It has been a busy season for me, but a slow one for The Slow Read. I was fortunate to have a lot of reading time this summer, but didn't quite feel up to putting my analysis hat on for any of it. I gave myself the gift of just pleasure reading without the need to report out on my findings. I offer you my favs of the summer with little context, other than to note that all of them are written by queer folks with adult audiences in mind:
If you’re a queer reader seeking paradise you might want to stop into Philly AIDS Thrift @ Giovanni’s Room in Philly (pics or it didn’t happen). There, I finally got my hands on a copy of Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore (it’s definitely available online but I prefer to hunt books in the wild) and encountered an amazing choose-your-own-adventure-style history of gender which checked all of my nerd boxes.
I'm currently reading and enjoying Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy by Christopher Marmolejo in preparation for my upcoming virtual workshop on tarot in the writing process (see below for more info). I’d been looking for an esoteric tarot guide that conscientiously breaks with the colonial structures and hierarchies that are often implied in tarot, and this book fit the bill.
If you caught my podcast episode on Incandescent Tarot, the tail-end of my interview with Raegan Revord, or my Writer's Digest article back in April, then you know that I often rely on tarot as a writing tool and a creative catalyst. If you're curious about how you can use tarot in your writing process too, I have good news: I can teach you!
Sign up for my upcoming workshop, Divining Stories, to learn how you can use tarot to transform your writing process. If you're interested but can't make the dates work (10/16 & 10/23), click here to fill out an interest form for future workshops