Summer reading for 2022

For lighter reading I want to finally read "Mexican Gothic," which I bought over a year ago and STILL haven't cracked open!

Jesmyn Ward is wonderful.

I'm about to start Grant Ginder's new novel, Let's Not Do That Again. He's gay, writes humorous fiction, and ain't bad to look at.

What a great last name for a gay writer!

This weekend I'll start "Sea of Tranquility" by Emily St. John Mandel. I greatly enjoyed her last two novels.

The Golden Bowl by Henry James

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

I have a strange relationship with Salvage the bones,. i can't say i enjoyed the novel (in fact i'm not too fond of her style) but for some reason is a novel that stayed with me for a long time

I'm sorry to say I was very disappointed in Mandel's SEA OF TRANQUILITY and I'm a huge fan of her work. I've read all her novels but feel in this one, she bit off more than she could chew. I'd say more but it's best going in knowing nothing. And I'd still recommend the book to her fans (not first time readers) because there's some great ideas and writing, of course.

AT DANCETERIA is a fun summer read.

DL's bookies might enjoy this NYT article about how Barnes and Noble has rehabilitated itself in recent years and is now generally seen by independent booksellers as an ally against Amazon and not an enemy.

I still prefer indie stores, but I do try to hit a B&N occasionally because I am glad they still exist.

I think l’ll be tackling lots of backlist titles, since I’ve been primarily reading new releases. I read everything through eBooks and the library and I’ve put off a couple titles that have cycled up that I’ll finally tackle including: The Secret History, Circe, Song of Achilles, The Dutch House, Hamnet and Shuggie Bain. I’ll also continue with the three reading goals I have each month that include a memoir, a novella and a work by an Irish author. I might tackle a Sally Rooney, which I’m dreading, but I want to see what’s the hypes all about. I really liked the limited series of Normal People, but mainly because of the phenomenal performances of the two leads. It would probably be a quicker read since I know the story, but maybe I should try one of the others? Anybody recommend or make and argument for one over the other two?

Just finished Bath Haus—not a bad first effort, but it does feel like a first effort. A perfectly fine palate cleanser between more challenging books. It’ll be a decent beach read when it comes out in paperback or from the library. No need to buy it in hardcover.

I'm going to read The Inn at the Edge of the World by Alice Thomas Ellis. They're making a movie with a starry cast and I want to get the story in my mind before I see the movie.

[quote]Just finished Bath Haus—not a bad first effort, but it does feel like a first effort. A perfectly fine palate cleanser between more challenging books.

I enjoyed it until the end, which felt forced and artificial. But it's a fun premise: a guy hooks up at a bathhouse with a psychopath, and then has to fend him off in real life while keeping the hookup a secret from his partner.

[quote] The Golden Bowl by Henry James

Good luck with that!

R10, I loved many of those books but especially Song of Achilles - such a pleasurable, engrossing read.

[quote] I'm sorry to say I was very disappointed in Mandel's SEA OF TRANQUILITY and I'm a huge fan of her work.

Me too. It felt like an outline for a novel she didn’t bother fully writing. She needed a pushier editor to tell her to take another year and actually write the book.

Well OP, your timing was perfect to align with this:

Re: The Golden Bowl

The third or fourth time that I went to pick up the book, instead of reading it I abandoned it, vowing that I wasn't going to continue with something that I had grown to truly dislike.

I'm about 100 pages into Karen Joy Fowler's new fictional bio of the Booth family called simply BOOTH and really enjoying it. I bought it at our indie book store yesterday on a whim, based solely on the great cover blurbs and my fascination with and John Wilkes Booth, as well as Lincoln.

But I just read the NY Times review which was an out and out pan like I've never read in a NY Times review! Then I scanned a few other major reviews that were raves. I guess I'll just keep reading.

Sometimes I think the most informative book reviews I read are the reader reviews on Amazon.

I'm starting John Connolly's The lovers. I really like that there are always gay characters (apart of Louis and Angel)

My Policeman, soon to be a Harry Styles Emma Corrin movie

I HATED My Policeman!!!! Awful book.

I'm about 100 pages into YOUNG MUNGO. Loving it even more than SHUGGIE BAIN.

why did you hate it R21?

Couldn't make it thru the first 100 pages of Shuggie Bain, after loving the excerpt that was in The New Yorker

I found the writing amateurish and the plotting preposterous and contrived, r23.

hmm, i was going off the glowing review in the NYT and a complimentary one from the Guardian

I’m confused by responses for the new St. John Mandel, most have been scathing and saying it’s stillborn, others are giving it high praise, but seem like paid shills.

ACK!

I'm a huge fan of Mandel's, I've loved al of her books including those preceding Station 11, but found Sea of Tranquility very disappointing and wanting. It read like her heart wasn't really in it. Though there's some brilliant writing and set pieces, it feels very sketchy and uncommitted.

I really liked "Sea of Tranquility" a lot although I would agree that it's not as strong as her previous two novels, which I think were both near-perfect. I've found her books generally are stronger in the realm of ideas, set pieces and world-building than they are in characterization, but in this one in particular the characters felt like props, or chess pawns. And I felt like she could have spent a little more time fleshing out certain aspects of the book -- her vision of the future, for instance, felt a little thin. I thought she could have had more fun with that.

All that said, it still contained a lot of beautiful writing and interesting ideas. You could certainly tell she wrote it in the early stages of the pandemic, and I liked how heartfelt she was in trying to work out on the page what an event like that means for humankind.

If you liked Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, I'd strongly suggest you read the new one, even if it doesn't quite reach the same heights. In retrospect, the three books really comprise a trilogy of sorts.

I'd definitely recommend SEa of Tranquility but NOT to anyone who hasn't read Mandel before. It's not representative of her great talent.

I'm curious if any DLers are familiar with the British novelist Ronald Frame?

Years ago, I came across a novel of his I loved called SANDMOUTH PEOPLE, a multi-character story (with a gay element) of lives in a British resort town which, IIRC, all takes place in a single day. Anyway, I finally tracked down a couple of his other novels; he's hard to find in the US and I bought 2 used editions on Amazon: HAVISHAM, an imagining of the early life of Dicken's Mrs. Havisham and THE LANTERN BEARERS, in which a man who was once a young muse to a famous composer writes a biography/memoir of his life years after the composer dies.

Can't wait to start them!

I just read THE ART THIEF, which has a fun concept and good characters,, but it reads like it was written by a teenager—lots of cheekbones caught by the light, and way, WAY too many paeans to “possibility.”

I'm reading Tomasz Jedrowski's Swimming in the dark.

The sweetness of water will be released here next month, i'm thinking of reading it and The Prophets to see if the comparisions were accurate

also read "Swimming in the Dark" and liked it very much

I just started reading Nightmare Alley today

I’m curious about DANCETERIA, which is recommended above and frequently in previous book threads. I read a couple of the stories this weekend and thus far am not getting the greatness. I’m the right demographic, being gay and having been in my twenties for most of the eighties, but the stories seem empty and linguistically flat. Is it just me?

They seem Didionesque to me--which sometimes I enjoy, sometimes not.

I, too, loved "Swimming in the Dark" -- such beautiful, powerful, evocative writing.

Thanks, R2. I'll check Grant Ginder out.

Every summer I like to read a classic tome. This summer it will be "Kristin Lavransdatter" by Sigrid Undset who won the 1928 Nobel Prize in literature for the trilogy. It's set in 14th century Norway, and it is supposedly very accurate its its portrayal of medieval life.

I'm completing Michael Nava's novels right now.

Also on the list: Daniel Kehlmann's "Measuring The World."

Didn’t love the new Jennifer Egan book. It starts out strong but isn’t as good as visit from the Goon Squad.

Sad to hear about the Mandel book. I will still read but that’s too bad.

Liking the new Sigrid Nunez book even though it’s very dark.

Made it thru 200 pages of BOOTH and gave up. I think if you’re interested in the subject matter it would be fantastic, I ultimately just didn’t give a shit about his family.

Going to start Helter Skelter based on another thread here.

I enjoyed BOOTH very much but I've always been fascinated by the family as well as Abe Lincoln 's more private life. I wasn't disappointed but it is a long slow read.

Just finished YOUNG MUNGO. Brutal (even more than SHUGGIE BAIN) but still well worth it. Gorgeous writing. I can't wait for Douglas Stuart to apply his talents to a different mise en scene.

Has anyone actually read, "The Prophets" mentioned above, and if so comments?

R37, did you stick around for the fourth story in DANCETERIA (“The Boy Who Lived Next to the BoY Next Door”)? It’s really the best and worth getting through the others—which I actually did enjoy. I love how the author presents LIZA.

I think the spare way he treats the celebrities/historical figures counters expectations of a more bold treatment. Which, perhaps, led to the flatness you described.

[QUOTE] Didn’t love the new Jennifer Egan book. It starts out strong but isn’t as good as visit from the Goon Squad.

I’m glad it’s not just me. I loved Goon Squad and re-read it before I started The Candy House. I’m really glad I did because the latter novel lifts out some truly ancillary characters from the former that I would have forgotten entirely had not re-read Goon.

The writing is good in The Candy House but the magic of that first book is missing somehow. I have a little over a hundred pages left so I’ll see if my opinion changes at all.

In Candy House, she does weird formatting for some of the later chapters and makes one of the characters an undercover international spy with a very long chapter in the strange formatting. I had to skip ahead at a certain point because it was annoying me so much.

R48 In Goon Squad, Jennifer did a chapter in Power Point. For Candy House she does a chapter in Twitter posts. That chapter predates Candy House and was actually released as a Short Story through the New Yorker magazine’s Twitter account back in 2012, but of course it is the continuation of Lulu’s story. I thought it was was one of the most hilarious of all the chapters, only to later be shattered by what it revealed about what happened to her further along in the novel. I thought the novels were brilliant and see it as just one big work with two volumes. It would be interesting if the Pulitzer felt the same way and awarded it so.

The Prophets is amazing. but i found it a slow read because i could feel the ending coming thru out. (and still was stunned at the end)

Oh thank you R48 - maybe I'll go back and read that part again.

Just curious - have any of you NOT read the Tolkien Hobbit/LOTR books? It seems like everyone did as a teenager, but I wondered if any of you avoided them and why.

I did end up really enjoying the (second to last) story in The Candy House that was composed entirely of emails. Halfway through, I realized that “Alex” was the same Ale who was Sasha’s date (in her apartment with the bathtub who she stole from) in the first story of Goon Squad.

Henry Miller - Time of The Assassins So far, I'm enjoying it. His prose feels fluid but organized. I have never read anything of him before.

Paulo Coelho - Manuscript Found in Accra Think of Khalil Gibran. It's good for the people who enjoy this kind of book.

Mia Couto - Fio das Missangas Short story collection. Is any of you familiar with Mia Couto? He's from Moçambique, writes incredible short stories. I've read some his other collections of short stories before and they are all amazing.

