Ailey 🩷💜💙

I think kesha and penelope garcia would be bffs tbh

I keep forgetting this darn thing exists. you guys are missing out on my silly goose thoughts!! I will try to remember some to share with you 🪿🫶

honestly this should apply to tv shows, music, movies etc as well. pay your dues, straight people.

it should be illegal for straight people to read anything other than queer books during pride month

thank you for the only book gay enough to possibly make me care about sports! 🏀

Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf's review of A Sharp Endless Need 5/5: “To us, basketball was a historical record of all the ways a body can move with and for another. What could be better than the strange and perverse pleasure of being known?” Thank you to NetGall...

@mcrane12.bsky.social's new book is a gut punch of queer yearning—gritty, tender, & unrelenting. It aches with first love, grief, & the brutal beauty of being known. Ty @thedialpress.bsky.social for the eARC!

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StoryGraph 🔗 tinyurl.com/y8yspwzs
Goodreads 🔗 tinyurl.com/muyfb9yh

Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf's review of The Hollow Half 5/5: Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be published in the US on April 22, 2025 by Catapult. “I am no longer bewildered by my collapse but by all we have survived....

Sarah Aziza’s The Hollow Half is a lyric of hunger and inheritance—queer, Arab, and unflinchingly honest. It excavates anorexia, exile, and erasure with aching clarity. Ty @catapultbooks.bsky.social for the eARC!

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StoryGraph 🔗 tinyurl.com/4hxaausz
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Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf's review of Yr Dead 5/5: Full Rating: 4.5 stars rounded up “All I want to do is leave a little more room for what good people are left to do their feral blooming.” Sam Sax’s Yr Dead is a book that lingers, both in its ...

Sam Sax’s Yr Dead burns slow and bright—a queer, Jewish elegy told in searing fragments. Political, intimate, and unflinching.

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StoryGraph 🔗 tinyurl.com/wjfkndrt
Goodreads 🔗 tinyurl.com/28d4z5bm

#booksky

Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf's review of Natural Beauty 5/5: Full Rating: 4.5 stars rounded up Ling Ling Huang’s Natural Beauty is a hypnotic descent into the grotesque allure of the wellness industry, where the pursuit of perfection veers into horror. S...

Ling Ling Huang’s Natural Beauty is a lyrical horror about the cost of perfection—grotesque, hypnotic, and razor-sharp in its critique of beauty, capitalism, and assimilation.

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StoryGraph 🔗 tinyurl.com/48knuuyv
Goodreads 🔗 tinyurl.com/ycxcw6xe

#booksky

Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf's review of Mad World 5/5: “After all, what is the utility of 'sanity' or 'rationality, in a world in which ‘sanity' means the death of oppressed people and the planet, and 'rationality' means the logic of the market? In t...

Mad World rips the facade off the mental health industry—bold, abolitionist, & full of Mad pride. A searing call to politicize Madness, deny carceral psychiatry, & imagine collective care. Ty @plutopress.bsky.social!

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StoryGraph: tinyurl.com/mpsry3fw
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Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf's review of Green Fuse Burning 5/5: Grief, like lichen, clings to the body long after the first wound has scabbed over. In Green Fuse Burning, Tiffany Morris carves open the quiet violence of survival — the gnawing hunger for conne...

Green Fuse Burning is eco-horror at its best—grief-soaked, lichen-laced, & defiantly Mi’kmaw. A visceral meditation on loss, longing, & the ache to belong in a world that refuses to remember you. Ty @stelliform.press!

Read my review ~
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Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf's review of House of Beth 5/5: Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be published in the US by Simon and Schuster on July 15, 2025. “There were normal brains out there, and I didn’t have one, a...

House of Beth is a queer gothic stunner—darkly funny, haunted, & heartbreakingly honest about harm OCD, girlhood, & the ghosts that cling to us. Ty @simonandschuster.bsky.social for the eARC!

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StoryGraph 🔗 tinyurl.com/5as97tc6
Goodreads 🔗 tinyurl.com/bdenkyj6

#booksky

Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf's review of Power to Yield and Other Stories 5/5: Tender, intricate, and alive with possibility, Power to Yield and Other Stories by Bogi Takács is a luminous meditation on cognition, communication, and the radical multiplicities of being. Throu...

Power to Yield & Other Stories is tender eco-speculation at its most unruly—Bogi Takács crafts alien worlds where minds bloom differently, bodies shift fluidly, & connection is a sacred act of resistance.

Read my review!
StoryGraph 🔗 tinyurl.com/mu86fhtk
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#booksky

Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf's review of And Then The Gray Heaven 4/5: Some books don’t so much unfold as unravel—like a tangled thread tugged gently through grief, memory, and love until what’s left is soft, frayed, and quietly shimmering. That’s how And Then the G...

