Summer Reads, Queer Adventures
6 Books to Get You in the Adventuring Spirit
When someone mentions adventure books, what do you think of? A big, burly man adventuring out into the wilderness to, I don’t know, claim his manhood or something? Thankfully, the patriarchy doesn’t have the adventure department completely cornered.
To kick off Pride Month and Summer, we’ve put together some of our best and favorite books about queer adventurers, because adventuring isn’t just for “cis-het normies” (as Eli Sasche likes to call them in True Trans Bike Rebel).
We’ve filled our list with fantastic adventures on bikes and down rivers, but also with adventures into everyday life and into the adventurer’s own, very rad, queerness.
A quick note for PRIDE month. We use queer as it’s a truly inclusive term that has room for every member of the community, including aromantic and/or asexual and transgender and nonbinary people. It’s been reclaimed as an umbrella term for decades, and so we refuse to give it back to the people who would use it to do harm and exclude vulnerable members from the community.
In this edition of our Taking the Lane series explores trans, nonbinary, and intersex folks’s adventures with bikes. This book ranges from one woman’s journey road-tripping by bike in “Everything I Needed to Know About Being Trans I Learned on the Pan-American Highway” to a story about a young person adventuring into nature to find solace and identity, and more.
While everything in the Lumberjanes series is great, Lumberjanes: A Terrible Plan is super great and super gay. Mal and Molly’s cute picnic date turns adventure-date when they are interrupted by a mysterious bear woman. Magical shenanigans inevitably ensue and the two must use brain and brawn to make it back to camp. This volume is the first in the series to really get into Mal and Molly’s relationship and is definitely worth a read.
Invincible Summer: An Anthology II
In the second installment of her Invincible Summer series, Nicole J. Georges has another volume of adventures in her day-to-day life. Featuring vegan recipes, fashion advice, friendship, and the rise and fall of Georges’ long-term relationship, this graphic novel will have you smiling and laughing the whole way through.
Part comic, part essay anthology, and part intimate interview, Shut Up and Love the Rain follows author Robnoxious’ journey from early sexual exploration to his “sex-positive, constantly deprogramming, uber-healthy queerness” of today. Rob’s adventures through his own queerness show us how experimentation should start early, that guilty pleasures need not be so guilty, and that there’s nothing more adventurous and exciting than discovering and living your queerness.
Also By Robnoxious, Unsinkable: How to Build Plywood Pontoons & Longtail Motor Boats Out of Scrap, is an adventure story/how-to-book hybrid following his trip down the Missouri river on a homemade boat. Rob and his friends meet wild rednecks, see sublime sunsets and encounter deadly storms in this incredible rollercoaster of a read. If Rob’s boating adventure leaves you itching to go on your very own, the DIY schematics included in the first part of the book can equip even the least experienced to build their own boat.
Unfuck Your Intimacy: Using Science for Better Relationships, Sex, and Dating
Sometimes one of the biggest adventures you can go on is one into yourself and your life. Best selling author of Unfuck Your Brain, Dr. Faith throws out all that Cosmo-grade B.S. relationship advice and uses real science to dive into topics like kinks, consent, shame, and trauma recovery.
Sections of this book also specifically cover queer relationship/sex topics, including for trans, ace/demi/aro people. Whether you’re looking to heal from past wounds, make better choices, improve an existing relationship, or figure out how to get the sex you want, this book is for you.
We recently posted a review of Unfuck Your Intimacy, so you can learn more and see if it’s for you.
What adventures are you looking forward to this summer?
This post was written by summer intern Rachel Dutton