Has anyone heard of this book or author that was released yesterday? I think it’s YA, a BookToker was raving about it. It’s Gay teens, NYC 1990s, AIDS. Sounds like the anti Heartstoppers.

A favorite. Recommended highly for eloquent ladies.

After all these years I'm finally reading THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND KLAY.

Only about 50 pages in but what an incredible read!

I'm taking a road trip vacation in a few weeks, visiting Civil War sites in Mississippi and Tennessee, and am taking David W. Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass with me.

Have pre-ordered The Italian Invert: A Gay Man's Intimate Confessions to Emile Zola, the focus of another thread here, really looking forward to it.

Kavalier & Klay is truly special.

R40 I LOVED Kristin Lavransdatter. Don't let the first few pages deter you, stick with it! I wish I could read that book for the first time again.

Currently reading Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. Beautiful prose.

I’m reading the Song of Achilles and it’s coming off as bad YA romance, and I’m someone who holds YA in high regard.

I’m finally reading Ship Of Fools, and We Wish To Inform You That Tommorrow We Will Be Killed With OurFamilies. I can’t wait to get to some mindless summer mysteries….

R60 The Antelope’s Strategy is a good follow up to “Tomorrow” when your ready to read more.

I loved Ship of Fools when I read it in high school and have always meant to reread it. The 1960s film really looks like it's set in the 1960s and not the late 1930s.

This thread in northern hemisphere centric.

Feel free to add recommendations from other hemispheres, r63. Or are you just here to bitch?

Have never read Kavalier and Clay. Maybe I'll give it a try.

I will be reading the new Andrew Holleran, "Kingdom of Sand," John Connolly's "The Furies," Ann Cleeve's new Vera novel, "The Rising Tide," F. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise," Sarah Hall's "Burntcoat," Mark Doty's "What Is the Grass," Joy WIlliams's "The Quick & the Dead," and Yoko Ogawa's "The Memory Police."

Given comments above I may also go for "Swimming in the Dark," "Danceteria," and "Young Mungo."

R5 "The Golden Bowl" is a grand novel, so persevere. James is an acquired taste, and he bores the bejesus out of many readers.

Happy reading, bitches.

R66 How can someone not love a novel with a character named Fanny Assingham?

R67 You are so right. I've always felt that HJ was perpetrating a sly joke on his readers or that he was so naive that the name didn't register as vulgar.

thanks r66 i'm now first in line to read the Furies when my local library get it!

Has anyone read FEBRUARY HOUSE? Nonfiction about a house rented in 1940s Brooklyn by quite a crowd—McCullers, Auden, Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, among others. It’s a lot of fun.

Yes! I loved FEBRUARY HOUSE by Sherrill Tippins, the wonderful story of the fabled boarding house in Brooklyn Heights that housed those young celebs for a couple of years pre-WWII, before they became very famous. Carson McCullers, escaping from a bad marriage, WH Auden and Benjamin Britten who were there to avoid the draft, Auden with his young American lover and Britten with his lover British opera singer Peter Pears. Also, Paul and Jane Bowles and set designer Oliver Smith. They were all brought together by George Davis a flamboyant literary editor who had just been fired from his long-time job at Harper's Bazaar. Though gay, he later married Lotte Lenya.

Most of them weren't making much money then and were supported by Gypsy Rose Lee, who camped out there in exchange for help in writing her first book, The G-String Murders. There was a also a sweet little musical done at the Public Theatre based on the book about 10 years ago. It could make a great mini-series (that is, if anyone under 60 knew who any of those people were).

Does Auden’s wife Erika Mann show up in the book at some point?

Yes, Erika Mann does live at February House for awhile. She was Thomas Mann's daughter and a lesbian. I can't remember why she married Auden though I guess it was for American citizenship or political reasons?

They named the residence February House because several of the original lodgers were born in that month.

Right now I'm reading The Storm is Upon Us, which is about Qanon. Only about 40 pages in but it's good so far

I can see the appeal a television miniseries based on "February House" would have for the millions and millions of Erika Mann fans.

R75, I hear Kristin Davis is in talks to play her.

I recently was given15+ John Grisham books. I'm curious to find out if I like his writing. FWIW, I have a legal background. I'd be interested to know what others here think of him. I have no plans to get involved with any particular author other than Grisham. If I can't get into his writing I'll be looking to continue passing those books on to someone that might enjoy them.

Reading Sea of Tranquility now. It started out okay but is getting kind of nuts.

The Golden State by Lydia Kriesling is fucking AWFUL. Do not buy it - do not read it.

[quote] Yes, Erika Mann does live at February House for awhile. She was Thomas Mann's daughter and a lesbian. I can't remember why she married Auden though I guess it was for American citizenship or political reasons?

"This was a marriage of convenience; by marrying Auden, Mann intended to obtain British citizenship to escape persecution in Nazi Germany.

Their marriage was mediated by Christopher Isherwood, who was a friend of Erika’s brother Klaus. Erika had initially suggested she should marry Isherwood, but he felt unable to go through with the marriage and asked his friend Auden to do so instead. Auden quickly accepted. Despite the fact that they hardly knew each other at the time of the wedding, Auden and Mann developed a friendship, and Auden dedicated his 1936 collection of poems Look, Stranger! to her.

Reading Douglas Stuart's Young Mungo and can barely put it down, despite its grimness (with faint glimmers of hope). See also: Stuart's Shuggie Bain. I've nothing against writers who largely plow the same field again and again (Austen, Updike, Anne Tyler, etc.), but I'm wondering if Stuart can (or will) write about anything other than alcoholic mothers, domestic violence, grinding poverty and what he calls "the gentle sons of Glasgow" and the older men who take advantage of them. Not complaining, just wondering.

I agree with everything you say, r81. And still looking hopefully forward to Stuart's next book.

R77 I remember loving The Pelican Brief and A Time to Kill, and really loving The Firm. If any of those three are part of your stack I'd read them. For whatever reason I stopped reading his new stuff around 20 years ago.

The Client is great.

Thanks, I have all of those books. Look like it's going to be a Grisham summer!

I put this on hold at the library based on the premise alone, but this review makes me even more excited to dive in as a bit more upscale than usual beach read with some literary value. And say what you will about him as an author, he’s an excellent storyteller.

The Traitor King, Andrew Lownie (DL gets a mention!)

Written in Blood, Diane Fanning (from The Staircase thread)

Also on a John Grisham trek. Read The Partner and The Guardians, both entertaining summer read a few words, check out the action on the beach/park, read a few more words reads.

Killing Commendatore, Murakami Haruki. Excellent translator/translation. Very readable.

I'm listening to Molly Keane's [italic]Good Behaviour[/italic] where the narrator is prefectly capturing the contrast between the posh Anglo and 'common' Irish characters!

I'm re-re-re-reading The Winds of War and War & Remembrance. I think someone here was typing about W&R, and I put them on hold at the library. And up they popped. I'm about 100 pages into TWOW. Briny has just left Poland and is in Berlin with Pug and Rhoda. Natalie wisely chose to go back to the USA via Stockholm.

I can't believe they cast Jan Michael Vincent as Briny. Ali McGraw as Natalie didn't bother me, but JMV? No, just no. My mental picture goes in and out between Hart Bochner and Nick Gehlfuss (red haired Dr. Will Halsted on Chicago Med).

I love GOOD BEHAVIOUR! That's a novel that every Datalounger should know.

i' reading Marshall Karp's series of Lomax and Biggs. 2 LAPD cops. great reds, and often gay characters appear. THE RABBIT FACTORY is the first in the series.

EDIT ^ i'm great reads^

fat fingers! bad typing skills

Just finished The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures, a historical true crime book about the man who created the first short film and then disappeared on a train between Dijon and Paris leaving the horrible and nasty Thomas Edison the opportunity to swoop in an claim credit. Quite good, very detailed and well researched, but reads like a novel.

[QUOTE] Given comments above I may also go for "Swimming in the Dark," "Danceteria," and "Young Mungo."

“Young Mungo” is a great novel, but quite depressing. I’m also curious (as others were up-thread) what else this writer has in his bag of tricks.

There’s a sequel to “Danceteria” out called “Better Davis.” Some like it better.

I’m listening to the Molly Shannon’s memoir, Hello Molly, and it’s hilarious, mainly because of her exuberance in reading, I don’t know if it works as well directly off the page. There’s also the darkness of the accident that killed her mother, sister and cousin when she was four. Then there’s her father coming out as Gay at the end of her life.

I read My Policeman, which is supposedly inspired by E.M. Forster, but beyond the triad of a married policeman, his wife and an cultured older gay male lover I didn’t see anything that really had a connection to Forster’s life. Also, from what I know about the three of them in real life is that they had a very good, successful relationship, but the novel is tragic, which of course is period appropriate, but I was hoping this was going to be a hopeful novel. I like how it captured the period, but ultimately I was very frustrated by it and I’m quite surprised that they are making a movie about it. There’s just not not much there overall worth putting up on the screen, I’m guessing they are going to add a lot in adapting it for the screen. Did anyone else read it?

I really disliked The Policeman. The film was made quite awhile ago (maybe even pre-Covid?) so I wonder if they can't find a distributor.

Just finished My Policeman, interesting, but not profound and like R96 says, not the Forster/Buckingham triad.

Really wish someone like Merchant/Ivory had told that story or someone would write the historical novel, (looking at you Colm Toibin, who did Henry James and Thomas Mann so well)

R98 Yes, since My Policeman was so tangential there’s definitely room for a more truly biographical and happy ending novelistic study of Forster later life and of course Toibin is the perfect person to interpret it.

If you're into legal writing, you'll prefer Scott Turow.

Summer reading? What is this, eight grade language arts?

A number of Gay options here. I’m most interested in Ryan O’Connell’s book.

I don't know what my problem is, but everything on that list sounded cringingly awful.

I just finished William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley and started DuBose Heyward's Porgy.

Tom Perotta's sequel to Election, Tracy Flick Can't Win sounds like a fun beach read, r103.

R104, how was Nightmare Alley?

R103 The good news is there are hundreds of years of and hundreds of thousands of backlist books that you haven’t read yet that will carry you through current publishing trends until something new comes along that you’re interested in reading again. You’ll be fine.

R105 This does not bode well for the book, and coming from someone who usually likes his writing.

The title is a little too on the nose.

Has Reese Witherspoon selected the book for her book club?

I finished [italic]Good Behaviour[/Italic] yesterday. Dataloungers are definitely its target audience! Poor Aroon pining away for her lover like that.

More summer reading recommendations.

I was having a conversation with a straight guy who, finding out I was a reader, wanted a recommendation for a book. I quickly gathered that it had to be an Important book, a need I’ve seen before among straight guys who aren’t natural readers. But I don’t much read those—any recommendations? All I know is that he is straight, white, and retired (early I sensed) from some kind of financial services career.

