Books every gay man should read

Except he wasn't gay - he was trans.

r1 "I became one of the stately homos of England" - Crisp

In any case, even if he were trans, THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT is still a great and important book that all gay men should read.

She was a FABULOUS elder sister! ...a true role model

I just make shit up!

He himself realised he was trans in the end. Someone explained it to him.

People didn't really understand trans in the London of 1938.

But I agree - it was a good book.

Valley of the Dolls

‘He himself realised he was trans in the end. Someone explained it to him.’

Well that settles that then. How could it be possible to argue with such an iron clad example of absolute proof.

Anyway, back to the topic... City of Night by John Rechy.

maybe not every gay man - but every DLer >>

Don't forget about me bitches!

All Genet.

Novels - Thief's Journal. Plays -The Maids.

Maurice by E.M. Forster

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Christopher and His Kind by Christopher Isherwood

Forbidden Colours - Yukio Mishima

The Charioteer by Mary Renault

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

Hard Choices, What Happened, Living History, It Takes a Village. You have to read them in reverse order if you want a happy ending.

Better Angel by Forman Brown (1901 - 1996) writing as Richard Meeker. The novel was published in 1933 and provided a happy ending for the gay couple. Forman Brown was a famous puppeteer and founder of the Turnabout Theatre.

How Long Has This Been Going On? by Ethan Mordden

Hollywood Wives.

Anything by Fran Lebowitz.

The Hardy Boys

"The Catch Trap" by Marrion Zimmer Bradley.

"Blue Heaven" by Joe Keenan (and the sequels, "Putting On The Ritz" and "My Lucky Star")

VERY gay and VERY funny.

Dancer from the Dance - Andrew Holleran (and anything else by him)

Giovanni's Room

Another Country

by James Baldwin

Pink “News” 🤮 has is currently serialising Crisp’s final—posthumously released—autobiography wherein he does indeed come out as a tranny and consequently severs any claim to admiration and gay hero status., sadly. I liked him (not her)

The Holy Bible.

Yes R32, any Baldwin. Especially the hard-to-find ‘Just Above My Head’ if you can find it. It’s his forgotten masterpiece imo, there’s no other book in literature like it.

A History of Shadows by Robert C. Reinhart. It's the fictional story of the lives of four older gay men who have been friends for more than 40 years. As they reveal their oral history, we learn what it was like to survive as gay men in the 1930s-70s, before "gay liberation." How did a gay person in the 1930s decide on a career, live with a lover, cope with oppression, attain self-esteem, form friendships? These are stories that present a rich and colorful hidden history. A must read for all gay men of today to see how important are the advances we have made.

Anal Pleasure and Health.

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin

It's a colorful novel about life in San Francisco in the 70s. An easy, fun, read.

Apologies for the unnecessary comma.

Men Loving Men by Mitch Walker

Wingmen by Ensan Case.

Gay history and culture is all fine and dandy and it has its place, but sometimes you just want to read a book for the story.

A truly manly old fashioned love story set in the Pacific in WW2, very well written and impeccably researched.

I second R25 and R30.

I enjoyed the Tales series, although some of its finer points may be lost on younger readers.

These are other books/authors I enjoyed:

David Leavitt (Cranes and While England Sleeps, especially)

Christopher Bram (Hold Tight was a great story, if I recall)

Laura Argiri - a female writer who wrote a really interesting novel about two men in love, The God In Flight

At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill

The Year of Ice by Brian Malloy is probably the best coming of age gay story I've written. It's not very sexual in content, but really captures the awkwardness and pressure of coming out.

There was a fantastic novel in the 90s that was about, I think, a vampire or fantasy-type character being gay, but I cannot remember the author or name. This was well before it became a genre, or before Tumblr and a lot of self published books clogged the search engines to find it!

Not specifically gay except for some larger-than-life gay characters, but [italic]A Confederacy of Dunces[/italic] has a sharply honed gay sensibility.

