Why am I passionate about this?
Growing up in an eccentric, liberal family, as a member of the Church of England, under the shadow of the British Government’s homophobic Section 28, the messages I received were distinctly mixed. If I’d heard the word ‘bisexual’ before the age of twenty my life might have been very different. And to this day, the most common assumption is that one can’t be simultaneously queer and Christian. As I’ve discovered, and as these books show, that isn’t true – and moving beyond that assumption reveals new and fascinating horizons.
Kathleen's book list on showing it’s possible to be queer and Christian
Why did Kathleen love this book?
I’ve never read a book quite like this, and yet it felt hauntingly familiar. The population of Earth is rescued en masse from a destructive solar event and has to start again from scratch on an unknown planet. But of course humanity has taken the problems of its own nature with it, and the encounter with its new hosts only raises further questions – around sex, gender, love, and nature. It’s brave and beautiful, hopeful and sad and dynamic all at once, and it kept me reading and guessing all the way to the end.
1 author picked The God Painter as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
In the year 2035 humanity is rescued from a lethal solar flare by seven mysterious beings and transported across the universe to the uninhabited planet of Ansar. Earth's major cities are recreated, and a stunned but thankful humanity mostly carries on with life and society. But is everything as it appears? Just who are the semi-omniscient beings who rescued them? What do they really want? And to what secret place do they retreat every night? With that appearance of the seven, all the old divisions concerning gender, privilege, and power re-emerge in unexpected and increasingly dangerous ways. Conspiracy theories abound.…