Try "Nothing to Envy" by Barbara Demick, stories from escaped North Koreans; it reads like gripping fiction.

[quote]any recommendations?

"Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets" by Nobel-laureate Svetlana Alexievich, an oral history of the last days of the Soviet Union.

Fascinating, enlightening, sad, beautiful, horrific, and—as you requested—Important.

I just read the first part (the 1893 section) of Hanya Yanagihara’s TO PARADISE which seems to be a gay take on Henry James’s WASHINGTON SQUARE. Pretty compelling to the point where I couldn’t stop reading to find out what was going to happen. I kept picturing David Bingham as a Catherine Sloper type but I don’t think he’s plain like she is.

Interested to see how the rest of the book plays out.

I loved NOTHING TO ENVY, r114, but didn’t care much for her book after that, about the Tibetans.

I read Ryan O'Connell's first book (a biography) and it opens a story about how he called his mother into the bathroom for help after he'd taken a shit (I think he was in his 20s at the time) and because it was too big to flush - she took a knife and cut the poop in half so it would flush down the toilet. I found that so revolting - I think it was supposed to be funny - that it's the first thing I think of when I see his name. His entire instagram is photos of him in his underwear - again - tainted by the imagery of his mother cutting up his poop to flush when he was an adult.

Reading "School Days" now by Jonathan Galassi and really enjoying it. About a fancy boys' private school where abuse occurred - jumps between present day and the 1960s. Writing is really strong.

I'm not interested in the Tibetan book either, r117.

I couldn't make it past 24 pgs of Anderson Cooper's Vanderbilt so I returned it and got Sandra Bernhard's Confessions of a Pretty Lady. I liked Hello Molly but found it more sad than funny. But Ms Shannon is admirable for her steadfast determination to make it in show biz

R113 I would say Empire of Pain, which was just about on every top ten list last year and won numerous accolades. Also an earlier book by the same author, Say Nothing, about the Troubles in Ireland.

Seconding "Say Nothing." Brilliant and gripping.

Empire of Pain is the same author as Say Nothing? I’m on it.

So after reading Kavalier & Clay and loving it so much I decided to read Chabon's Telegraph Avenue. It's proving a bit challenging to get into though his prose always has its rewards. But should I have read The Yiddish Policemen's Union first?

Interesting, r40. That’s a solid recommendation.

R124, I recommend his Wonder Boys.

I think Chabon might have peaked with "Kavalier and Clay." Which I loved. But I could never finish "Yiddish Policeman's Union," and I thought "Telegraph Avenue" seemed like a lot of half-formed ideas that never quite gelled. I haven't picked up anything he's written since.

I've been reading "Koko" by Peter Straub which is a suspense/horror novel about Vietnam vets that came out in 1988. Straub was sort of a less prolific Stephen King, and it has a similar feel to earlier King, though Straub's prose is blessedly a little more subtle.

It's a long, strange book. There's a psychotic gay killer (or maybe not the killer? Not yet clear) which is very late '80s, although it's not entirely demeaning in its depiction of homosexuals. Overall it's more interesting as a cultural relic than as fiction, but that's not necessarily a criticism.

Currently reading "The Sea" by John Banville, and while the language is pretty, I'm finding the book to be an exercise in self-indulgent twaddle.

I'm reading "Burn Boston Burn: the Largest Arson Case in the History of the Country"

Given what the book says, I'm kind of surprised this isn't a continual problem in every city

[quote] Currently reading "The Sea" by John Banville, and while the language is pretty, I'm finding the book to be an exercise in self-indulgent twaddle.

As they say in the UK, the Booker Prize usually goes to the right authors but for their wrong novels.

Banville can be very good (though he overwrites), but "The Sea" is not one of my favorites. I much prefer "The Unotuchable" and "The Book of Evidence."

[quote]So after reading Kavalier & Clay and loving it so much I decided to read Chabon's Telegraph Avenue. It's proving a bit challenging to get into though his prose always has its rewards. But should I have read The Yiddish Policemen's Union first?

I liked all of his books through Kavalier & Clay, but The Yiddish Policemen's Union—oy, that is one book I could not get into. Holocaust survivors then taking on Alaska as their new Israel? No. Just no.

I did like Telegraph Avenue, though.

Sideways inspired by this thread, I’m reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s THE SNAKEHEAD.

R66, I really liked the Mark Doty book. Reading it made me realize that I owned the worst edition of Leaves of Grass. In a later edition, Whitman removed many of the more homoerotic lines.

More possibilities. There seems to be a strung of young gay men in NYC as AIDS blows up novels coming out. Here the one is My Government Means to Kill Me.

[QUOTE] There seems to be a string of young gay men in NYC as AIDS blows up novels coming out.

Could you name some of them? Or anything from the past couple of years. Novels or collections?

R136 Well there’s the one mentioned in the article, I think earlier in this thread or the last was When You Call My Name by Tucker. I feel there was another that I saw, but didn’t pay heed to. I know the new Andrew Holleran is set in Florida and an older man dealing with the fallout from AIDS, but he might be reflecting back on a more youthful time. I just listened to a long review of a new collection of Thom Gunn’s letters which focused much on AIDS. AIDS seems to be having a resurgence in literature. There’s was also the memoir All the Young Men about the woman in Arkansas who cared for young men dying of AIDS and rejected by their families that came out in 2020.

SciFi/Fantasy Summer Reading Possibilities

[QUOTE] AIDS seems to be having a resurgence in literature.

Also: “Christodora” by Tim Murphy, “The Great Believers” by Rebecca Makkai, “At Danceteria” and “Better Davis” by Philip Dean Walker.

Christodora and The Great Believers are two of the best novels I've ever read, AIDS related or not.

I'm the poster who asked upthread about Michael Chabon recs after enjoying Kavalier & Clay so much. As I might have mentioned, I'm currently reading Telegraph Avenue, about 1/2 way through it, and thoroughly loving it. I guess he's just my kind of storyteller, I love immersing myself in the world of his characters.

Couple of interesting Gay titles, including two non fiction Bad Gays and Secret City about Gay D.C.

More on the book Bad Gays.

I’ve been reading Julian Fellowes‘s SNOBS and wondering why his TV shows are so stupid. This book is light but definitely not stupid.

The State of the Book.

Best Books of the year so far according to Time.

Has anyone here read 100 Years of Solitude? I was browsing in The Strand (NY's primo indie bookstore) yesterday, saw a paperback copy and asked myself why I haven't ever read it? So I bought it. Looking forward to getting into it this weekend.

Also, bought Rebecca Makkai's The 100 Year House (I musty be into 100 titles, lol) as I so loved The Great Believers.

Try THE HUNDRED DRESSES, r148. It should be DL canon.

R146 When I stumbled upon 100 Years of Solitude by myself in my late twenties I was angry that no one had ever told me about the book before, it is that beautiful and impactful.

Lovely, r148. Thank you.

"100 Years of Solitude" more than deserves its reputation—it never leaves you.

T147. Also, “The Witch Family”—lesbian family in fairy tale form!

R146 I hate it. I'm spanish so Gabo is huge here and i was utterly dissapointed by the book. But i loved Chronicle of an announced death

I think Love in the Time of Cholera is better.

Just finished this. An academic book, had to slog through the first two chapters, but picked up later.

Just picked this up at my bookseller. Will report back on reaction

Does anyone know about the book or author of Boys and Oil?

Now reading Chris Bohjalian's "The Lioness." I'm about 20% in and it's pretty terrible. All tell, no show, and incredibly pedestrian writing.

I'm listening to Muriel Spark's "A Far Cry From Kensington" which I don't really want to end!

R157 Ugh, I was hopping it would be like a fun, campy, beach read, does it at least work on that level, I didn’t need anything too literary?

R159 I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it's not fun on any level.

It will be winter reading for me, but at the moment i am going through all the trashy crime novels which are $1.50 on amazon kindle store. Some of them are great, but it's honestly a bit of a gamble.

Really loved the Tucker Shaw book. Thank you for that recommendation.

Also loving The Chrisodora now. This thread always has such good recs.

[QUOTE] Also: “Christodora” by Tim Murphy, “The Great Believers” by Rebecca Makkai, “At Danceteria” and “Better Davis” by Philip Dean Walker.

All of these authors know each other and have blurbed each other’s books.

I’m currently reading THE BERLIN STORIES by Christopher Isherwood.

“Mr. Norris Changes Trains” includes some very direct comparisons to Alan Hollinghurst’s THE SWIMMING POOL LIBRARY. Has Hollinghurst ever mentioned that his novel is in conversation with Isherwood’s novella?

"To Paradise" was a real dud for me. And I love "A Little Life".

Me too R165. Couldn't even get through the first section of it.

[quote]All of these authors know each other and have blurbed each other’s books.

Often that happens when writers have similar sensibilities. They meet at conferences, and find they admire each other's writing.

Very true, R167. It’s fun to think of these authors in conversation with each other. Even just like having a cocktail together or whatever.

Garth Greenwell just published an article in The New Yorker about Andrew Holleran and his new novel, THE KINGDOM OF SAND.

Tim Murphy (CHRISTODORA - which is amazing, as others have pointed out) blurbed Walker’s last book:

[QUOTE] Scathingly funny, downright nasty, unnervingly haunting and ultimately heartbreaking, the stories in “Better Davis and Other Stories” take a very specific moment in American culture —the late seventies and early-mid eighties—and imagine the inner worlds of true-life celebrities, artists, gay playboys and their good-time gal pals as AIDS shadowed and then decimated a vibrant and decadent generation. Keenly aware of his characters' failings and frailties as well as their vulnerability and humanity, Philip Walker writes as if Andrew Holleran had ever turned his shrewd lens on the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and Paul Lynde, revealing the messy and tender hearts of large and small American icons who are already half-forgotten. —Tim Murphy, Christodora and Correspondents

[QUOTE] Garth Greenwell just published an article in The New Yorker about Andrew Holleran and his new novel, THE KINGDOM OF SAND.

[quote]All of these authors know each other and have blurbed each other’s books.

Spy Magazine used to refer to this as "Logrolling in Our Time."

I'm enjoying a book of inter-connected stories set on Guadeloupe: [italic]Crossing the Mangrove[/italic] by Maryse Conde. Mentioning it here in terms of drag names...

"Sirop Batterie who dressed up as a woman at Carnival time..."

Finish reading "Miss Memory Lane" - then "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "Kidnapped by the Pirate".

I'm halfway through Holleran's 'Kingdom of Sand'. Haven't yet read any of the reviews so I haven't bounced my thoughts against others,

It's been a long, long, wait, and he doesn't disappoint. So far. I've loved his writing for years and I'm already reading paragraphs two and three times because his prose is always so beautiful.

