It has taken, oh, only about a year or so and I finally had the idea to write up my aspec bookshelves into a single post instead of sharing them on socmed only and making them hard to access fairly quickly. So I figured I'd put them here too. For easier referencing. Let's get to it!
This is the most current update for these shelves at 29 September 2024. I'm missing Two Dark Moons because a friend borrowed that and they're currently not sure where it is because life happened, so if you're wondering why I only have book two in that series, that's why. Also, fun fact: if the book is pulled forward from the shelves (Painted Devils on the bottom shelf is a perfect example) that means it's on my TBR pile. If it's neatly pushed back against the bookcase that means I've read it.
I'll be linking to (and copying verbatim) the threads I made on the picture I took five months ago, but since some books were added or removed, I'll add in some notes about those as needed. Those notes will be in italics. Everything else will be formatted as it would've been in the original thread.
Anyway, let's get you all some titles, shall we!
Most of the books on these shelves have multiple aspec characters and cover both the asexual and aromantic spectrums. You all can have fun researching that because my brain is MUSH for remembering the details. (In my defense, I'd have to remember all the details for like 300+ books by now, so. No.)
Anyway! Top shelf. We start this batch off with Common Bonds, which is a specifically aromantic collection of short stories. I really should just put it nicely in the row with the rest, but it looks so comfy and cosy like this...
Below that we start off alphabetically with a good chunk of Claudie Arseneault's oeuvre: Baker Thief and the Isandor quartet starting with City of Strife. Beside them are Lyssa Chiavari's Iamos books. Well, the first two. There's two more. I'm slow at collecting them all. T_T
(Slow at collecting them all sums up most of the series, tbh. Anyway.) Then we have Frostbite by J. Emery which is technically not aspec rep but IS written by an aspec author who is my friend. Wingborn by Becca Lusher is more implied rep, but hey implied rep counts too.
Then we have Cedar McCloud's Threadverse books. The spine of the hardcover doesn't have the title, but that one is The Thread That Binds. (You probably want to read them in publication order, btw.) Then we have RoAnna Sylver's Chameleon Moon and Stake Sauce books. I wrote a whole essay on CM. Here!
Then we have Tarnished Are the Stars and Fire Becomes Her by Rosiee Thor and Sienna Tristen's Heretic's Guide to Homecoming duology. It's followed by Tabitha O'Connell's Structural Strain series and their Beauty and the Beast retelling Dirt-Stained Hands, Thorn-Pierced Skin.
I should add "comp DSHTHS to E. Wambheim's More Than Enough" to the list of interesting essay topics I'm rebuilding. (Am I making this comment purely to sneak in a title I currently only have in ebook? Maaaaaaybe. You'll never know. Although you could also comp them both to two allo retellings...)
Anyway! Next up is Avi Silver's Three Seeking Stars. I do actually have the first book (start with Two Dark Moons), but I lent that to a friend and so it is not currently on the shelf. It has been a good reminder in why the bottom shelf has a small stack of duplicates specifically for lending.
Lastly for the top shelf is Ceili Simkiss's work with A Knight to Remember and Learning Curves.
Next up we'll do the books I didn't write first. That way if you're not interested in self-promo you'll know what part of the threads to skip.
First up are Julie Sondra Decker's The Invisible Orientation, Ela Przybylo's Asexual Erotics and Sherronda J. Brown's Refusing Compulsory Sexuality.
(If you're wondering where Angela Chen's Ace is, see earlier when I said I'm slow at acquiring print copies. Also, tbh, it is my least favourite of the ace nonfic.)
Lastly we have Ties That Binds from Luna Press, which isn't aspec nonfic as such but does have an aspec essay I wrote in it, so.
Then it's onto the fiction that spilled over onto this shelf! There's Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli, Quicksilver by R.A. Anderson, The Winter Garden by Alexandra Bell, Hazel's Theory of Evolution by Lisa Jenn Bigelow and The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard.
Note: Leah on the Offbeat has since been taken to the second-hand book shop because the aspec rep in that is tertiary and also when I started to read it I decided that I wasn't that interested in the story anymore.
Fun fact: I have also written about Quicksilver. You can find that piece linked too if you're interested.
More fun facts: Quicksilver is one of the earliest books we have with named rep and it's pretty solid up until the very end. Hazel is the first ownvoices aspec MG title we have, iirc.
Now we're onto my books. I won't do any buy links, don't worry, but still. It seems fair to give you a heads-up. This may be where you go "Oh! Yes, tell me even more!" or "Nooo, don't shill your own things. Go away". So, yes. Hi! I'm a demi writer of aspec sff, so of course my books are also here.
Note: You're reading this on Payhip, so if you're interested in any of my books, you're in luck! Just pop on over to the store page and voila! They are there for the buying (and if you do thank you so much and I hope you'll enjoy whichever you pick!)
For my books we have Among the Glimmering Flowers, Courage Is the Price, Sea Foam & Silence, A Harmony of Water & Weald (read SFS first, trust me), The Ice Princess's Fair Illusion, Feather by Feather and Other Stories, Heart of the Covenant, He Must Go Walk The Woods So Wild and Rapunzel, Rapunzel.
The book on the side is the omnibus of Sea Foam and Harmony. Not pictured are A Promise Broken because that's currently not in print and the novellas that I deemed too short to publish in print and stand a chance of selling any copies.