And Then the Gray Heaven is tender and splintered—grief unraveled through queer love, dissociation, and devotion. RE Katz writes mourning like a mood: lush, elusive, and full of ache.

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StoryGraph 🔗 tinyurl.com/4n3xeecu
Goodreads 🔗 tinyurl.com/2exwz9w3

You or Someone You Love is abortion care as love language—lyrical, radical, & rooted in reverence. Matthews writes with a doula’s grace, showing that abortion is sacred, communal, & life-affirming.

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Goodreads 🔗 tinyurl.com/592um6ta

#booksky

All This Safety Is Killing Us is abolitionist medicine in action—a searing, visionary collection where the authors expose how policing, prisons, & borders infect healthcare. Ty @natlanticbooks.bsky.social for the eARC!
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In Case of Emergency is a blistering, blasphemous scream of a novel. Via Shadi’s drug-fueled drift across a collapsing Tehran, it cracks open gender, class, & survival with electric prose. Ty, @feministpress.bsky.social!

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Goodreads: tinyurl.com/yms4mxye

Immaculate Conception is a scalpel disguised as a novel, cutting deep into art, obsession, & technology. The novel follows two art school BFFs turned techno-rivals. Ty @duttonbooks.bsky.social for the eARC!

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#booksky

Plum by Andy Anderegg is a razor-sharp portrait of surviving familial abuse. Told in second-person, it’s haunting, lyrical, & painfully intimate. Thank you to @hubcitypress.bsky.social for the gifted copy!

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#booksky

Review by bisexualbookshelf - Fragments of Wasted Devotion “I curl into myself and I touch the feral creature of my heart and ask ‘is there anything left...

FOWD speaks to those consumed by love, offering a visceral reckoning with romance & the healing that comes from looking inward to find yourself among the wreckage. Thanks to NetGalley and Quilted Press for the ARC!

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@amalelmohtar.com @torbooks.bsky.social @tordotcom.bsky.social 💌

Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf's review of The River Has Roots 5/5: Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be released in the US on March 4th, 2025 by Tordotcom. Full Rating: 4.75 stars rounded up Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has R...

The River Has Roots is a spellbinding novella steeped in folklore & transformation. Sisters Esther & Ysabel share a deep bond, even as their differences pull them apart. Thanks to NetGalley & Tordotcom for the ARC!

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StoryGraph 🔗 shorturl.at/HOcQP
Goodreads 🔗 tinyurl.com/25eyny3a

Review by bisexualbookshelf - Calling In "We can skip the viral shaming and reputational warfare. We can skip the ideological litmus te...

In Calling In, Ross interrogates call-outs & their punitive impulses. For those seeking transformative ways to address harm, this book is essential. Thanks to NetGalley & Simon and Schuster for the ARC!

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Goodreads 🔗 shorturl.at/AnYyZ

#Booksky

Review by bisexualbookshelf - Scorched Earth “I think it all takes courage: falling in love, staying in love, leaving love that no longer s...

Scorched Earth is an excavation of self in the wake of loss, poems navigating the dissolution of a marriage & the aching process of unbecoming.

Thank you to NetGalley & Atria for the eARC! This book releases tomorrow!

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image of Haley (a white person with glasses and a blue mask) holding up a colorful "read queer all year" sticker. text says: "if you want to contribute, my venmo is haleystrass" "or donate via my ko-fi in bio!" "if you donate $10 or more, i'll mail you a sticker! (US only)" "lol just got the official cost of my sterilization surgery,,, $2365. surgery is in 2 weeks!"

well, it's official! my gender-affirming sterilization surgery is happening in 2 weeks (march 14— fingers crossed nothing comes up). i'm lucky to have insurance but it's not all covered:(
venmo: haleystrass
paypal: haleylana18@gmail.com
please boost if you can! US donors get free stickers:)

ISSUE 42 DROPS MARCH 3

22 new books on migration, labor, legacy & the power of stories to challenge, heal & transform. This week’s lineup: Iranian exile, eerie open waters, fast-food alienation, student visa survival & Black womanhood’s deep imprints.

Subscribe on Medium: medium.com/@diversishelf

Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica: A stark commentary on morality & ethics, unveiling a world where human life has been commodified, and consuming human meat is the new norm.

The Seep by Chana Porter: As Trina navigates a post-capitalist utopia shaped by an alien force, she grapples with grief, transformation, and the allure of oblivion.

Read my review!
StoryGraph 🔗 tinyurl.com/4y66j3zd
Goodreads 🔗 tinyurl.com/bdh38jcf

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon: blurs the boundaries between human and monster as Vern flees the oppressive forces pursuing her, revealing how true horrors are rooted in America’s brutal past.

I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Mac Crane: Through the eyes of a grieving mother and her resilient child, exposes the horrors of a system that assigns Extra shadows to those who have done wrong.