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

The Swimming Pool Library and The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

A Boy's Own Story and The Beautiful Room is Empty by Edmund White

Borrowed Time and Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll, by Paul Monette

Martin and John, by Dale Peck

At Swim, Two Boys, by Jamie O'Neill

Rough Music, by Patrick Gale

Call Me By Your Name, by Andre Aciman

The City and The Pillar, by Gore Vidal

The Lost Language of Cranes, by David Leavitt

All signs point to the majority of posters being in desperate need of reading this:

Author is a gay male doctor. Not an instagram doctor i.e. a nurse's aide, but an actual doctor.

The Best Little Boy In The World, by Andrew Tobias

A Single Man, by Christopher Isherwood

Although his stories aren't specifically gay, Patrick Dennis seems to be popular with gay people. My favorites are:

- Auntie Mame (of course)

- Little Me (even better)

- The Joyous Season (timely, and seems to capture the atmosphere of mid-60s NYC)

- How Firm a Foundation (not his best, but still pretty funny - and downright thrilling to a then-teenager who had never before encountered the word "cunt" in print)

I always wanted to slap TBLBITW.

Gay Roots: Twenty Years of Gay Sunshine, an Anthology of Gay History, Sex, Politics, and Culture ed. by Winston Leyland

At Home At The End of The World, by Michael Cunningham

[quote]The Year of Ice by Brian Malloy is probably the best coming of age gay story I've written.

r42 I liked it, too, Brian.

R62 Haha! I meant that I've READ, not written.

I'm not Brian. Though I did meet him at a book signing in Columbus, OH years ago. Hot in that slightly nerdy grew-up-in-the-late-70s sort of way. Kind of like Steve Kornacki (?) from MSNBC.

The Front Runner - Patricia Nell Warren - 1974 - 1st contemporary Gay novel about a coach and his star runner. I was 24 then and got the book and read it in two days. Nice story and not your typical 'gay' porn - ah to be 24 again!

And the Band Played On

Neil Gaimans Sandman, especially the Death miniseries.

The Coming Storm

Bump

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man by Fannie Flagg

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng.

Christodora by Tim Murphy

At Danceteria and Other Stories By Philip Dean Walker

In September, the Light Changes by Andrew Holleran

Thank you, R70. I did not know of the book of Holleran stories.

The Joy of Gay Sex

The Gay Man's Kama Sutra

R70 I'd add The Angel of History by Rabih Alammedine to the row recent AIDS fiction books (and all of Holleran--superior to all of Edmund White, IMO).

Great read.

Lgbt History: a fine collection of essays.

Lincoln was a bro? Tripp of course doesn’t entirely make his case, but his arguments are interesting.

Abe was family

This book makes some good points about lgbt sexuality and culture.

Radclyffe Hall lived at the intersection of Trans & Lesbian. She even stole a British Admiral’s wife! Hall’s Anti-Semitism is not period uncommon, but still disturbing.

Not the most well-documented, but McKenna’s insights about Wilde’s sexuality seem closer to the target than other biographies.

McKenna is even less scholarly here, but this is a fun read and points out the long related gay male/trans community.

Some nonfiction that I like:

The Evening Crowd at Kirmser’s: Gay Life in the 1940s by Ricardo Brown. Details of post WW2 gay life in St. Paul, Minnesota. Great read

Sex Crime Panic - in the 1950s in Souix City, Iowa, the murders of a toddler and a young boy were blamed on a gay man. As a result, many gay men were set up, arrested, and sent to a specially created unit of the Iowa state mental health facility. Like The Evening Crowd, it’s a fascinating insight into gay life and experiences in the middle of the USA.

Gone with the wind. We all need a bitch model And how to loose the man of your life With grace.

Denton Welch's books

The Power Look by Egon von Fürstenberg.

Nancy Drew in The Secret of Red Gate Farm...every gay boy's first girl he wanted to be!

Der Puppenjunge by John Henry Mackay was surprisingly good. It's a very touching story of love in Berlin in the 1920s.

'The Boys on the Rock' by John Fox

WAS a novel by Geoff Ryman--AIDS, Judy Garland, Wizard of Oz.