Even when he writes about the mundane...as an example, two paragraphs about a video arcade at the intersection of two roads...it's careful, beautifully descriptive, and almost stunning the manner he has with words and ideas and placing you right there at the intersection with a person not unlike yourself, or one of your friends. I run to my partner, telling him he "You just have to hear what Holleran's done here!", and I read to him.

I'm an eldergay fan boy, I guess. So consider that.

I don't know hm personally, but from what I do know of him, the book seems to be, so far, a thinly veiled story of his life, with some changes or eliminations.

And death. All kinds, but still death. Makes me think of a gay man's death by a thousand cuts.

That's so far and I may be wide of the mark, but if you like Holleran, you'll be reading it yourself.

Then I'll do an about face and tackle Kirchick's 'Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.' Probably not ideal summer reading.

Has anyone read or heard about the new historical novel TRUST by Hernan Diaz? I'm reading some great reviews about it.

I've been meaning to pick it up r174. I loved his last one "In the Distance." Sort of a strange, skewed take on classic wilderness/Western novels.

I read Trust when it first came out and was very excited about it. It’s a book whose structure is its defining element and I highly recommend reading it as uninterrupted as much as possible such as during a dedicated weekend read. There are four parts and the shifting subtleties are the key to the book and it’s at its best when you can keep that all in your head, and the more meaningful the book will be. So, I enjoyed it, but it is very much an at the moment book, within a few weeks of reading it I felt like I had read it a year ago.

I’m reading Andrew Holleran’s new novel The Kingdom Of Sand. It’s engrossing but a downer.

Summery reads.

I've been posting here about finally discovering Michael Chabon and how much I loved Kavalier & Clay and then Telegraph Avenue.

So, I was very eager to jump into The Yiddish Policemen's Union as so many friends have recommended it. But it looks like I'm giving up after about 100 pages, at least for now. Maybe it's just too much Chabon too soon, but I'm finding the novel and characters very hard to get into. So many overly eccentric characters with difficult names and wacky locations, I'm just having trouble keeping up and I'm not into the "alternate universe" presented in the Sitka history as fashioned by Chabon.

Hope to get back to it someday. I guess I need a break and I've just started Hernan Diaz's In the Distance. Enjoying it so far.

Chabon was told by a writer that for every child a writer has they lose a novel. He has four kids.

I want to read “Downton Shabby” by Hopwood DePree.

Has anyone read it?

The NYPL doesn't carry Phillip Dean Walker. Literal violence.

Why not, r182?

Just checked WorldCat and he’s available in many libraries (lots of universities) throughout the country and many in D.C. in particular which makes sense because he’s a local there.

I ended up ordering his two books online since the recs provided on this thread are solid.

Not sure why the NYPL doesn’t carry him - pretty frustrating.

I’ve read Ben Lerner’s three novels in the last few months. Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04 and The Topeka School. Wonderful reading experiences.

Librarian here, most library acquisitions policies require a book to be reviewed at least twice, if not three times in a professional journal, there are about five primary ones things like Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist. It looks like Walker’s books are published by a very small midwest publisher, smaller than what would even be called a small publisher. If a book isn’t reviewed, and obviously somewhat favorably, a library usually can’t buy it. It’s basically a check and balance and proof that librarians don’t just buy what they like, their purchases have to be justified.

This is the same reason that self published books will rarely if ever get purchased by libraries. Unfortunately, this publisher is basically a step up from self publishing or a vanity press. The best thing that could happen is that he gets recruited by a bigger named publisher who might republish his backlist as well as new works and have the authority to make sure they get reviewed.

You can also always request a library purchase something, but the criteria they need to purchase is the same. If you get a number of people to independently request the same item you have a better chance. For the most part, libraries begin their fiscal year on July 1st, which when they are more flush with funding.

Thank you R187 - that is helpful (and interesting). I bet NYPL has a section to request that they purchase something.

R188 Your best chance would be going through the NYPL Overdrive app where you can recommend eBooks very easily. Just look up the titles and scroll down to the “Not Owned” and hit recommend. This will also put you on notification if they buy it and you will automatically be put on hold for it. If you can get other people to request it, as many as possible, that will increase the chances for purchase. It’s much easier to add eBooks when space is limited on the shelves and choosing which branches to place them in is complicated. Libraries have been hugely supportive in buying LGBT+ materials especially with the current culture of book banning.

The Book of Form and Emptiness won the Women’s Prize for literature, though not my choice to win, her acceptance speech was lovely and heartfelt.

Thank you R187/R189! This is great

Looking forward to hottie Louis Bayard's new book JACKIE & ME, a fictionalized account of the wobbly friendship of Jackie Kennedy and JFK's bff Lem Billings.

[quote] Chabon was told by a writer that for every child a writer has they lose a novel. He has four kids.

Michael Chabon has PLENTY of novels by this point. Four more at this age would put him in Joyce Carol Oates/Anthony Trollope territory.

Chabon’s wife is a real screamer

So is Chabon (in a different sense).

[QUOTE] Librarian here, most library acquisitions policies require a book to be reviewed at least twice, if not three times in a professional journal, there are about five primary ones things like Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist. It looks like Walker’s books are published by a very small midwest publisher, smaller than what would even be called a small publisher. If a book isn’t reviewed, and obviously somewhat favorably, a library usually can’t buy it. It’s basically a check and balance and proof that librarians don’t just buy what they like, their purchases have to be justified.

I really enjoyed your post, thank you, R187. I love hearing about the inner workings of a library from someone who knows what they’re talking about. It’s interesting to hear what goes into the process of acquisitions.

I looked it up and all three of Walker’s books (there is actually another book between Danceteria and the new one) have received *starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Kirkus also chose all three as one of their “Best Books of the Year” in the years the books came out. So I’m sure that’s how he made it into so many libraries.

I’m only a few chapters in to Ryan O’Connell’s Just By Looking at Him, but it should be essential beach reading for DLers and I would not be surprised if Ryan’s posting on here. Everyone will recognize his bitchiness and cunting as prime DL.

Yay! Colm Toibin is in the running for the historical fiction prize, and by this article seems like the favored child.

I was very disappointed on Toibin's The Magician. For me, it completely lacked a strong point of view about Mann unlike Toibin's wonderful book on Henry James.

Oh R197 thanks for the reminder about Ryan's book. Yeah he definitely seems like a DLer.

I'm going to read The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

This is good and surprising news.

I’m sure this has been discussed on other reading threads, but it’s new to me, are the Garden of Allah series by Martin Turnball worth reading in, I guess, a trashy beach read way, and are there gay characters throughout or only in the first book? I see you can buy a trilogy eBook of the first ones for under $7.

I guess this guy is the Elena Ferrante of Gay romance, and I know we relentlessly love to hate out gay successful people here on DL, but all of this sounds like utter trash and pandering to me. Are gay people actually reading this stuff? On TikTok it’s the house fraus who seem to be loving his latest book. And that name, uff, did he watch too much Dynasty growing up?

R204 is he actually a guy? When the fraus become obsessed with gay male fiction - it’s usually being written by another frau.

If it’s written by a gay man I would check it out but I’m done reading fiction by women about gay men.

Has r204 ever read Elena Ferrante?

"Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ."

It's part of my cell's Infiltrate, Groom, Corrupt, Convert (IGCC) plan. Heading to Utah in August after some local training.

I'm a Sr. Protocol Developer for the West-and-Center Region but always have fallen asleep between Nehi I and Dabner III. Soooooo boring. But meeting the goals of a longterm undercover gay proselytizing initiative (Hail, Satan!) with this pack of lunatics requires more careful preparation.

Certainly more than the Mennonites, who are so easy we use them with our recruits. Those hairy sons of horse-breeders, who are tired of the wee, familiar putzes of their brothers, cousins, neighbors and visitors, bend over for a cigarette behind the nearest turkey barn, and they carry their favorite lube, too.

Well, back to work.

Keep reading, OP.

Oh, she's asleep.

R206 I refuse to read her on principle, I want to know who my authors are when I read their books.

Ugh, when I saw the trailer I made a comment as such. But I thought I was being facetious, I didn’t know that’s what they were actually going for.

Has anyone read the Norwegian murder mysteries of Karin Fossum, featuring Inspector Sejer? I came across a used copy of THE INDIAN BRIDE yesterday and I haven't been able to put it down. Wonderful writing, even if the murder solution will be disappointing.

[quote]I'm going to read The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

I just finished it. I thought it was fine, but it felt too much like a book written by the Smartest Boy in School desperate to impress his favorite teacher.

I just finished reading "School Days," by Jonathan Galassi. The novel takes place at a New England prep school and focuses on a gay student who later becomes a teacher there. It's an easy read (224 pages), perfect for a long flight, but I guess I was expecting more from the author, who was a former editor with the Paris Review and chairman of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

R212 I read it too! I thought it started out strong but went off the rails a bit at the end. Would have liked less obsessing about the teacher in the present and more action. Seemed to get very repetitive with the going over and over about him. Expected more too but the part that described them all in school in the past was beautifully written.

r204, I'm inclined to believe he's a guy; for some reason his persona seems more authentic than most. But the last time I thought that it turned out to be a woman using her husband's picture (as well as a scam artist doing a lot of shitty stuff behind the scenes). So who knows? I haven't read any of his books, but he was discussed in last year's gay romance thread. 140 over there said he didn't find it authentic.

Agree with r205 that I don't really read gay romance unless I know it's written by a man, and the most popular ones that takes off with women tend to be written by women because what women readers are looking for isn't authentic gay experiences. There was some discussion about this on Twitter a few months ago; I remember someone pointing out a romance written by a man set in a clothing-optional camp for bears, where one of the women reviewers on Goodreads noted she was a bit put off by the mention of the smell of poppers and lube. (Or something along those lines.) I think this is the one (though I can't find a review with that line now--though the first reviewer, supposedly a guy, mentions not liking everyone being on PrEP in a romance novel). Haven't read it, though it does sound porny-er than something that would be written by a woman.

If GRUMPY BEAR isn't illustrated, I'm not interested.

Just finished "Fellow Travelers" and liked it more than I expected to. Some of the McCarthy hearings was tedious and too much, but the central love story was compelling and poignant (spoiler: equal affections cannot be). I know the gaylings don't want to read about ancient history (1950s) especially if the ending is unhappy. Eldergays however might find much that resonates with them.

Looking forward to the Showtime 8 episode miniseries that Matt Bomer is producing and starring in.

Interesting, I’ve just started Secret City, (which someone already created a thread for here) and it’s quite fascinating. It really starts within the FDR administration and focusing on the Gays in The State Department and diplomacy. The Truman section is next and about the interlocking of the Lavender Scare with the Red Scare. It reads like the best journalistic narrative investigative nonfiction, which is to say like good fiction. If you’ve read Fellow Travelers and want the real history behind it, this is perfect for you.

As much as I loved Fellow Travelers I felt I missed a lot because I didn't know all the history and names.

