I always love visiting this exquisite little gem in Greytown and look forward to it every winter festival, but I have just one note that I spotted on the previous visit, thought "oh surely not, you blind old bat, you just missed it", looked again this time and confirmed: no queer book section. The only rainbows I saw were on colouring books. My gob was truly smacked. Dear Mrs Blackwell: gays and bookshops go together like gays and bookshops. We are all about the quiet joy found in a good read, respecting spaces, and spending our child-less income on our hobbies. There's a massive, booming market in queer stories. You're doing yourselves a disservice by not stocking anything about us. We don't need to talk about stocking "romantasy": those books about wide-eyed secret princesses being whisked away by sexy dark figures who don't talk to their mums and once a month turn into hot dogs, and not in a New York way. That's a genre for someone else to fight for. I'll be over here enjoying "Heartstopper", "Red White and Royal Blue", and the underrated "The Charm Offensive". On our way out, I did finally see one book: "The Queer Bookshelf: A Reader's Guide" by Layla McCay, and I wasn't the only one. Two baby gays also spotted it, and one of them tapped it and said in an excited whisper to her friend: "Like us!!"