Randy Shilts - And the Band Played On, Conduct Unbecoming

Anthony Powell - A Dance to the Music of Time

Charles Kaiser - The Gay Metropolis

Honcho

Thousand and One Night Stands: The Life of Jon Vincent

It's truly fascinating.

Hanya Yanagihara's 'A Little Life'

A book every millennial should be forced to read.

Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram. This is the book that was adapted into the award winning film God's and Monsters.

Vanna Speaks. It's just a hell of a book.

R91, WEHT Sky Dawson?

How many miles to Babylon by Jennifer Johnston

Jack Donovan The Way of Men

“Courage is an animating spirit of masculinity, and it is crucial to any meaningful definition of masculinity. Courage and strength are synergetic virtues. An overabundance of one is worth less without and adequate amount of the other.

Masculinity is about being a man within a group of men. Above all things, masculinity is about what men want from each other.”

^ /s

R68, love that book!

What about MARGARET MEAD ?

Could someone who still has some FFs please apply one to r93?

Dame Barbara Cartland DBE CStJ:

The Outrageous Queen (1956)

I search for rainbows (1967)

Passage to Love (1995)

The Protection of Love (1995)

The Cave of Love (1993)

Running from Russia (1995)

Sex and the Teenager (1964)

The Queen Saves a King (1991

Love at Forty (1937)

Now Rough-Now Smooth (1940)

The Vibrations of Love (1982)

Love Wins (1981)

Pure and Untouched (1981)

Touch a Star (1981)

The Necklace of Love (1989)

Look lovely, be lovely (1958)

The Impetuous Duchess (1975)

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Rubyfruit Jungle - Rita Mae Brown

Why Dame Barbara Cartland never won the Nobel Prize for literature I shall never know.

"The woman's guide to sizemeat "

I Know WHY the Caged Bird Sings

Valerie Solanus

S..C. U. M. MANIFESTO

(Society for cutting up men)

My Way Of Life

Diary of a Mad Playwright by James Kirkwood

Temple Slave by Robert Patrick

Winter's Light: Reflections of a Yankee Queer by John Preston

The Lonely Life

This and That

Denton Welch (already mentioned) . In Youth is Pleasure and Maiden Voyage.

J. R. Ackerley. We Think the World of You and My Father and Myself.

[quote]Yes [R32], any Baldwin. Especially the hard-to-find ‘Just Above My Head’ if you can find it. It’s his forgotten masterpiece imo, there’s no other book in literature like it.

Moonlight director Barry Jenkins will direct Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk with Pedro Pascal starring. I haven't read it but I assume it's more of a het novel? It would be awesome to see Another Country or Giovanni's Room on screen one day.

For the intellectual. Halperin, Butler, Sedgwick, Dollimore...

Also Nightwood by Djuana Barnes...

I really wish I could remember the name of that gay vampire book. It had a white cover but I can't remember the name or the author.

Getting old sucks.

Interview with the Vampire?

.... or something from Poppy Z. Brite?

No, it was a male author......

I usually don't like fantasy or sci fi but I liked this one. I think it had somewhat of a romantic element, though it was 23 years ago that I read it.....

I have just totally brain farted on what it was, though.

R122, was the title simply the name of the main character?

I couldn't say, R123. I just don't remember....it will be a "I'll know it when I see it" moment.

I wanted to say it was The Living End (which is the Araki film, something different) or some sort of pun on the vampire element, but nothing comes up when I search that.

Also, I acknowledge this is my punishment for my years of working at a big box bookstore and laughing at everyone who came in and said "I saw this book and I need you to help me find it...it's blue?"

The Living One, r124? That's a good book.

Vampires Anonymous by Jeffrey McMahan is another good book.

YESSSSSS! Thank you, R125! I love you!

That was indeed the book I wanted to suggest.

I knew Lewis was part of the name but it wasn't the character, it was the author.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

And ooops, it didn't have a white cover. Like I said, getting old is a bitch. LOL

I've got The Living One on my bookshelf, a few feet away from me. I read it over twenty years ago. Maybe I'll re-read it now.

