the Introducing Lesbian Fiction Event

April

May will hopefully see reviews posted for Far From Xanadu by Julie Anne Peters, Lunatic Fringe by Allison Moon, Water Logic by Laurie J. Marks, and Liar by Justine Larbalestier.

On the to-read list are The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth (it was due back at the library yesterday -_- ), When Women Were Warriors by Catherine M. Wilson, and the seven or eight requests sitting in our email.

We’re also updating some of the older posts and reviews from this time last year, which aren’t up to scratch and are thus too embarrassing to stay.

For a full list of stories we’ve reviewed, see The List of Book Reviews.

Filed under lesbian books lesbians 2012 book reviews books good lesbian books

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Good Lesbian Book Lists: finding lesbian fiction through our site

So the first round-up of links went viral, which was awesome. Unfortunately, it’s also out of date. Out of date in a good way, because now we have more book lists. For the most up-to-date list in future, see this page on the site. For a list and star rating of all the titles we’ve reviewed to date, see the List of Book Reviews.

Themed/Niche Book Lists

Want something FREE?

You don’t quite have what I want… where else can I start looking for good lesbian books?
  • Well, there’s our actual reviews, of course! (Come see what we’ve posted lately!)
  • For general scifi and fantasy, the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards are a great place to start; we’ve got a short list of the lesbian books out of the whole spectrum here: The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards: Overview & Lesbian Recipients
  • The Sci-fi/Fantasy page is also pretty up to date, and gives a nice overview of what we’ve already reviewed on the site so far, and introduces you to some good authors.
  • For reliable lesbian fiction authors, check out the Alice B Readers Awards, which go to authors who publish a lot of good (enough) lesbian fiction, rather than to specific books.
  • To just start browsing books on Amazon, try the Good Lesbian Books Amazon Store. Yes, we know that searching for ‘lesbian’ just brings up porn and everything in the ‘Gay & Lesbian’ category, so we’ve curated this handy store. It doesn’t contain every lesbian book published, but it’s got an awful lot of them.
  • For more award winning GLBTQ books, check the Award Winning Lesbian Books page (we’ve got the Lambda and Stonewall awards up, as well as the previously mentioned Alice B Readers and Gaylactic Spectrum Awards. They tend to be mixed GLBTQ, so we’re going through and identifying the lesbian stuff).
How About Some Fun Arty Stuff?

Why don’t you have a list on…?

  • because we’re still putting it together
  • because we haven’t thought of it yet
  • because there aren’t really any books that fit 
  • because there are way too many and we’re scared

So if there’s something you’re dying to find books on, suggest it! 

Filed under good lesbian books lesbian fiction book lists book reviews lgbtlaughs lesbian gay lesbrarians genres

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Help! Come To Our Birthday Party!

On Monday, March the 5th, it’s our first birthday. And being young and uncertain in the world, we desperately want people to turn up and visit us.

With presents of course. 

Presents in the form of a guest post answering this question: Which Lesbian Book Should You Read First? 

By which I mean… Your best friend, your grandma, your teenage daughter, some random kid on the street has just come out to you. What book do you give them? What book would you suggest to the dad, daughter, cousin, friend, past self? 

Fantasy? Young adult? A classic? Something that’s all about Feelings and Coming Out? Something that’s really casual about the whole Gay Thing? Something set in the modern world? What?

Can you even choose? What title comes to mind? 

What do you have to do?

Well. Pick a book, and tell us about it. Whip up a list of Awesome, gush about your favourite novel, dash out a paragaph, send us suggestions in meme format, create an essay analysing lesbian literature, compose a poem to the best lesbian book for beginners - whatever. WE WANT YOU(R POSTS).

If you’ve never really read any… tell us what you’d WANT to read. Describe your imaginary perfect first lesbian book.

Drop us an email at goodlesbianbook on Gmail, attach any blurb about you, links, favourite pet, preferred number of pages in a book, credit card details and PIN, pseudonym, etc that you want used, and accept our gushing thanks and a piece of imaginary cake. 

Write it now, before you forget. Send it to us by the 5th. Send it afterwards, if you must, but we might haven eaten your cake by then. Reblog this, send it to your book loving friends, and COME WRITE SOMETHING.

Background details and motivations and cake here.

Filed under guest post lesbian lesbian books lesbian fiction good lesbian books

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I actually didn’t really read many lesbian titles until fairly recently. I think it’s mostly that it is so hard to find when starting from a mainstream position, and it never really occurred to me to go looking for it. And that it would necessarily be any good - because surely, if there were good lesbian books out there, I’d have heard about them by now? Or at least stumbled across them in the library?

Good Lesbian Books, on having to look for quality lesbian media. (via fuckyeahlesbianliterature)

Egads, we’ve been quoted. Fetch me my smelling salts!

Filed under lesbian books fiction lesbian literature good lesbian books lesbian libraries

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A video of a bunch of the lesbian books we’ve read and reviewed at http://www.goodlesbianbooks.com/

  • Song: “Sweet Woman” by Cris Williamson, from Lesbian Concentrate: A Lesbianthology of Songs and Poems (1977) - used under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States and downloadable here.
  • Artwork belongs to Good Lesbian Books and can be found in our Zazzle store!
  • All other images are book covers, or excerpts, and copyright to their respective owners.

Filed under lesbian literature book reviews lesbian video good lesbian books video sweet woman lesbian music cris williams lesbian