Ugh, I’m reading When You Call My Name about young teen boys falling in love in NYC during the AIDS crisis and one of the characters lives in the Village and walks by Two Boots Pizzeria in May 1990 and it’s taken me right out of the story because I’m 99% sure it didn’t exist then. The original one open in the EV in 1987, and the second one in Park Slope in 1989. I know because friends did the murals on the walls. There’s no way that the Village location would have been open by May 1990, and I feel it opened considerably later because I remembered being surprised that a Brooklyn restaurant would be popping up suddenly in the Village. Do editors just not check facts anymore? It’s historic fiction, but it’s just not that long ago, someone on the production line of this book must have lived in New York at that time and had this jump out at them?

R220, I’ve lived in the West Village for many years and I don’t remember Two Boots being there in 1990 either. It’s obviously an example of an author trying to be trendy by dropping a name.

R220, there have always been errors in books, plays, etc. Shakespeare got facts wrong about history. What a silly thing to complain about. One pizzeria.

R222, that’s what I said.

Shakespeare often engaged in writing propaganda to please the Tudors, so some errors were deliberate

[quote](looking at you Colm Toibin, who did Henry James and Thomas Mann so well)

Speaking of James & irish authors, I've been reading "The Master" by Toibin, but it's a bit of a slog.

On someone on DL's advice, I've also been reading Trollope. I liked "The Way We Live Now", though I was hoping for a happier ending for good guy Roger Carbury, but Barchester Towers & Church of England politics was not as joyful

I just read Young Mungo it was pretty good

[quote] Shakespeare got facts wrong about history

HA! Understatement of the year!

r225, if you enjoyed THE WAY WE LIVE NOW (one of my favorite novels) try Trollope's HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT and ORLEY FARM. They're both stand-alone novels, not part of series, and IMHO far better than anything he wrote in the Barchester and Palliser chronicles.

R224, maybe he made the pizzeria error on purpose to piss off uptight queens

Lolll r229. Quite possible. The book is lovely and well written.

Thanks R228; what do you think of The Duke's Children or the Prime Minister?

Re: the pizzeria. According to the author's bio, "Tucker Shaw is a writer and editor who first found his family in New York City's East Village in 1991 when he was twenty-three." So presumably he has some familiarity with the area at the time and just forgot (or it was artistic license).

Plowing through the jumbo biography of photographer George Platt Lynes (by Allen Ellenzeig). Anybody who was anybody in the 20th century sat for him, and looked GOOD!

r226 Mungo was a great story. i wanted to spend more time with him after i finished the book

R222 Tucker Shaw says that the book is very much a love letter to NYC and he does many deep dives in exquisitely detailing all kinds on NYC minutia and early 1990s cultural reference especially in music, fashion and gay culture and he’s doing a pretty good job of painting that moment in time and it ringing true, which is what makes the gaff stand out so much.

He does mix some completely made up elements or renames other things, which he points out in the author’s note. While there is a St. Vincent’s Hospital and a character goes there, the brother of one of the boys works at the made up St. Hugh’s Hospital. I’m pretty sure he’s calling that one particular big magazine shop on Hudson St. Dome Magazine instead of its real name, which I don’t think I even knew at the time what it is/was. And the video store he works at seems to be Kim’s though he names it something else as well. He mentions a free gay giveaway magazine by a name I don’t recall, I think replacing Next and HX, which may be after 1990 anyways.

I will say one of the boys is obsessed with fashion, designers, fashion shoots and models and seems way to knowledgeable about those components even though he’s reading things like French, Italian and British Vogue. But I don’t think they would have the information about all those elements mentioned, like down to who the stylist was at the level he’s gleaming from those. At the time what I recall is people in the know about fashion at that level were getting it from WWD. Also, Paper Magazine in its earliest iteration would have been something that could have been a source of that information and a must read, but it hasn’t been mentioned yet.

He’s about 3 years younger then me and as mentioned he came to NYC in 1991, while I came in 1988. So I do appreciate the level of detail he’s infusing into his story, but it’s surprising to get something like that wrong- when in doubt mention something else like Elephant & Castle that you would know definitely was there. He did live in the EV and just a few blocks away from the original Two Boots, so maybe he assumed it had a longer history. But like I said, I’m surprised that someone else in NY publishing who lived during that era wouldn’t have caught it before publication.

I don't know if this will be of interest to anyone, but to follow up on the gay romance discussion, the NYT posted a story last week (that I just saw) about New Hope, PA as a gay getaway. One of the people interviewed was a man who wrote a couple of gay romances set there for Harlequin's Carina imprint. It linked to this interview, and I thought this was interesting:

"What is the landscape like in terms of LGBTQ+ representation in literature?

It’s complicated. I’m trying to write stories that are romantic but also true to the experience of being a gay man. In The Hideaway Inn the experiences of bullying and trying to navigate masculinity are center stage. I always hear from gay male readers about how these themes rang true for them and that always makes me feel like I’ve achieved my goal. I write commercial fiction and it’s often a challenge to write authentic LGBTQ stories that will be successful in the market."

In other words, the kind that won't turn off women readers? Hard not to notice that since his second book came out in February 2021, all that imprint's gay romances have been written by women (or nonbinaries).

Speaking of Gay romances I finished Marvelous Light, which is a fantasy Edwardian series where magicians live among the unknowing rest of the British population. It is written by an Australian women, but in contrast to Song of Achilles the sex was very explicit and well done, quite pornographic. There’s the nerdy, bookish magician and then there’s the golden boy Cambridge landed gentry jock with the square jaw and blond hair, who at one point willingly gets fucked unrelentingly by the assumed bottom and comes off as genuinely happy to be vers. I guess that’s part of the fantasy as well.

The kid could have just as easily walked past Fuddruckers.

r231, The Duke's Children and The Prime Minister are both part of the Palliser series. I didn't care for them, too much about the local politics, fox hunts, entail rulings, etc. of the mid-19th century, with Trollope's characters mixing with real historic characters (who were of little interest to me).

Another great Trollope stand-alone novel is The Vicar of Bulhampton. It's also relatively short.

This sounds intriguing, has anyone read it yet?

Thank you Trollope Troll!

R237 sold. Thank you.

Lizzie Eustace is a Datalounger's dream. The Eustace Diamonds easily stands alone.

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW is a rare case where watching the outstanding video first might make more sense than tackling the tome.

i love Phineas Finn. "Sunday Morning in Grosvenor Place" is one of my favorite chapters in Victorian literature, as Lady Laura Standish realizes the terrible mistake she's made in marrying the dour and unyielding Robert Kennedy, one of the richest men in the UK, for political gain.

Even I will admit that the BBC min-series of THE WAY WE LIVE NOW is spectacular. Wonderfully written and produced, and a stellar cast of familiar Brit actors, including David Suchet , Matthew McFadyen, Cillian Murphy, Shirley Henderson, Jim Carter, Cheryl Campbell and so many others.

THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS is part of Trollope's Palliser series but reads almost like a stand-alone novel. Lizzie is a fabulous unforgettable character. Unfortunately, there's some very nasty ant-Semitism in it which occasionally reared its head in Trollope' books. He kind of made up for it though with a very sympathetic portrayal of a wealthy Jewish businessman in TWWLN (played by Jim Carter in the series).

Of the Barchester series, the only book I really loved was DR. THORNE, which also has a nice TV adaptation, written and produced by none other than Julian Fellowes (who has stolen most of his major plot points for DOWNTON ABBEY from Trollope).

Ooops, sorry, forgot to sign my post ^^^^

The Trollope Troll

I bought some cock books at a rummage sale today.

I finally read WHAT BELONGS TO YOU by Garth Greenwell, which was sexually explicit and exceptionally intelligent, It's the rare gay novel influenced by Proust that's neither precious nor pompously mannered (looking at you, Edmund White).

Has anyone read SOUR SWEET by Timothy Mo by any chance? It was first published in the UK in the early 80s and I came across a used copy. It's about a struggling Chinese immigrant family in London in the 1960s who become irrevocably entangled with high powered Chinese gangs. Actually somewhat comical in tone and it was short-listed for the Booker Prize.

I'm liking it, loving the parts about the family, but after 100 pages I'm struggling to finish it. Not sure it's worth it.

I'm curious if anyone has read LOTE by Shola von Reinhold. It's very popular in the UK among gay academics and literary scholars--the author is Black and British, and uses "they" pronouns (not clear if they are trans or genderfluid or what).

Loving Better Davis but it’s so short 😩

Agreed, R251. I read it all in one sitting and just wanted more when I got to the end.

Have you read his other book, At Danceteria? Similar series of stories that also take place in the 1980s and feature celebrities as characters. Liza is in it doing a lot of coke!

I’m reading The Catch Trap by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It’s kind of a trashy gay romance beach read but I’m really enjoying it so far.

I’ve always liked books set in circus environments. I read Nightmare Alley last year and loved it.

Ordered it R252!

R218, I'm really liking Secret City so far

Reading every book john dufresne has written, the first one i read is Love warps the mind a little and i was hooked am on The way that water enters stone now. Short stories. His characters are bizarre yet beautiful in their own way , rich thought provoking writing in everday strange characters. Enjoying him very much.

I was glancing through ABT ballet dancer James B Whiteside’s memoir, ‘Centre Center’, where I came across the following, when he was offered a position in ABT, a lifelong dream:

[quote] “We think you’d fit in nicely here at ABT and we’d like to offer you a soloist contract,” Kevin said.

[quote]I nearly had a heart attack, and my butthole practically imploded. “Th-that’s incredible,” I managed to stutter. “Th-th-thank you!”

The bit about ‘my butthole practically imploded’ rather arrested my reading. I guess it’s an honest depiction, but still…

Here’s the cover of the memoir.

Mr Whiteside has had a serious knee injury recently.

He seems to be on the road to recovery, but I’m really wondering if he could recapture the characteristic explosiveness of his dance moves like before

Really enjoying the Ryan O’Connell book. Full of explicit sex and clever bitchiness. Quick read.

R259 Agree, or was the perfect beach read for Ptown and Fire Island this year.

I have Horse on hold and the Keefe collection of long format nonfiction essays, he’s the author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing that many have been enamored of reading in the past.

More options…

I quitted The Netanyahus, i find the first 60 pages pretty boring.

Now i'm reading The kite runner, quite lovely but typical bestseller material

Has anyone ever read "Lonesome Dove"? I'm taking a trip out west this summer & I want to get into the "western" spirit

R263 Trust me, something happens that never would in typical bestseller fair, and I still can’t believe it’s taught in high schools,

I can’t believe The Netanyahus won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year.

[quote][R263] Trust me, something happens that never would in typical bestseller fair,

Oh, [italic]dear.[/italic]

For those who read Trust, Kate Winslet will be doing it as a limited series on HBOMax. Of course it’s all but unfilmable, I guess they could pull a French Lieutenant’s Wife times two on it and I assume she’ll play the wife?

Lonesome Dove is great, R264. I'm not really a western fan, but I really liked it.

