Falcon Four: Four reading recommendations for Pride Month 2026
By: Hannah Johnson
Happy Pride Falcons! Whether you aren’t too familiar with LGBTQ+ fiction, don’t know where to start, or are just looking for more writers and books to pick up in the LGBTQ+ sphere, here are four Pride themed reading recommendations.
Call Me By Your Name – Andre Aciman
Made into a movie in 2017, some audiences may already be semi-familiar with this story, but readers should definitely know that it’s a book as well, and a magnificent work of LGBTQ+ fiction. Tender and heartbreaking, Aciman throws readers through a heated, passionate romance between, as Goodreads puts it, an intellectual and a younger teenager, over the course of a summer in Italy. Sudden, intimate, intense, and life changing, Call Me By Your Name is a foundational tale, with its powerful emotion and intimacy packed into each of its pages.
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda- Becky Albertalli
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda is a wonderful place to start for LGBTQ+ fiction and has also been turned into a film back in 2018, titled, Love, Simon. Set in the storm of high school, Simon happens to be, as Libby puts it, both falling in love online and also trying to protect his own sexuality in real life. Albertalli is able to tell an accessible, cute and feel-good love story, while also commenting on LGBTQ+ identity within the setting of high school and in adolescence.
Enigma Variations- Andre Aciman
Another work from Aciman, though more recent and perhaps less known about, Enigma Variations takes the format of multiple shorter stories in one book with overlapping themes, most definitely love, heartbreak, and discovery, over several stages of life. One can reflect on their first loves years down the line. One can return to their college town years later, reflecting on the place seeping with intimate memories. As can be seen in Aciman’s other work, powerful emotion, and complex characters as well as narratives, are in no short supply. If readers have already heard of Call Me By Your Name, perhaps aware of its popularity already, and are looking for another radical Aciman book, for another powerful emotional journey, Enigma Variations is a great book to indulge in.
Red, White & Royal Blue- Casey McQuiston
Especially appropriate for summer and the soon approaching Fourth of July, Red, White & Royal Blue combines patriotism and politics with romance, between the First Son of the United States, and the Prince of Wales. Politics is all perception though between these rivals to lovers as Goodreads puts it, and how relationships shift under the surface is something perhaps no one can see coming. Made into a movie only a few years ago (2023), Red, White & Royal Blue is an easy summer read filled with well-loved tropes of the romance genre, a cute romance within the complex realm of social politics.
Each of these stories carries their own special elements, while also all highlighting love and Pride in their own ways. Happy Pride and happy reading.