And that's it for the top two shelves of my aspec bookcase!
Bottom two shelves are up here. As before I’ll be focused on giving you titles and some assorted ramblings as I have them.
As before, these are all going to be in alphabetical order. Once I've read all of them and the last 18 I had on my ereaders, I will recatalogue the lot. I'm thinking splitting them into major vs tertiary rep because right now minor characters who maybe get one or two pages are also included.
(Yes, I am absolutely saying that I could fill these shelves up with a) nothing but major character representation, b) books I genuinely like and WANT to keep print copies of given my limited space. Provided I had, idk, like a thousand euros and some paid time off to read them all.)
Anyway! First up Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman, How to Be Ace by Rebecca Burgess, Once & Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy, To Be Taught If Fortunate by Becky Chambers, Queen of Coin and Whispers by Helen Corcoran, and Poisoned Primrose by Dahlia Donovan.
Then we have Alechia Dow's The Sound of the Stars and The Kindred (one day they'll be joined by A Song of Salvation), Goddess of the Hunt by Shelby Eileen, Daughter of the Burning City by Amanda Foody, The Second Mango by Shira Glassman, and Nophek Gloss by Essa Hansen.
Then it's... That Kind of Guy by Talia Hibbert, The Bone People by Keri Hulme, Raybearer and Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko, The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia, That Invetitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston, The Language of Roses by Heather Rose Jones and I'll pause here for some more fun facts.
Firstly, I am awesome and made a typo. It's Inevitable, not Invetitable. 🤦♀️
Anyway! I should add The Language of Roses to my BatB comp essay idea and, The Bone People is the oldest, deliberate aspec novel I know of. It was published in the 1980s and won the Booker Prize. Isn't that so cool?
Moving on we have Let's Talk About Love, If It Makes You Happy and The Romantic Agenda all by Claire Kann. Then it's the Tarma and Kethry books by Mercedes Lackey, Not Your Backup by C.B. Lee, and The Four Profound Weaves and The Unbalancing by R.B. Lemberg.
Next up! A Snake Falls To Earth and Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger and, this may be a surprise, Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Yes, really. There's a really good essay by Megan Arkenberg called "‘A Mayde, and Last of Youre Blood’: Galahad’s Asexuality and its Significance in Le Morte Darthur".
Then we move down to the bottom (and last shelf) where there's actually one book that's obscured by the shelf above it, so give me a sec. We'll start with I Want To Be A Wall by Hanami Shirono and that one. I'll be right back. To make up for it not being visible properly, I'll give it its own post.
It's Jo Walton's Among Others! So we're jumping all the way to the end of the alphabet (and splitting up her books), but there we are.
I'll be back in a couple of minutes. I've been doing nothing but writing out these titles in the threads and I'm in need of a nice cup of tea to keep me going.
Aaaand I'm back. So starting from the books below Wall now, we have Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway and Beneath the Sugar Sky, The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon, Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy, Before I Let Go by Marieke Nijkamp, and Clariel and Goldenhand by Garth Nix.
Note: Like Leah on the Offbeat, Ramona Blue only has tertiary rep and when I sat down to read it, I actually wasn't interested in the story enough to finish it. I used to read everything with aspec rep regardless of how much I enjoyed it or whether the rep was good or, like, a throwaway line for a character that barely shows up -- think Florence from Sex Education but if it didn't even have the "you are valid" conversation -- and [gestures at the shelves] I think we have enough choice that I can stop doing that. But hey that just means the books can go to someone who WILL appreciate them.
Fun fact: I have a comp essay between Clariel and EHAD that one day I'll expand into an actual, honest to goodness book chapter on death-adjacent ace stereotyping.
I'm still sore I managed to lose the original nonfic book outline for that. Now I need to come up with those pun titles ALL OVER AGAIN.
Note: I may not convert it into a whole essay on death-adjacent ace stereotyping. I may structure this book entirely differently when I get the chapter outline to, like, work. It currently refuses to cooperate.
Then it's Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small series, Alice Oseman's Loveless, C.L. Polk's The Midnight Bargain, Margaret Owen's Little Thieves & Painted Devils, Jenn Reese's Every Bird A Prince, Margaret Rogerson's Sorcery of Thorns, Mysteries of Thorn Manor (read Sorcery first) and Vespertine.
Tucked away a little is Sherwood Smith's Banner of the Damned, Tara Sim's Scavenge the Stars, A.M. Strickland's In The Ravenous Dark, Emily Victoria's This Golden Flame, Jo Walton's Sulien duology and Khan Wong's The Circus Infinite.
Note: I have since added John Wiswell's Someone You Can Build a Nest In, Clara Ward's Be the Sea -- although I think that's in a different country at the moment -- and Katrino Leno's Summer of Salt. I have some more books in another country, so those aren't on there and some were written by an author who went full TERF a few years back, so those books at least are never going back on these shelves.
And that's all on the bottom shelves!
That concludes a look at my aspec bookshelves. As I mentioned, or should have somewhere, this isn't all the aspec books that are available. Just the ones that I have in print available to me at the moment. I have a bunch of ebooks I've read and I'm sure there's at least a few indie books on my list where they contain rep and I just don't know because I haven't read them yet.
Hope you enjoyed this glimpse of my bookshelves and maybe found a title or five that sound like it could be exactly your type of book!