You're listening to Reading Glasses, a show about book culture and literary life designed to help you read better.

I'm author and book devour, Mallory O'Mara.

And I'm Brea Grant, filmmaker, and e-reader.

This episode, we're giving out tips for ADHD readers and recommending pirate slash treasure hunting books. This is something y'all are all very interested. And all the tips are coming from y'all. So we very much appreciate all your tips for ADHD readers. But first, Brea, what are you reading? I am reading a book to check off one of the reading glasses, glasses, this challenges, which is to read a banned book, a currently banned book. That's this year's, right? That's reading glasses this year. A currently banned book by an author who is still alive. I'm reading All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson. Oh, yeah, this was a highly challenged book. It is one of the most challenged books, which made me very interested in it. It is, and it's called a memoir manifesto. It is a bunch of really beautifully written,

like, funny, but poignant essays. I was not prepared for it to be funny and as, like, charming.

Like, he has a very charming way of speaking where he's like, okay, I'm going to tell you a story now.

And, like, it's just like a really fun way of speaking where he's like, okay, I'm going to tell you a story now. And like it's just like a really fun way of speaking.

He's a queer activist.

Right now I'm still like in the childhood section.

So there was like a whole chapter about being bullied because he was queer.

I mean, there's a chapter about his relationship with his grandmother and a chapter about all of it and all the

stuff about his cousins and just being like kind of trying to figure out where he fit in in both

the black community and the queer community and how those communities kind of can be separate

and you can be in one but not be in the other one and also where he he didn't totally fit in. Like he was like a huge athlete, but also loved to go do double-dutch jump roping with

with all the girls from school. And it's just a really well-written. He's a fantastic writer and

he's a journalist and he's an activist. So he knows how to write and keep you wildly

entertained. I've been reading like one essay or so a night. And I always finish one essay and then I'm like, I'm going to read one more because it's so charming. And like it feels like you're kind of like sitting down with your friend and he's just telling you stories about him growing up, which is like one of my favorite things, my friends do. And it's just a really great book. and, fuck all the people who have banned it. I cannot

believe this book is banned. It's such a, like, it's a book that I feel like a lot of people

would relate to or would just like find these stories interesting because obviously he grew up in

like a different time period when things felt different, although not that different from now.

So I cannot believe this book is banned and it should be not banned, but it should be

fucking required reading because it's so great. What do you read? Yeah, it's fucked up. And that's

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