I wanted to love it and I appreciate it's a pocket book but the legacy of Pride as a movement is too great to be abridged as harshly as this.

A good idea but lacking in depth. Very basic.

The Pocket Pride is basically a pocket sized list of bullet points about queer history.

I think it’s an “ok” starting point for people that are looking for a place to start, sort of a list for the reader to research later. It lacks any depth required to understand any of the concepts mentioned in the book. Trying to encompass all of “Pride” in a pocket sized book didn’t give meaningful context to the topics.

The Stonewall section didn’t even mention Marsha P. Johnson.

This book kind of lacked depth, but it *is* a “pocket book”, so I feel like that was to be expected. It’s more of a collection of quotes rather than an actual educational book about the history of pride, but I still enjoyed it. However I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone really looking to learn about the history of LGBTQIA+ rights and pride parades; there are definitely much more detailed books out there.

If a real queer person wrote this, I am very sorry for the honesty of this review. But I am 90% sure this was written by AI, and I don't think any humans seriously reviewed this before putting it on NetGalley. Maybe the 'author' is named after Google's AI?

In today's climate, I can see the use of something like this book, but I don't think anyone will get much from this other than a few basic factoids and quotes.

There is no substance, just a lot of high-level, fluffy language about various topics, organizations, people, and events. It really struggles to be specific and explain itself. Though it alludes to "struggles" and "discrimination," it's not able to articulate what those things are, which I think is a big problem for a book like this. Yes, it's short, but there were a lot of redundant sentences throughout the book and opportunities for small language adjustments could be used to provide much needed context. This was also a problem in its failure to seriously address trans history. It used the LGBTQIA+ term and briefly mentioned transgender people as a line item a few times, but that was it. Though Marsha P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera were thrown in as notable figures at the end and mentioned in the description of STAR, they were completely left out of the Stonewall Section and just described as drag queens. I also thought it was strange to have a section on Angela Davis and not mention that she was a Black Panther and say a few works on the significance of that. Instead they mention she was an honorary leader of the Women's March. AI makes weird choices like that or worse it could be a deliberate avoidance.

As a queer person, I cannot recommend this book, as it did not strike me as a creation that takes the queer community seriously. It was frustrating to read. And it's just poor quality overall.

Thank you NetGalley and Gemini for the ARC! I'm sorry.