I'm struggling with TRUST. I'm into the third "narrator" but I don't care about any of the characters. All of the finance stuff is boring. I guess I'll finish it though.

I’m flying through this memoir and trying to remain sympathetic that a 27 year old is just figuring out he’s Gay. It is very interesting to see how these White Children of Privilege (surprisingly mixed straight and Gay) party, they must have donor livers already identified and waiting for them to be transplanted at a short notice.

[quote]I can’t believe The Netanyahus won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year.

"The Netanyahus" is half-baked hack work, but then so is Drama winner "Fat Ham." So it's fitting they won together.

I am about two-thirds of the way through "The Netanyahus" and am totally loving it. It's like a Saul Bellow novel.

Recommendations from NPR.

John Glynn didn't know he was gay? Did he not own any mirrors? That boy is smelling so many cookies, he must be a Keebler elf.

^ Read that as John Glenn and I was like "Whaaaatttttttt?!!!!"

I'm looking for a good mystery that takes place during summer.

R275 - someone I follow at You Tube identifies as straight, but honestly I'm just not buying it. There seems to be some ability for incredibly strong denial I guess?

^ Agatha Christie's A Caribbean Mystery has a tropical setting

Any Jonathan Franzen fans here? I've loved his novels, especially the most recent, CROSSROADS, so I'm now reading one of his early ones, STRONG MOTION. It's quirky. Maybe too quirky. But I'm only about 25 pages in so we'll see......

How does English BookTuber Jack Edwards identify?

R281 As annoying.

R269- good to know. I bought the paperback and it’s sitting like a brick on my nightstand. The first 10 pages were a slog. The font is tiny. It’s daunting but I still want to read it. I assume it picks up? Also, I’m not a western fan but have read you don’t need to be to love this novel. Talk to me.

I didn't find Lonesome Dove to have much depth. But to each his own.

If I'm going to read a western I prefer more post-modern takes like TRue Grit by Charles Portis, Days Without End by Sebastian Barry, News of the World by Paulette Jiles, In the Distance by Hernan Diaz, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick de Witt or even The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage

The Candy House was ok (Jennifer Egan(

A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty

The Internet is Not What You Think it is by Justin E Smith

I’m a third of the way into Secret History and loving it! It reads like a breeze, I was expecting something way more complex writing style wise, but instead it’s really fun, and I’m glad Bunny gets killed because he is such a pill.

This, x 10

[quote] I’m glad Bunny gets killed because he is such a pill.

R287 If you’re coming after me because you think I’m revealing a spoiler, the whole book starts off telling you they murdered him. This is not a who done it, it’s a why’d they do it.

R288: no, I’m agreeing with you Lolz

The ‘x 10’ means I agree times 10 times; and the loathsome garbage refers of course to Bunny.

I should make sure I write clearer next time

Cool, cool!

Really enjoyed Pachinko.

I also loved Pachinko but am having trouble staying with the (gorgeous) TV adaptation.

R292 is it even worth watching or no?

I also loved the book Pachinko but couldn't get into the mini-series.

Lonesome Dove may not have much depth, but it does have (I think) a fantastic, sweeping story and is a great summer read. The 1989 TV adaptation, starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, is very good, too.

"Francis Bacon Revelations." The recent jumbo 900-page biography by Mark Stevens.

His life (and times) make the rest of us all look like Disney Teens by comparison!

Bunny is very assasinable from the very first scene. I didn't enjoy as much as death of a character since Joffrey Baratheon in Storm of swords

True Crime Story, Joseph Knox

Loved his drug-addled detective Aidan Waits series. This stand-alone is a very clever, well-written thriller and social commentary about the "it's all about ME" generation.

I started a thread on Unmask Alice about exposing the story behind Go Ask Alice. I waiting on my library copy, anyone read it yet?

Big points for the literary snobs and those who actually enjoyed classic novels reading in high school English.

What counts as literary fiction vs other fiction?

Enjoying How High we go in the Dark.

Think of it this way, literary fiction is the kind of stuff that wins the big literary prizes: Pulitzer, Booker, National Book Award, Women”s Prize, etc.

Oh, and the “other” is }genre fiction:” SciFi, Romance, Mystery, Fantasy, etc.

Got it - thank you.

I really enjoyed Karen Joy Fowler's fictionalized account of Ed.win & John Wilkes Booth's family BOOTH earlier this summer so, when I came across a copy of her earlier best seller THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, I bought it. It had never interested me when it first appeared because I snobbishly assumed it was trite frau lit.

But I'm actually loving it. A great summer page turner. I've read all of Austen's 6 novels in the past so it probably helps, as there are, of course, many references to them as their stories parallel the later book's characters' lives.

Next thread will not not have a USA-, Northern Hemisphere-Centric title. Count on it.

I'm reading David Mitchell's Utopia Avenue

The literary vs genre fiction comment reminds me of a very pretentious way I once heard the difference described.

Genre fiction "just" wants to tell a story. Literature wants to tell the truth. About the world, about life, about whatever, it's supposedly trying to say something.

In other words, literature has pretensions; genre fiction doesn't. (So a pretentious description is fitting.)

How is that, r307? I loved Mitchell's "Black Swan Green" but had trouble warming up to some of his more heady, high-concept works. "Utopia Avenue" seems like it might be a little more down to earth?

"The Midcoast" is amazing, especially considering it's a debut. Just read the mesmerizing "The Pallbearers Club", and just started "Upgrade" by Blake Crouch.

I’ve been reading this Fire Island nonfiction book and while I was skeptical at first, I’m really enjoying it. It’s got just the right amount of academics and lightness and he keeps it moving quickly. There’s a great bibliography in the back of works from books, films, plays and movies. He’s an Oxford academic who also this year released his PhD dissertation called the Poetics of Cruising: Queer Visual Culture from Whitman to GrindR. Seems less pretentious and much more readable then the eminent Dr. Cervini. Here’s a tidbit I learned, the Wild Rumpus in Where the Wild Things Are May have been inspired by Sendak sneaking off to the Meat Rack.

Who is Colleen Hoover and why the hell is she so popular?

R309 I'm liking it. There are some references to his other novels (like Stephen King, Mitchell always like the give a hint here and there). It has a lot in common with Daisy Jones and the six.

R312, she writes romance novels or tearjerkers, or both? I've seen several articles about her lately since her books have taken off. She's popular with readers on Tiktok, who talk about her a lot evidently.

There are any number of book "influencers" on social media. If you can find one whose tastes match yours, you're lucky.

Has anyone ever read MILDRED PIERCE? Just bought it and I can't wait to dig in. I've saw the Crawford film years ago but don't remember it that well so I hope to be surprised.

I liked "Mildred Pierce." It's a gripping family story with an interesting Depression era backdrop; the relationships are all messed up, but very believable. A few years after it was published, Cain told a friend that "the book wasn't really so hot, two novels in one, scrambled in a confusing way," but I didn't find it all confusing or scrambled.

I'm listening to [italic]The Mysteries of Udolpho[/italic], which is often compared to Twilight, which I've never seen (read?).

This is a rather bizarre list of books.

I couldn't scroll through more than 10 of those pretentious choices before I gave up, r319.

Mildred Pierce is excellent, R316. I especially liked how Cain always detailed how much things cost - it sounds odd, I guess, but Mildred is always calculating dollars and cents on her journey from a struggling abandoned wife to a successful business owner.

The part where she's setting up her first restaurant is especially good for this. The novelist Laura Lippman said, "“You can learn how to run a chicken-and-waffle restaurant by reading 'Mildred Pierce.' ”

My mom had a book club selection called "Three by Cain" or something that had The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce in it. All three of them are excellent.

I liked those three so much that I've tried sever other Cain novels over the years, but I never liked any of the rest of them as much as those three.

3 truly great novels are more than most writers can hope to achieve.

I liked James M. Cain's The Cocktail Waitress

I am loving the new novel, "Venomous Lumpsucker" by Ned Beauman. Wild eco-thriller after everything has gone to shit.

One of my favorite books of the past year just won a prize! Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan is a heartbreaking gem of a novella and can be read in one sitting. It’s perfect for a wintery December day.

anything by Colm Toibin

currently reading The Empty Family, collection of short stories.

I'm hoping that the poster on the recent Ruth Rendell thread who mentioned a couple of their favorite Patricia Highsmith novels might be reading this. What were the two less well-known Highsmith titles that were recommended? Or if anyone else would like to chime in on Highsmith, please do.

I love The Talented Mr. Ripley but was very disappointed in Strangers on a Train and The Tremor of Forgery. But I wouldn't mind giving her another go.

TIA!

I made the mistake of starting 'The Wife Upstairs' before bed and ended up staying up way too late, I read it in one sitting.

I cannot recommend Somerset Maugham's [italic]The Painted Veil[/italic] highly enough. Perfect summer reading for a DL'er looking for a gay author.

I just recieved the importance of being ernest but...i didnt realize it was a play.its still really good , love me some oscar

Reading The Colony by Audrey Magee and it’s some of the most stunningly beautiful writing I’ve experienced in years. Have no idea where the hell its going though.

Oh I loved The Painted Veil! Read it a few summers ago and it's stayed with me. I'll second your recommendation, r330.

Also enjoyed Maugham's Cakes and Ale and also Theatre but not nearly as much. And then I tried reading The Razor's Edge and found it utterly pretentious and unengaging. I couldn't finish it.

I have a few collections of Maugham's short stories. They're awesome

[quote]anything by Colm Toibin

Did you like "The Master"? I finished it, but I didn't think it was one of his better books. Though I did think the part about how Flora from "Turn of the Screw" was modeled after his sister (who most certainly would've been a DLer)

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

A book about how to scratch my asshole

Just started A Previous Life by Edmund White

I've just begun reading THE LATECOMER by Jean Hanff Korelitz, recently published to great reviews. It's a 450 page family saga about a dysfunctional wealthy Jewish family with triplets and a late in life younger child. I'm only about 40 pages in and enjoying it but I'm distracted and disturbed, so far, by two rather minor details: the author writes about a young woman executive in the late 1970s wearing shoulder-padded suits and sneakers in her commute to work on Wall St. Wasn't that, in fact, a mid-80s thing a la Working Girl? And then the author writes about a character wondering where they'll rent videos if they live in Brooklyn Heights, but this is in 1979. Were videos available then?

These may seem like minor quibbles but they drive me crazy and make me not want to continue reading. Though, as I said, the writing and plotting is otherwise quite good.

I've read quite a bit of LGBTQ+ fiction this summer. I decided I wanted to understand trans identity better than I do, so I read "Nevada" by Imogen Binkie, which was first published in 2013, became something of a cult book after it almost immediately went out of print, and just came out in a new edition this summer. It's very funny, and helped me understand quite a bit of the daily problems trans people go through (not with LITERAL VIOLENCE!--mercifully, there is no trans bashing throughout the entire novel, nor do the trans characters bitch about microaggressions--, but with just trying to pass on a daily basis for the gender they want the world to see them as). I also read a hilarious proto-trans novel from 1932 by Robert Scully called "A Scarlet Pansy," about a man who passes for women and has a fantasy existence, fucking every hunky straight man she sees while simultaneously becoming a wealthy woman a nd a brilliant medical student.

