Queer Books databases make it easy to find your next LGBTQ+ read
I’m inclined to reminisce about the many hours I spent in the local library of my youth, where it took my entire teenage years to sniff out precisely three books with strange characters. Contrast that with the library I’m sitting in right now which has piles dedicated to LGBTQ+ books, each title adorned with a little rainbow sticker for extra gay assurance. Enlightened queer blogs abound these days, chronicling releases in a growing range of genres. Each season, Casey’s book previews have more and more titles. There are simply too many gays to follow.
The joy of the information age is that it only takes a few steps to navigate a swamp of data before someone feels like collecting, cataloging and cross-checking the crap. Enter, the queer book database!
What exactly do I mean by database? Well, I want it to be something that can be queried or filtered; it’s not just a long list of books, and the search isn’t just limited to title or author, but lets you query every intersection of queer interest. Too many times I will have read thirty reviews on a mainstream site when ultimately someone mentions that a book has lesbian pirates in it. I want this vital information front and center when it comes to making my reading decisions (spoiler: none of the databases below include “pirate” as a searchable field, so someone should really s put there).
Considering that Goodreads and Storygraph are themselves giant databases of nearly every book published, they hide a lot of control over search terms in favor of recommendation algorithms or seeing what your friends are reading. Its good! I’m open to all possibilities of queer book discovery, and the list of databases below just complements that, giving you a bit more control over which direction you want to go. More importantly, because these databases were created by gay people for gay people, there is an understanding of what matters to us. And hopefully never straight books!
And while it’s not filterable in the same way as a database, be sure to browse the Autostraddle Literature section for your LGBTQ+ book needs!
The Queer SFF database lets you search across a plethora of sci-fi and fantasy subgenres, with filters for cross-identities and a whole host of miscellaneous tags. Do you want a space opera set in a homophobia-free world where your WLW protagonists are over 40 and guaranteed to be alive and together at the end? This database will find this book! Individual book entries are linked to longer takes by trusted queer reviewers.
This comprehensive database of comics and graphic novels contains filters not only for queer representatives, but also for art style, tone, and genre. You can also search for free online comics – with direct links! Reviews tend to come from mainstream publications like Kirkus rather than queer bloggers, but there’s plenty of information about each title to help you figure out if it’s going to be your thing.
This filterable list focuses on YA and mid-level books on trans and non-binary people, written by trans and non-binary people! A labor of love from author Ray Stoeve after realizing how hard it was to find this information, this thankfully growing list also includes upcoming titles. note in your diary.
Last year, this long-running queer parenting blog added a huge database of LGBTQ family books and other media. There are a few defined categories for reading ages and book type, but it’s really the breadth of tags that will help gay parents find books on anything from adoption to drag. by gay uncles!
This character-driven database is a great resource for digging up books on less-represented queer identities. By tagging characters with “importance”, quantifying reputation level, and filtering on a range of ro-as identities, it’s easy to determine whether a book does justice to its protagonists or if there is no only a symbolic secondary character.
It’s my favorite kind of internet stuff: a long list of things that someone just wants to share with the world! Compiled by a particularly voracious sci-fi reader, this regularly updated list of books is tagged according to the weirdness and importance of the characters, with a tell-tale line about what the reader really thought! I like that a lot of older titles are included and that it’s possible to look up when a title was added, which means it’s easy to come back from time to time and see what’s new. the list.
This one is all about the data! Essentially it’s a giant Google sheet of every queer book going back to Carmilla (I guess Sappho never got an ISBN) with 50-150 added every month. Although a bit more difficult to search and navigate than the other sites on this list, the huge advantage of this database is that all data is freely available (and encouraged) to download and share!
There’s information about the weirdness of the main characters, along with some notes on identities, supporting characters, and other tags. If you are a spreadsheet fiend, I have no doubt that you could do bad things with this huge data set!
Trying to catalog the 500+ YA books with queer content published between 2000 and 2020 is no small feat, but this site did it! Although no longer actively updated, this is a great resource for browsing through two decades of lit YA, easily filtered by gender, orientation, location, ethnicity characters, etc
The most comprehensive blog in terms of number of books featured, LGBTQ Reads doesn’t quite meet my definition of a book database because it’s not possible to query for genders, identities, and backgrounds. other queer specificities. However, the way it groups books within each category makes it easy to focus on certain subcategories that are sure to pique your interest.
The best little advertised perk of being an A+ member.