The Lonely Lady

The Persian Boy by Mary Renault

The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexander’s life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas.

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima

story of a Japanese boy's development towards homosexuality during and after the Second World War.

The Story of the Night by Colm Tóibín

In Argentina, in the time of the Generals, the streets are empty at night, and people have trained themselves not to see. Richard Garay lives with his mother, hiding his sexuality from her and from society. Stifled by his job, Richard is willing to take chances, both sexually and professionally. But Argentina is changing, and as his country edges toward peace, Richard tentatively begins a love affair. The result is a powerful, brave, and poignant novel of sex, death, and the difficulties of connecting one's inner life with the outside world.

Sounds good, R132. Thanks.

Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac

Flowers in the Attic

When I was a kid, and it first came out, all of us gay boys were passing it around on the beach while the jocks played volleyball and chased the girls. It's too bad it never got the movie treatment it deserves.

The 100 Best Gay Books by The Advocate

I can't believe these haven't been mentioned ...

but the "Buddies" cycle by Ethan Mordden is some of the best gay fiction out there. It was life-changing for me. Start with 'Buddies', the 2nd of the series, and the best. It will hook you and then go back and read "I've A Feeling We're Not In Kansas Anymore" ... and then the others which get increasingly depressing as the AIDS epidemic decimates the world in which these remarkable stories exist.

"Leaving a Comment for Future Reference" (2017)

Nancy Mitford

Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry Into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy

I'm not reading any article that requires me to subscribe, R136.

[quote] the "Buddies" cycle by Ethan Mordden is some of the best gay fiction out there.

I bought a copy of the first book. I think it's OOP, because I bought a used copy. It smelled so awful, I couldn't read it. I kept trying, over a period of a couple of years, but the book never stopped smelling, so I threw it out. I should probably try again. I wish the series would come out on Kindle.

The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. It's gay male fiction.

All of Mordden's fiction is available on the Kindle, R141.

I know because I read them in that form.

Al Franken's "Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" ... it's hilarious and informative, entertaining and educational, with a great sensibility. And rigorously fact-checked.

Al Franken's follow up book, "The Truth" is also very wroth reading... just as funny and factual, but four years later. The two books really sum up the 2000 and 2004 elections, the politics at the time, and all the evil seeds planted then (and before) that spouted into our modern political disaster under Trump.

Thanks, R143.

"You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again" by Julia Phillips

Al Franklin's most recent book"I'm Sorry I Grabbed those Boobs."

All of Christopher Bram's books are well-written, fascinating and about different kinds of gay men.

The same goes for Mark Merlis, who died recently.

You are just TOO hilarious, r148. Freeper trash.

I can tell you a book I do NOT recommend.....

I tried to read Felice Picano's Like People In History and loaaathed it.

There were a few books by various authors like Like People In History over the years that I loathed, and I loathed all for the same reason: the story was wafer thin and the entire 300 to 600 page story was "I fucked this guy. Then I fucked this one. Then I attended this orgy. And we looked fabulous. AND I fucked this guy who was so hot/butch/straight/military."

And when people weren't fucking, they were talking to their friends about who they fucked and how big they were.

Not that a novel can't be sexy, but I just thought the balance on that Picano book, in particular, was way off.

Some really interesting suggestions on this list. Thank you, datalounge!

"Stonewall : the riots that sparked the gay revolution" by David A. Carter

SR152 Picano is a mass market pulp writer with an unrealistic estimation of his talents. He embodies the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

In fiction, I always found Edmund White and Paul Monette books to be poorly written, but they were among the most available gay fiction available in the 80's. I never got into the gay detective and mystery books that used to be widely available.

Personally, I enjoy Augusten Burroughs. Running With Scissors, Dry, Possible Side Effects, and Sellavision were interesting reads.

I was waiting for the DL resident Felice Picano-hating troll to slither out from under his rock.

Predictable, bitch, who's only read one of his books.

I've liked what I've read of Felice Picano, and some of Edmund White. I can't think of anything I didn't like by Paul Monette, and I've never heard anyone say anything bad about his writing before.

second r113.