I read a few lesbian novels too: "The Member of the Wedding" by Carson McCullers (which was the best thing by McCullers I've read, since it was not as outlandishly Gothic and grotesque), and "Two Serious Ladies" by Jane Bowles (which was very, very funny).

Right now I'm reading for the first time "Another Country" by James Baldwin, which is so dark, but so brilliant.

R340 I've published on McCullers and I agree--"The Member of the Wedding" is her best. I think "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," while touching in parts, is very much a first novel--trying to cover too many topic (race, gender, Deafness/disability, class issues) in one container and the writing is at its best when focused on Mick. I actually enjoyed "Clock without Hands" (which Flannery O'Connor called the worst book she ever read), though well aware of its excesses and flaws. I've never made it past the first fifty pages of "Two Serious Ladies," and don't know why--I enjoyed what I read, but somehow got distracted each time. Will try again.

r341, the trick to enjoying "Two Serious Ladies" is to remember while reading it that it's never going to go much of anywhere. It's about two upper middle-class American women with plenty of money who are contrarians, and the dependents they attract who pretty much have to do as the women say because they hold the purse strings. I'm also an academic (as you apparently are), and I realized it would be a very hard book to teach to undergraduates because of its narrative aimlessness. But it's very funny if you just go with the flow of it and enjoy its quirkiness.

I've yet to read "Clock without Hands," but I agree with you very much that "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" is both poignant and trying to do far too much. It's not as overwrought, though, as both "The Ballad of the Sad Café" and "Reflections in a Golden Eye," which are just insanely over-the-top (and which inspired Capote's early and equally over-the-top fiction like "Other Voices, Other Rooms"). I was impressed with "The Member of the Wedding" in that though it has its own Gothic touches, it's not quite so berserk--she somehow reined in her love of Southern Gothic excessiveness when writing it.

R340... I was watching it when my ex demanded I turn off the TV. I had to explain it was an award winning play.

The video of Other Voices, Other Rooms featured Lothaire Bleutau giving an incredibly over the top performance as the DL eldergay stereotype. However... the actress playing Zoo Fever gave a dead brilliant performance as our Brit friends would say.

Ryan Connell’s book was enjoyable. Similar to his tv show but very entertaining.

I really enjoyed “ This Body I Wore: A Memoir” by Diana Goetsch.

Really the only reason now to read "Other Voices, Other Rooms" now (other than idle curiosity) is to better appreciate the brilliant "King of the Hill" episode that parodies it, when Bill Dauterive goes back to his family home in the Delta.

Long lists for the Polari Prizes were released.

For those intrigued about NYC history this was a great read focusing on the history of West 23rd St. from 6th Ave. to 5th Ave. & Madison Square Park from Native American times up to present day. There are all these mini histories encapsulations from the birth of the hotel industry, early Broadway theater, early Gilded Age living, police corruption, the toy industry and many other things that emerge, peak and wither all around this area during the whole history of NYC. It’s really fascinating. I had started a thread when it first came out that had an excerpt about Mapplethorpe living there, Wagstaff bought him the loft from selling his photography collection to the Getty.

r336 again, I am now reading another book by the same author 'The Hunting Party' and this one is good too.

Survive the Night by Riley Sager. Quick, engaging thriller with multiple plot twists. Also a treat for classic movie fans, with a lead character who loves golden era films and references many of the films and stars.

Edith Wharton’s “The Custom of the Country.” Undine Spragg (what a name!) is a piece of work! (IMDb says Sofia Coppola is directing a TV version, alas, no cast is listed).

There's also "The Archeology of Home" by Katharine Grieder, which traces the history of the location of her Lower East Side home from Native days to the 21 Century. Lots of thorough, well-presented research making generations of inhabitants come alive.

CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY is so underrated, IMHO one of Wharton's best with more satiric humor than all of her other novels. I've never understood why it wasn't made into a feature film years ago. Undine Spragg would have been a perfect role for Lana Turner in her early MGM days.

For pure escapism reading, I didn't care for "Custom of the Country" because Undie is such a user and Undie types seem all too common today (though it would be a great role for that royal thespian Meghan Markle)

I'm going to read Ali Smith's Summer (i suppose it's appropiate)

Do the "I hate Harry and Meghan" shills for the royal family have to invade every thread?

"I loved FEBRUARY HOUSE by Sherrill Tippins, the wonderful story of the fabled boarding house in Brooklyn Heights..."

...which was adapted into a musical. When the showstopper is a song called Bedbugs....well...you can imagine the rest.

Both novel and film of SHIP OF FOOLS are among my favorites. The latter is graced with one of the great Main Titles in cinema history.

I just started reading, SCHOOL DAYS by Jonathan Galassi. It's all about "treachery" and "secrets" in an all-male Prep school (A SEPARATE PEACE is one of absolute favorite novels).

r356, I loved the musical of FEBRUARY HOUSE which I saw at The Public Theater. Quirky for sure, but so is the subject matter.

Book Prize Nominees Announced

I hated THE TRUST by Hernan Diaz. An utter pretentious bore. Absolutely couldn't get into it and stopped reading 50 pages before it ended. I couldn't have cared less.

OTOH really loved BOOTH by Karen Joy Fowler and glad to see it get some attention as it received an unjustified pan in the NY Times.

It's me or this is a way less gay year.

I suppose after two gay winners they need a rest

R360 The quite shocking omission of Young Mungo (and To Paradise as well) kind of see that out. The year Shuggie Bain won someone related to awards said they wished it was “less Gay.” Mungo’s British cover of two Gay teens kissing was a direct in your face reaction to that, and now it was if it was shunned as many feel Mungo is an even stronger work than Shuggie.

R359 All of Trust hinges on the structure that only makes sense when read it as a whole. And in fact the first part is basically a muckraking biography and isn’t supposed to be good, but somewhat salacious. Reading it for me was like a runaway train, I needed to get to the next section to unravel the mystery. It was meaningful and impressive as I read it and was fascinating in what the author does, but within weeks it felt like something I had read a few years ago. The “trick” is what’s impactful, but I don’t know if it’s important in the long run. I think the longlist is it’s reward.

r359, thanks and maybe someday I'll go back and read that final section of TRUST, but by the time I got there I just didn't care about the wife's point of view. I was just never engaged by the wife's story or her illness no matter whose take it was.

The Birdcage by Eve Chase. Intriguing so far.

This seems like a random grouping. I’ve read 7 and I just started an eighth yesterday.

^Hmm, I surprised "The Paying Guests" by Sarah Waters wasn't on that list; it's a good book, but the lead character's isolation & sadness is a tough read in these troubled times

Another day, another Gay list of books. This also includes Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, which I’ve never heard of and is described as a updated Orlando in Queer USA in the 90s. Has anyone read it?

r366, there are so many books not on that list, I don't know where to begin.

I'm assuming when Trust is filled as a series, there's going to be a more coherent structure.

R369 Probably like The French Lieutenant’s Women times two with different color filters and aspect ratios for the four stories.

R361 That story is not correct, the member of the jury had no problem with Shuggie Bain, the problem was with Adam Mars-Jones Box Hill.

The member of the jury had trouble with the explicit sex (frankly i read Box Hill and it's not that hardcore and it's very well written) so he or she said that he/she prefer less gay stories like Shuggie Bain (where gay sex was not the centre of the story).

It was not the first time, Alan Hollinghurst's The folding star was the favourite to win in 1994 but some members of the jury had problems with gay sex too.

Anyway, there were three gay writers winning the prize in the last seven years

[quote]It was not the first time, Alan Hollinghurst's The folding star was the favourite to win in 1994 but some members of the jury had problems with gay sex too.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the gay sex was between a 33 year old teacher and his 17 year old student?

I just finished the new Michael Cimino bio ("Cimino" by Charles Elton). The writing is OK, not great, but the book is very well researched, and saves some surprises for the last chapters, which I liked. Cimino's personality tended toward extremely stubborn and difficult with the studio execs, but many actors and crew members loved him. I didn't know he started out on Madison Ave., directing highly successful commercials in the 1960s. After "Heaven's Gate" his career was a shambles, but he never stopped writing scripts and had two books published in France. He started cross-dressing and indulging in cosmetic surgery in the 90s, and strictly compartmentalized his friendships so no one really knew all that was going on in his life. He left everything (including houses in the Hollywood Hills and East Hampton, and apartments in Manhattan) to his surrogate (possibly legal) wife-producer and her daughter. He had an odd, obsessive creative energy, which was kind of endearing in spite of his arrogance and fabrications, and Elton offers a sympathetic and honest account of his unusual life.

Has anyone ever read CALL IT SLEEP, Henry Roth's acclaimed 1934 novel of the Jewish immigrant experience? I found a nice paperback in a used book store yesterday. Eager to read as it's often been recommended to me over the years.

Just finished Our Wives Under the Sea, which has some stunningly beautiful writing that rhythmically rushes in and out, lapping at your consciousness. It’s very much centered on the relationship between the two woman and is heartbreaking. It’s like a fever dream and claustrophobic, filled with body horror and incredibly stylistic and atmospheric. It’s really an immersive experience.

R374-I haven't read it in years, but I wrote an award-winning term paper about it.

I just finished reading Andrew Holleran’s terrific new novel The Kingdom of Sand. The man can write. I hadn’t realized how much he writes about nature and finding beauty in the mundane. His newest is a bit repetitive but I think that’s intentional since the protagonist is a lost soul. I’ve read two career spanning essays on Holleran by Garth Greenwell and Alan Hollinghurst.

Has anyone else read JACKIE & ME, Louis Bayard's fictionalized account of the early friendship between JFK and Jackie with closeted gay Lem Billings? Truly delightful, delicious read! The sections on the Kennedy family gatherings are particularly biting and hilarious. But a lot of sweet, poignant. beautifully observed scenes as well.

Highly recommended.

Robert Goddard does mystery/suspense/thriller very well. "Caught in the Light" started out slow, but I've eventually become hooked. Goddard does pacing very well... just when I've felt the protagonist has reached a dead end, a plot twist clue appears, but not contrived (deus ex machina). There are parallel timelines, modern and Regency, if that's a plus or minus for you.

Appreciate the recommendations on this thread - thank you everyone.

Loving Kingdom of Sand right now. Agree that his writing is breathtaking.

Read Box Hill. Brief and disturbing. Mary!

Enjoyed the new Gary Janetti book. Was both funny and quite poignant. Regardless of what you think of his social media presence or Brad Goreski - it’s worth a read.

