Marion: Being Excited to Read More

Marion is a physicist who first discovered book club through an Aces in STEM discord server. They said: “[growing up] was marked by the total absence [of indisputable ace representation] in books or anywhere, as much as I loved to search for crumbs. I wish Loveless by Alice Oseman had existed before I went to uni. It would have meant a lot to me to read that as a teenager”

For many of us at book club, we read and connect to ace books now whilst knowing how significant having these books would have been for our younger selves. Even though Marion says that their ace identity is “less salient” in their life nowadays, they mentioned that is it nice to have books they can identify with: “I am certainly more excited about reading something if it speaks to the ace (or queer/trans) experience in an interesting way.”

The number of books with asexual representation is increasing and this is reflected in the ace shelves (yes, as of February 2025 there are multiple ace shelves!) at Gay’s The Word bookshop, the venue for our club. We, as a group, have been able to tell the booksellers about representation and feedback to them about the books we choose to read. The members of the London Ace Book Club have, in a way, become scouts for the shop and have allowed the shop’s stock to expand helping other aces find representation they see themselves in. Marion themselves said that “getting recommendations and discovering ace books” is one of the reasons they keep coming back to book club.

At the first book club meeting Marion attended in May 2023 we were discussing Refusing Compulsory Sexuality by Sherronda J. Brown, which Marion described as one of their favourite ace books: “This is a book that shows how allonormativity and amatonormativity (which aro/ace people are at the sharp edge of) oppress everyone in society. It was great to have a really in-depth intellectual discussion [at book club] about the different concepts this book raises.”

Marion is someone who would have been described as a reader as a child – “I often had my head in a book and always liked reading” – but reading for fun was a hobby that was harder for them to keep up in education. Now, however, they are actively trying to read more and likes book club for giving them the “motivation to read at least one book a month.”