Sublime

R152

From interviews with him I've always gotten the impression that Felice Picano has a VERY high opinion of himself. He speaks about his life the same way he writes about it in 'Like People in History'. I find him exhausting and tedious.

R155: R122 here. NO, I've read a number of his books--mainly because when I was coming out, his stuff was available. I think he's the least talented of the Violet Quill. His main distinction is that he's managed to stay alive. White, whose work is uneven, has some genuinely good stuff--though I could do without the confessional memoirs of recent years. I still think Holleran out writes them all.

R161

Uh, no darling, *I* was R122. I was also R152. Not sure who you were meaning to cite.

R157 I'm the Picano hating troll? Ha!

I didn't realize others disliked his work or have shared said opinion before. I was just, as the kids would say, sharing my truth.

Smooches.

Speaking of “At Danceteria and Other Stories” which is listed above, Walker’s mentor in graduate school was Andrew Holleran (who also blurbed the book).

R130 : this one as well.

Life with My Sister Madonna by Christopher Ciccone

R166. Awful book. Christopher Ciccone is a whiny little pig.

Besides which, no, every gay man should not read a book about Madonna. Ugh.

Start with these.

He won the gay vote by a sinslide!

This. Bitches.

QUEER by Burroughs. HOW TO GO TO THE MOVIES by Quentin Crisp. THE BELL by Iris Murdoch. A DEAD MAN IN DEPTFORD by Anthony Burgess. THE ORTON DIARIES and Kenneth Williams' diaries, plus PRICK UP YOUR EARS by John Lahr. THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY by Patricia Highsmith.

Exile In Guyville, Dave White

and

101 Movies for Gay Men, Alonso Duralde

Role Models by John Waters. It's delicious.

This thread is excellent! I just went hog wild on Amazon ordering some of these titles. Thanks to OP for starting it.

Gay men knit too.

Mapplethorpe - Assault with a Deadly Camera

I enjoyed it, so sue me.

Don't get me wrong. I assume everyone here already owns this...

Remember when gay and lesbian bookstores were a thing? You could buy pride necklaces. People went there to browse titles and each other. The pornography was tasteful.

I love Butt. Forever Butt.

Cultural History for Millennials. It's an easy read. Lotsa pics.

Butt is a magazine, though, is it not?

(Not a book.)

R182 - That is a book in the link. A compilation of stuff from Butt Magazine.

Do not question me.

A book made up of magazine articles is STILL A MAGAZINE

R184 - Tell that to Oprah, bitch.

D. V. by Diana Vreeland

R186 - Yes, the bible was already mentioned a few posts up.

R172 exquisite taste. Are any of those books you mention non'fiction? If not, do you have any suggestions?

Les Be Friends by Les Bean

I can't believe noone (unless I'm slipping) has mentioned Vito Russo's 'The Celluloid Closet'.

Christopher Davis' The Boys in The Bars is good.

....

'When we Rise' by Cleve Jones 'F*****ts' by Larry Kramer (my apologies, not my choice of language) 'The Mayor of Castro Street' by Randy Shilts 'The Well of Loneliness' by Radclyffe Hall (especially for Lesbian sisters) 'Portrait of a Marriage' by Nigel Nicolson (especialyl for the bisexuals)

It was mentioned very early on in this thread, R190.

Celluloid Closet was R16, R190.

Right near the top, Mary.

People here read?

Another for Ethan Mordden's BUDDIES. Better than David Sedaris long before David Sedaris.

Don’t forget I wrote one just for you, bitches.

Is Alexander the Great Series by Mary Renault any Good?

R198, what does Jameson got anything to do with anything gay?

Oh geez, it's best I shuffle to bed immediately.

Rest in peace, Cookie.

Who is Diana Vreeland, and why should I care?

She was an eccentric old lady who loved red and made grand statements about fashion, and as such there's the school of thought that this is meaningful to gay men, but in truth there's really no reason for you to give a shit about her at all, R203.

Required reading...

