Out Now: Queer We Go Again! is a follow-up anthology to All Out featuring 17 new stories by queer YA authors about queer characters. There was a good mix of fantasy and contemporary stories in there.

Like most anthologies, it was a mix of stories that I really liked, ones I thought were okay, and ones I didn't like. Overall, more than half of the stories were 3 stars or more from me, and the average rating for all the stories was a little over 3 stars.

My particular favorites were:

Lumber Me Mine by CB Lee - It was a cute romance between the girls who met in their woodshop class. The love interest was ace, which was nice. I wouldn't have minded more of this.

Victory Lap by Julian Winters - This was more focused on the father/son relationship, although there was a minor cute romance for the son. But it was the father/son relationship that was wonderful. The son found out that his dad figured out he was queer and had been researching how to be properly accepting and had joined groups and everything. It was so sweet.

A Road of One's Own by Kate Hart - A group of girls go on a road trip and one of the them calls the group the GROSS Club after Calvin and Hobbes, but has it stand for Get Rid Of Sexist guyS. That made me smile, as did the rest of the story. There was a cute romance between two of the girls.

Starcrossed in DC by Jessica Verdi - The daughter of the president finds herself in a difficult position when she suddenly finds out her dad is supporting an anti-LGBTQ+ bill when she herself is bisexual, although only her best friend and the girl she likes know it. The story focuses on her struggle on what to do. With a little focus on her relationship with her crush.

One Spell Too Many by Tara Sim - The main character works in a bakery where you can order baked goods with spells in them. She gets in a bit of trouble when she agrees to help a friend by baking her a cupcake with a love spell, but gets it mixed up with another classmate's order. It's a cute story.

"The same selfishness that makes so many of us hurt the ones we love makes our species hurt creatures that it admires. To hunt and destroy chimpanzees, like they would never do to us. Our treatment of animals is a great failure of our empathy"

A fascinating tale about a young orphan boy living in Gabon who is indebted to a cruel man who treats him like a slave. In a twist of luck he meets a man who changes his life and introduces him to the chimpanzees who become his family.

This was slow in the beginning but soon picked up and I loved reading about survival in the Gabon jungle and about chimp behaviour. I've been lucky enough to see up close and in the wild both Gorillas (in the Rwanda) and Chimps (in Uganda). Beautiful and eye opening experiences I will never forget. It is absolutely essential that these incredible primates be protected and allowed to live freely in their natural habitat. This book is so important, appealing to younger readers and teaching about the devastation of deforestation and poaching and learning about these endangered animals. It ended too soon I want to know more!

A-Z Challenge: Apes

Recently, I learned that the musical "CATS" -- which drew its inspiration from this book of poetry -- is staging a revival where I live for a short time. And so, to better inform myself about it before seeing the musical, I decided to read "OLD POSSUM'S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS." And what a delightful, entertaining book of poetry it is. I read it in a very short time.

Three tributes to T.S. Eliot, two very short, one too long...

Hughes' approach to literature is a bizarre amalgum of comparative mythology and assumed symbolism - whether deliberate or subconcious on the author's part. It's entirely alien to me. Perhaps I would understand it better if I re-capitulated Hughes' education in mythology and anthropology but I doubt I would relate to it any better. Hence the longest of these essays was kinda wasted on me. The second, howver, departs from Hughes' norm and talks about the structure of The Wasteland and I found it a lot more accessible and useful. I could have done with more of that.

Hughes rates Eliot and Yeats as the two greatest 20th Century poets. Eliot I know and love. Yeats I'm currently completely familiar with.