ALU Summer Book Club: Follow-up Reads After Anomia

If you liked the mystery at the heart of Anomia…

…try The Winter Knight by Jes Battis (ECW Press)

Much like in Anomia, mystery is at the core of this urban fairy tale/historical fantasy/detective novel in which the Knights of the Round Table are reincarnated into modern Vancouver. When one winds up dead, a Valkyrie named Hildie, is called to help solve the mysterious murder. Battis effortlessly weaves queer, trans, and disabled representation into a traditionally non-inclusive genre and offers a world of loveable heroes.

If the love story in Anomia had you hooked…

…try Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante (Metonymy Press)

Hazel Jane Plante’s Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) is a playful and poignant novel about a queer trans woman grieving the death of her friend. Similar to Fir in Anomia, the narrator here also sifts through the unrequited love for her friend and the depths of that loss, coping with it by rewatching a TV show called Little Blue. It’s also got an innovative structure: encyclopedia entries of each Little Blue character is weaved throughout the main narrative so that by the end of the book readers have a fulsome picture of this fictional TV show. A queer love letter about grief, desire, and the comforts of pop culture during difficult times.  

If you enjoyed reading gender-neutral characters…

…try For Both Resting and Breeding by Adam Meisner (J. Gordon Shillingford/Scirocco)

In Meisner’s imaginative play, we’re introduced to a future society in which everyone uses the pronoun ish. Two historians make a plan to turn an abandoned millennium-era house into a museum that re-enacts society in the year 2000—everything from fashion to family roles of millennials will be on display through the lens of binary gender roles. As the museum volunteers work on getting everything ready for local visitors, illicit sex acts between two of the volunteers make the project drama-filled, risking to threaten the values of their society. 

If you want to read more Jade Wallace…

…try Love Is A Place But You Cannot Live There (Guernica Editions)

In their debut collection of poetry, Jade Wallace offers a series of vignette-like poems, framed in sections that are tied by reflections of people’s relationships to places and to each other. Gothic themes run throughout the poems with haunted houses and places, creatures, and other nonhuman types. The poems also reflect on nature and our impacts on it. If you were a fan of Wallace’s language in Anomia, their poetry will be a treat you won’t want to miss.

Listen to Jade Wallace read a poem from their collection, here.

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We’ve had such a blast reading Anomia and sharing our thoughts about the book this month. You can still get a copy (if you haven’t already) for 15% off until the end of the summer with code INTHECLUB2024.

And, if you missed all the book club happenings this month, catch them here.

Join us in August when we read The Rage Letters by Valérie Bah, translated by Kama La Mackerel (Metonymy Press).