SHEBOYGAN COUNTRY LGBTQ ALLIANCE BOOK CLUB

Join the Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance for a book discussion series brought to you in partnership with Mead Library, meant to highlight the diversity of our community. Each month a different book covering a unique perspective on the queer experience will prompt deep, thought-provoking, and inspiring conversations for people who identify as LGBTQIA+ and straight allies alike. And if you don't know how you identify, but have a good faith desire to learn with curiosity and humility- we welcome you too. Join us for this facilitated book club that celebrates and explores queer life, love, and liberation. Books and discussions in this club may contain mature themes and language. Reserve copies of each month's selection are available at the first floor desk of Mead Public Library.

Here's the Fall lineup:

Sept. 7: I Wish You All the Best (2019) by Mason Deaver
When 18-year-old Ben comes out as nonbinary, their parents heartlessly throw them out of the  house. With nowhere else to go, Ben calls their older sister, Hannah, whom they haven’t seen in 10 years, and she mercifully agrees to give them a new home. Hannah’s husband, Thomas, is a teacher and arranges for Ben to enroll at his school, where Ben quickly meets Nathan, who has been assigned to help orient them. Extroverted, ebullient, and always smiling, Nathan is a bit overwhelming at first, but gradually Ben accepts Nathan’s overtures of friendship—and is it possible that their friendship might blossom into something more deeply felt? First, however, Ben must find the  courage to come out to Nathan. The  question is, can they? Deaver’s first novel deals with a complexity of serious issues that are, generally, well handled. Yes, Ben can sometimes be annoyingly self-pitying but gradually grows out of that habit, while Nathan remains a wonderfully sympathetic character throughout. Withal, Deaver’s novel is a welcome addition to the  growing body of LGBTQ literature. -- Michael Cart (Reviewed 2/15/2019) (Booklist, vol 115, number 12, p50)

Oct. 5: The Great Believers (2018) by Rebecca Makkai
In Makkai’s (Music for Wartime, 2015) ambitious third novel, it’s 1985, and Yale has just lost his friend Nico to AIDS: not the  first friend he’s lost, not nearly the  last he’ll lose to the  terrifying, still-mysterious disease. Soon after, Nico’s younger sister and Yale’s friend, Fiona, connects Yale to her nonagenarian great -aunt, who studied art in Paris in the  1910s and now wants to donate her personal collection of never-before-seen work by now-famous artists to the  Northwestern University art gallery, where Yale works in development. This potentially career-making discovery arrives along with a crushing reveal in Yale’s personal life. Another thread throughout the  novel begins in 2015 as Fiona flies to Paris, where she has reason to believe her long-estranged adult daughter now lives. With its broad time span and bedrock of ferocious, loving friendships, this might remind readers of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (2015), though it is, overall, far brighter than that novel. As her intimately portrayed characters wrestle with painful pasts and fight to love one another and find joy in the  present in spite of what is to come, Makkai carefully reconstructs 1980s Chicago, WWI-era and present-day Paris, and scenes of the  early days of the  AIDS epidemic. A tribute to the  enduring forces of love and art, over everything. -- Bostrom, Annie (Reviewed 5/15/2018) (Booklist, vol 114, number 18, p22)

Nov. 2: Mad Honey (2022) by Jodi Picoult
First love between golden boy Asher and intriguing new girl Lily ends with one teen dead and the other under suspicion of murder. This stellar collaboration is more layered, surprising, and emotional than any story has a right to be- and readers should eagerly devour every page. For fans of: The Bad Daughter, and Defending Jacob.

Dec. 7: Make You Mine This Christmas (2022) by Lizzie Huxley-Jones

Jan. 4: Just Ash (2021) by Sol Santana

Feb. 1: I’ll Give You the Sun (2014) by Jandy Nelson