This has been a rough reading year for a lot of us. While many people have managed to read way more than usual because of an extended amount of free time, many others have lost their reading mojo. They’ve lost the inspiration to read, or can’t land on a book, bouncing from one to another without finishing. While I find myself regularly reading, I’ve definitely got a lot of rows marked DNF in my spreadsheet. But what I have always managed to finish, whether reading a single volume or a bit of a series, have been comics. Soft, lovely, queer comics. Okay, mostly soft. But always lovely. There are so many other queer comics and manga on my list to read (and there are some sitting next to me as I write this). I don’t know when I’ll get around to them. But I love that I can look to these and books like them when I’m looking for something that has just enough conflict to keep it interesting, but that is still the bookish equivalent of a warm hug and a mug of tea. CW for internalized homophobia, emotionally abusive parents, sex on the page, undiagnosed depression(?), adultery (I also read The Tea Dragon Society by the same author, which is even more gentle and lovely but a lot bigger…literally, it’s over a foot tall.) CW for gender disphoria and euphoria; traumatic experience getting a pap smear; misgendering; casual homophobic and transphobic language (checked and unchecked) Because we all need that right now.
