100 books like Love in a Dark Time

I was obsessed with this novel when it first came out, and every time I go back to it, it offers me another gift.

The writing is lean yet elegant, a perfect combination to tell such a heartbreaking story—of three women connected through time by Virginia Woolf’s singular novel Mrs. Dalloway.

It’s a book about how to sustain ourselves through challenging times—how to literally survive—but it’s also a treatise on creating remarkable characters, the call to be an artist, and a rare glimpse into the imagined writing process of one of the English language’s greatest wordsmiths. (I’m referring to Woolf, but I could just as easily be talking about Cunningham.)

The structure is inventive and compelling, but it is really what he shows us of the characters, how he opens their hearts and whispers their secret sorrows into our eager ears, desires they barely understand themselves, that makes this… show more.

Set against the backdrop of the sociopolitical turmoil of the 1960s, James Baldwin’s Another Country captures a diverse group of friends in cities both foreign and domestic (NYC and France) who are struggling with interconnected issues of race, sexuality, gender, and class.

As history repeats itself in the 21st century, there is wisdom in reviewing how people survived the last round of radical social upheaval. They did so without losing themselves, nor their opportunities to forge meaningful human connections in the melee.

How do you learn from ex-lovers? How do you make peace with the dead? How do you stay sane when the world is hassling you over unchangeable characteristics you’re working to embrace rather than despise? These characters are trying to build something real on shifting sands, and their stories are still relatable today.

This novel broke my heart the first time I read it, as much as it thrilled me, and I wanted to step into the book and hug all of the main characters.

They felt so alive—through their pain and desperation, their anger—and it showed me how to weave a layered, complex plot with multiple points of view into a cohesive, meaningful, single story. It follows a jazz musician with a huge secret, one revealed only after his death, which threatens to destroy the family he’s made, on and off the stage.

I love a good family saga, especially one dealing with issues of identity, class, culture, and sexuality—but if that doesn’t grab you, read it for the simple pleasure of Kay’s writing.

Skilled at the art of concision, she imbues this novel with both lyrical and concrete imagery, leaving the reader with portraits so crisp and profound you will feel… show more.

To call this book a biography threatens to diminish the power and force of the story telling.

Yes, it covers the biographical details—the troubled family life, the delayed yet ferocious sexuality, the prodigious talent—but what makes this book extraordinary is the alchemy that occurs on the page; the blending of Williams’ voice with Lahr’s narrative focus gives us a deeply researched and insightful dive into the mind (and heart) of one of the greatest playwrights the American theatre has ever produced.

People today call everything “epic,” but this book truly is; it delves into Williams’ process, introduces his demons and muses, and shows the challenges all writers face of how to balance the people we’re committed to in our real lives with the characters we’re devoted to on the page.

The gift here is not in the gossip (though there’s plenty of great dish), it’s in the time travelling: to… show more.

Written from the perspective of one of the victims of the infamous 2001 Queen Boat scandal, when 52 men were arrested and put on trial in Egypt during a raid on a gay party, In the Spider’s Room is an intense depiction of living in a society that fears and rejects any form of queerness. Unflinching, claustrophobic, and suffocating, Abdelnaby does not shy away from exploring what happens when one is presented with no avenues for expressing their desires and sense of self.

This was my first read of Jason’s work, and I was pleasantly surprised by just how much I loved it.

The mythology of the world was incredibly well-built, and I loved it when the humans got involved, too. The fat rep was incredible. It’s amazing to read about characters described like myself. The non-binary rep was excellent.

Overall, this was a fun read that I borrowed from the library and then bought because I loved it.

I may be biased about this book because I happened to read it during a really dark time in my life. It was exactly what I needed to get me back on my feet and lighten my mood. I loved being able to escape into Noah’s messy and hilarious love story and forget about the world around me. 10/10 I highly recommend this book!

With America's increasingly divisive political climate around LGBTQ issues, Real Queer America takes on renewed importance as Samantha Allen explores the resilient LGBTQ communities in red states.

Allen takes readers on a road trip through often-overlooked regions of the United States and challenges preconceived notions by showing LGBTQ communities thriving in places like Mississippi, Utah, and Indiana. I was inspired by Allen’s ability to curate personal storytelling alongside journalistic interviews with queer community leaders.

Allen strikes the perfect balance between travelogue and memoir – through her vulnerability in writing about her own coming out journey in America, she allows the reader to better understand what fueled the interest in red state queer communities and conveys the idea that the personal is always political.

Gay Bar is an imaginative history of gay bar culture in London, San Francisco, and LA – where the author has lived, over several decades. It is both personal and more widely historical, blending anecdotes and “overheard” with in-depth research to uncover the importance and also problems that come with these spaces, which are increasingly becoming extinct, as gay bars in major cities struggle to stay in business. 

No Straight Lines brings together multiple comic creators from four decades of comics by and about LGBTQ+ people. If you want to get a sense of how the queer community has developed and changed over time, and how comics have reflected - and impacted - that, then this anthology is definitely the place to go. 

From early underground gay and lesbian comics, through responses to the AIDS crisis, to more recent webcomics and trans memoirs, this book takes the reader on a historical journey and introduces them to many creators of fictional and non-fictional comics who they may well want to read more from.