R203 - You blasphemous whore.

R205 I loved that book!

Has Andrew Holleran written anything since "In September The Light Changes" ? I love his writing, but I guess he's done.

R208, he publishes articles now regularly in The Gay & Lesbian review.

[quote] All of Mordden's fiction is available on the Kindle

I was hoping the NYPL would have the Buddies series, but they only have a couple of them and not the first. Are they just as good out of sequence as one poster said?

Meanwhile is Ethan Mordden a DLer? This account isn’t verified, but not everyone bothers with that. Is he watching us right now?

r210 "Sorry, you are rate limited."

Net Neutrality No More in action?

Ethan posted this Post article about Jared.

Came to say Gay New York which has already been posted and maybe The History of Sexuality by Foucault (or a summary of it)

Holleran wrote a short novel, "Grief," about ten years ago.

The App and Lucia novels by E F Benson. Gay beyond description and divinely bitchy. Also: The Well of Loneliness by Quaint Irene (AKA Radcliffe Hall)

Sorry, the MAPP and Lucia novels.

r216 shouldn't type without his piNce-nez.

Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye To Berlin, Down There On A Visit & the one he wrote after Berlin, whose name I forget. Brilliant, bitchily funny, as fresh as the day they were written.

Charley Shively's two Whitman books: Calamus Lovers & Drum Beats. He was a great historian who stripped away the heterosexual bullshit of Whitman that had been perpetrated for decades. His achievement has been downgraded by heterosexual academia, who aren't worth to wipe his boots. Louis Compton's Byron & Greek Love was a similar breakthrough work that stripped away the het bullshit.

"How to catch a man, how to keep a man, how to get rid of a man"

Big Penis: The Ultimate Guide for a Longer, Thicker, Stronger Penis

The Dreyfus Affair, by Peter Fefcourt.

Two by John Weir: 'The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket', and 'What I Did Wrong'.

LOVED 'What I Did Wrong'. Read it in one sitting.

There are some YouTube's of John Weir reading from his work.

R212, thanks for ruining this thread by posting a pic of that sociopathic cunt.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Fingersmith

The Charioteer by Mary Renault

Holding the Man by Timothy Conigrave

Joe Caruso's groundbreaking Queer Hustler

A Room On Chelsea Square - fabulous roman a clef by a man who was kept by wealthy Peter Watson

Flesh, Meat, and the other early Straight To Hell true sex anthologies by the Rev Boyd McDonald. But only seek the original editions, not the reprints, as I believe they have been stripped of some of the stuff now considered unacceptable.

Diary Of An Innocent by Tony Duvert -- an extraordinary non-fiction novel that reads like a drug dream: the writing is of such a high order, Duvert's sexuality (paedophilia) is beside the point.

Night Letters by Robert Dessaix: one of the greatest works to come out of The Plague.

The Boy Who Picked The Bullets Up and its sequel. Without question these howling masterworks set during the Vietnam War would have been made into films long ago if it wasn't for homophobia.

California Screaming -- if you prefer your gay humour cold and hard, rather than soft and warm like Joe Keenan or the Tales Of athe City stuff, this book is your ticket.

The Blue Star by Robert Ferro. If you love Holleran you'll adore this book. It's a failed novel: the fantastical section doesn't really work, but it's wonderful nonetheless. Very very smart, funny, and with gorgeous writing.

r231 When I googled "The Blue Star by Robert Ferro," I was sent to this page, which recommends a number of contemporaneous gay novels, most of which I read and enjoyed, mostly during the 1980s.

Designing Your Face by Way Bandy

"À l’ami qui ne m’a pas Sauvé la Vie" et "Le Protocole compassionnel" par Hervé Guibert

Even fictionalized AIDS can rivet, and this novel does not disappoint. The narrator, a bisexual also named Herve Guibert, is friends with the gay intellectual Muzil, based on the French structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault. Guibert realizes that he has AIDS when his symptoms resemble those afflicting the ailing Muzil after his return from the San Francisco bathhouses. Guibert naturally jumps to conclusions when his friend Bill, manager of a pharmaceutical laboratory, expresses hope for a vaccine. When that hope fizzles, Guibert's response recalls the philosophical parallel he has drawn between the mind of the terminally ill and the celestial black holes that paradoxically survive by eating into themselves. Written in the form of a random journal, this work offers both convincing medical descriptions and probing personal analysis.

