New Releases Tuesday: The Books Out This Week Worth Reading

Eva, Celeste, Gina, and Steph used to think their friendship was unbreakable. After all, they’ve been though a lot together, including the astronomical rise of Moonlight Overthrow, the world-famous queer pop band they formed in middle school, never expecting to headline anything bigger than the county fair.

But after a sudden falling out leads to the dissolution of the teens’ band, their friendship, and Eva and Celeste’s starry-eyed romance, nothing is the same. Gina and Celeste step further into the spotlight, Steph disappears completely, and Eva, heartbroken, takes refuge as a songwriter and secret online fangirl…of her own band. That is, until a storm devastates their hometown, bringing the four ex-best-friends back together. As they prepare for one last show, they’ll discover whether growing up always means growing apart.

Reasons to read it: This is a queer YA getting the band back together book! It bounces back and forth between how the band broke up to their attempts to piece the friendships back together. This will appeal to music fans, and it also has a second chance F/F romance. If you’re looking for more queer YA, Some Girls Do by Jennifer Dugan (an F/F YA romance) and May the Best Man Win by ZR Ellor (an M/M romance with a trans guy main character) are also out today!

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet—from the QWERTY keyboard and Staphylococcus aureus to the Taco Bell breakfast menu—on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene’s reviews have been praised as “observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy.” John Green’s gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection that includes both beloved essays and all-new pieces exclusive to the book.

Reasons to read it: This is based on the podcast of the same name, but with new essays and illustrations. There are also essays that are only available in the audiobook version. Whether you have read John Green’s YA novels or not, The Anthropocene Reviewed offers a thoughtful, philosophical take on everyday experiences that will encourage you to think more deeply about the world.

Personally, I think John Green’s nonfiction is his strongest work, whether it’s The Anthropocene Reviewed or his thoughts from places videos. I’m in the middle of listening to the audiobook, and it’s one of my favorite things. It’s comforting and challenging, acknowledging the pain and suffering in the world and the beauty in it without discounting either.

Ever since seventeen-year-old Josie Wright can remember, writing has been her identity, the thing that grounds her when everything else is a garbage fire. So when she wins a contest to write a celebrity profile for Deep Focus magazine, she’s equal parts excited and scared, but also ready. She’s got this.

Soon Josie is jetting off on a multi-city tour, rubbing elbows with sparkly celebrities, frenetic handlers, stone-faced producers, and eccentric stylists. She even finds herself catching feelings for the subject of her profile, dazzling young newcomer Marius Canet. Josie’s world is expanding so rapidly, she doesn’t know whether she’s flying or falling. But when a young actress lets her in on a terrible secret, the answer is clear: she’s in over her head.

One woman’s account leads to another and another. Josie wants to expose the man responsible, but she’s reluctant to speak up, unsure if this is her story to tell. What if she lets down the women who have entrusted her with their stories? What if this ends her writing career before it even begins? There are so many reasons not to go ahead, but if Josie doesn’t step up, who will?

Reasons to read it: From the author of Full Disclosure, this is a story about being behind the scenes of celebrity lives as well as the #MeToo movement. It also has a fat bisexual main character with anxiety. I loved Full Disclosure, so I can’t wait to pick this one up.

We’re here. We’re queer. We’re fat.

This one-of-a-kind collection of prose and poetry radically explores the intersection of fat and queer identities, showcasing new, emerging and established queer and trans writers from around the world.

Celebrating fat and queer bodies and lives, this book challenges negative and damaging representations of queer and fat bodies and offers readers ways to reclaim their bodies, providing stories of support, inspiration and empowerment.

In writing that is intimate, luminous and emotionally raw, this anthology is a testament to the diversity and power of fat queer voices and experiences, and they deserve to be heard.

Reasons to read it: This is a collection of a range of voices and formats, including fiction and nonfiction, poetry and prose. It’s a much-needed collection with honest accounts of what it’s like to live in this world as a fat and queer person.

Punch Me Up to the Gods introduces a powerful new talent in Brian Broome, whose early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys propel forward this gorgeous, aching, and unforgettable debut. Brian’s recounting of his experiences—in all their cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking glory—reveal a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in. Indiscriminate sex and escalating drug use help to soothe his hurt, young psyche, usually to uproarious and devastating effect. A no-nonsense mother and broken father play crucial roles in our misfit’s origin story. But it is Brian’s voice in the retelling that shows the true depth of vulnerability for young Black boys that is often quietly near to bursting at the seams.

Cleverly framed around Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool,” the iconic and loving ode to Black boyhood, Punch Me Up to the Gods is at once playful, poignant, and wholly original. Broome’s writing brims with swagger and sensitivity, bringing an exquisite and fresh voice to ongoing cultural conversations about Blackness in America.

Reasons to read it: This is a memoir in the form of a collection of essays that deals with masculinity and addiction as well as growing up gay and Black in the U.S. Augusten Burroughs called it a “masterpiece of a memoir and Brian Broome should win the Pulitzer Prize for writing it.”