Eighty-Sixed by David Feinberg is excellent. The main character, BJ, is pretty unforgettable. There is also a sequel called Spontaneous Combustion.

The Bobbsey Twins Visit A Gay Bar The Bobbsey Twins Go On Ru The Bobbsey Twins and the Village People Nancy Drew and the mystery of the fat closet Lez presidential candidate The hardy boys go to barcelona

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst is my favorite novel about a gay man. It won the Booker Prize about 10 years ago.

Another vote for Denton Welch and his books A Voice Through A Cloud and In Youth is Pleasure.

I first heard about him in an article written by John Updike in the New Yorker.

R235 I read Feinberg years ago and had forgot how much I liked his work.

Other people have said "At Swim, Two Boys" but I will repeat it. So great.

I will also add in Finlater, a great book.

The Finishing Touch by Brigid Brophy.

A slim homage to Ronald Firbank written by the wife of the Director of the National Gallery, London, and which would have pride of place on Nan Michiganwomyn's shelf.

It's set in a girl's finishing school run by two lezzies: one a bull dyke, the other a powderpuff fem, and is hilarious.

The first sentence in the book is:

" Men are coarse."

And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks.

not especially gay, but Catcher in the Rye gave me hope, courage, the desire to get the hell out of a small town in texas and really feel life...

to be free

Panthers In The Skins Of Men is the sequel to remarkable The Boy Who Picked The Bullets Up.

Funeral Rites by Genet is an incredible book, but only in the Panther paperback translation.

The Velvet Rage - in the “self-help” category so not for everyone’s taste

The Folding Star by Alan Hollinghurst is quite good but, as a warning, has a rather icky pedo-ish storyline. Reviewers have called it the “gay Lolita.” It almost reads like Proust at times. (Remembrance of Things Past belongs in this thread, by the way).

To the person who suggested At Danceteria and Other Stories, it’s apparently being adapted into a limited series for HBO or Netflix. Would love to know who’s playing Princess Diana in male drag!

R245 "The Velvet Rage" creates rage for non A-Gays.

The Family of Max Desir by Robert Ferro (who was a member of the Violet Quill).

The Fan by Bob Randall.

Read? Something other than my Instagram feed? Is this a joke?

R241 I always get her confused with the interesting Bridget Boland

Why this one ! Of course !!!

[quote]has a rather icky pedo-ish storyline.

Bitch, please: spare us your virtue signalling. Especially over a big flemish teenager. You can practice curling your lip in private to Death In Venice, the DVD of the movie of which you've probably worn smooth.

This.

^ OMG

The blurb for that is unreadable.

"Blue Heaven" by Joe Keenan should be required reading for all gay people just because it's so fucking funny.

The publisher of 'The Penetrated Male' is identified as Punctum Books. Punctum !?.....ouch!

Rushes by John Rechy

R257 - Punctum must be a portmanteau of puncture and rectum.

Very much so, R199.

Theodore Sturgeon’s short story "The World Well Lost." I don’t have a link to the story, but it was reprinted in several of Sturgeon’s short story collections and should be easy to find. It’s wonderful and very touching.

Wikipedia says the following about it: “Its sensitive treatment of homosexuality was unusual for science fiction published at that time, and it is now regarded as a milestone in science fiction's portrayal of homosexuality. According to an anecdote related by Samuel R. Delany, when Sturgeon first submitted the story, his editor not only rejected it but phoned every other editor he knew and urged them to reject it as well.” It’s an important story, and Sturgeon was a marvelous writer.

Michael Nava’s mystery series featuring gay attorney Henry Rios.

^^^The book amazon.com is featuring is not one of the novels in the series, but the link will take you to Nava’s amazon page where you can see them all.