R380, I just finished reading his short novel Grief. It’s amazing. I think Holleran is a master.

Yes - it’s taking me awhile to read kingdom of sand because it’s so beautifully written I have to pause periodically and actually take it in.

MARY!!! yes I know but it’s true.

This thread had recommended a similarly beautiful writer (also gay) with a short story collection that was also breathtaking. I can’t remember his name. Stories were about his mother mostly. Just stunning.

The DL book club is stellar.

R378 There’s mention of them in The Secret City, the nonfiction book about Gay Washington, especially when they toured Europe and one of the prominently known Gay diplomat organized outings and accommodations for them and then later in DC during Kennedy’s presidency.

I loved Box Hill, i thought it would be some kind of erotic novel but it was way more than that, really well written.

I ended Ali Smith's Summer and i really like the way she writes (but from the seasonal quarted Autumm is my fave)

[QUOTE] This thread had recommended a similarly beautiful writer (also gay) with a short story collection that was also breathtaking. I can’t remember his name. Stories were about his mother mostly. Just stunning.

I think you’re talking about MOTHER OF SORROWS by Richard McCann. It’s stunning.

McCann and Holleran both taught at the MFA program at American University and were friends.

Yes R385 thank you!!

I bought MOTHER OF SORROWS based on recs here. Read a few pages and couldn't bear the pretentiousness of it all. I guess I should give it another chance.

I'm reading Mary Robinette Kowal's The fated sky. I really liked the calculating stars

QUEER SAINT (2015), juicy biography of arts benefactor Peter Watson. Just republished. Watson was filthy rich, died in suspicious circumstances, and knew every significant artist and homosexual between the two world wars.

R389, I've read a little about Watson. He had a fascinating life!

It is worth sticking with TRUST by Diaz? Finding part 1 pretty dull. Is there a pay off?

R391 Trust is a work of meta fiction where each of the four ”books” informs and expands upon what you have already read, like a puzzle, to create an experience of a whole, that you then decide what is, or isn’t, the truth. The first part is meant to be a salacious, badly written biography of a robber baron, so in a way you’re not supposed to be wowed, or interested in the writing.

It’s preparing a road map to be deconstructed, once, twice, three times. I loved the experience while I was in the book reading it and I was speed reading faster to unravel the mystery, but within days it felt like I had read it months ago, then years. I am not one who reads or enjoys mysteries, but I expect that is more the audience of those who read and really enjoy it, I primarily liked the historical fiction elements. But ultimately this book lives or dies on its structure and what it’s trying to do, it does it quite well, but it’s not for everyone. I hope this gives you enough to make a decision.

R392 thank you so much. I‘ll definitely keep reading.

R393 Oh good, I’m glad I could help without (hopefully) giving too much away. It’s weirdly kind of a book you need to know “how” to read going into it.

I’m reading 2 cocks in my ass

Thank you to the poster who recommended "The Painted Veil." I can see why the book is "out of favor" (if you will) considering the attitudes towards the Chinese/colonialism, all that. But I thought Kitty's inner journey was very compelling and the idea what exactly is a live of service vs. a suicide mission was kind of an interesting idea.

I re-watched the Painted Veil movie & while it differs a lot from the book, it's beautifully shot, the music is perfect & DL non-fave ill-tempered aspie Ed Norton is perfect as Walter. Definitely worth a watch for the amazing scenery of China alone.

[r387] Try reading "My Brother in the Basement" first.

Has anyone read Tommy Orange's THERE THERE? I'm half way through it. Liking it, not loving it so far, in spite of all the rave reviews and awards.

Felt the same way R398. Liked it but didn't love it. Worth reading but wasn't blown away by it.

Anyone read GENDERQUEER, the graphic memoir about being non-binary that’s been getting so many schools and libraries in trouble? You really do feel for the tormented soul, but it’s so solipsistic that you just want to shake them and send them to therapy. It’s far more sexually graphic than the usual (school-approved) high school reading, so it’s a tad disingenuous to assume that calls for banning are solely due to its transgender topic.

R400, why do you think the VAST majority of books these biddies are trying to ban revolve around gay or trans people? Do you think that's just a coincidence?

Any good gay novels recently? And none of that YA or Z-gen crap.

What about some good non-gay novels that don't focus on a hetero romance/relationship?

R402-Try one of the cleverest mystery/thrillers in many years, "Wrong Place, Wrong Time" by Gillian McAllister. Original and incredibly smart.

Earl in "Kingdom of Sand" seems like a true DLer.

Oh, no, r401, the whole alphabet soup of us is being targeted, for sure. Just saying that sex, generally, has always been the primary target of censorship attempts in schools and public libraries.

R402 Our Wives Under the Sea is stunning writing with a haunted and moody atmosphere. Young Mungo will break your heart into a thousand pieces. Just by Looking at Him is a good beach/summer read. A Marvelous Light is an interesting take of Gay fantasy with blush worthy sex scenes. Matrix by Lauren Groff has girl boss radical medieval lesbian nuns. And Last Night at the Telegraph Club may be YA, but it transcends that in a novel that captures a certain time, place and experience that is underrepresented.

Agreed on Young Mungo, but if you want your heart drop-kicked in Dublin instead of Glasgow there's always At Swim Two Boys. I'm often tempted to reread (or re-reread) it when I'm between books. Such beautiful writing and dialogue. It would make a fantastic six-part miniseries with the right screenwriter, director, production designer and cast (a lot of birds to get in one tree, I know).

1. Go to Project Gutenberg

2. Download a copy of "Armadale" by Wilkie Collins

3. Read it

4. Come away with an impression that the author captured EXACTLY how gay couples have spats.

Loved loved LOVED ARMADALE and have raved about it in many other DL book threads over the years. I don't know why the book isn't better known; it's far superior to Collins' THE WOMAN IN WHITE and THE MOONSTONE and just a great rip-roaring page turner. I also don't get why it hasn't been made into a fabulous British mini-series. A perfect novel for literate DLers.

NO NAME is another Collins title that everyone should read, also superior to his more famous novels.

And yes, it's very hard to read ARMADALE now and not see a very homo-erotic relationship between its two male leads. Definitely a book I'll reread in my old age.

Marketing got a bit out of hand

R410 that made me laugh outloud.

R411: I was literally OMGing when I first saw it

Well, if they had only known it was going to be a hit, she could of spent some of all that boring hiding out signing blank sheets to be inserted into future copies of her book and it would have helped pass the time.

R398 It's a good debut but the novel was extemely overhyped. In my opinion the writing is good the story not so much. It's very plot driven and the characters lack interest.

Now i'm reading Days without end (and i'm not very impressed right now)

I’m more than 1/2 through Circe and it’s amazing, like Miller learned how to really write and tell a story in between this and Song of Achilles, which I was not very impressed with at all. I’m so happy I continued with her despite that overly hyped book.

I have put THERE THERE on hold for now though I'm less than 100 pages to the end. I loved the chapters on the 2 half-sisters but all of the male characters were depressing and unengaging. I know full well that Native Americans have been treated like shit for hundreds of years but this novel doesn't really seem to have a sympathetic male character, except for the young doc film maker and he just wasn't enough.

As for DAYS WITHOUT END, I remember loving it, especially the first half when the 2 guys are young.

r415, I'll have a look at CIRCE based on your rec. Thanks!

I read an amazing graphic memoir, THE BEST WE COULD DO by Thi Bui. It's the story of her parents--how they were raised, how they met in Viet Nam, and how they made an incredible journey out of Viet Nam with their four small children as boat people. I am not easily moved by memoirs, but this one was genuinely moving.

I am now reading FIRE & BLOOD by George R R Martin in preparation for THE HOUSE OF THE DRAGON on HBO next week. Unfortunately it suffers his usual problem of leaden prose, but the positives outweigh the negative: it shows his gifts for creating memorable and complex characters, and it shows his ability to keep plots moving quickly, as he did in his first three GAME OF THRONES books. (Afterwards he lost the thread of what he was doing and couldn't keep the plot of the series going; plus he apparently doesn't want to end it--probably fearing he'll die if he does--so he keeps stalling on bringing out the final two books.)

Local Woman Missing, is really good.

The Boys of Fairy Town, which is about the gay history of Chicago. Really interesting, I recommend it if you are into gay history

I finished Hawk Mountain and it seems a bit like fantasy wish fulfillment in getting back at your high school bully, with a Dennis Cooper twist. I’m notorious for giving first novels more leeway, and while I didn’t love it I admire that he “went there” creatively and he developed fully realized characters on the page and a complex narrative. He was also quite good at evoking landscape having been to the real Hawk Mountain, which isn’t in New England.

Has anyone read Karen Joy Fowler's WE ARE COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES? Published in 2013 it got rave reviews. I like the story she's telling but wishing there was more pace and tension to the writing. It just feels like it might have been better as a short story.

R421 I loved We are completely beside ourselves

Good to hear, r422. Thanks for replying. I intend to keep reading; I'm about 200 pages in.

"Mercury Pictures Presents" by Anthony Marra is akin to reading "The Godfather" for the first time, but much more literate.

Love hearing that, r424! Might have to order it now.

Picked up "The Lola Quartet" by Emily St. John Mandel, after absolutely loving her three more recent novels. Curious to see how she did at an earlier point in her career.

Very fun read - HOLD TIGHT, an early (1989) novel by Christopher Bram, about a hunky young Southern sailor who's enlisted by the US Navy to root out Nazi spies, as he goes undercover (in more ways than one) at a brothel on the westside docks of NYC during WWII. Sounds outrageous, and I guess it is, but it's really a good smart and sexy read. I've enjoyed Bram's other books, especially FATHER OF FRANKENSTEIN (basis for the film GODS AND MONSTERS) but missed this one, until now.

r426, I'm a huge fan of Emily St, John Mandel and searched out her 3 early novels, pre-Station 11, and loved them all. Be sure to read The Singer's Gun, her best of that group. Sort of like Patricia Highsmith, but IMHO, much better.

Unfortunately, her latest, Sea of Tranquility, while it has some good parts, is rather disappointing.

After being very excited about Mercury Pictures, the first reader’s feedbacks haven’t quite been that glowing, so I’m glad to hear more favorable experiences, but I’m not quite rushing to read it anymore.

Read some questionable reader reviews on Amazon so instead of buying Mercury Pictures Presents, I decided to order an earlier book of Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (awful title!).

Mary Rodger's posthumous memoir "Shy", co-written by Jesse Green, makes for summer reading, if you can get a copy. It's being covered and dissected in several other DL sites as we speak. Andrew Holleran's newest novel "The Kingdom of Sand" is a must and finds him at the height of his powers. It's also suited to the age range of many DL members. I love this line on page 150: "Fort Lauderdale, for gay men, was what Israel is for the Jews." The northern part of Florida might want to file a class action suit, however. I'm delighted that someone on reply #374 mentioned Henry Roth's immigrant tome from 1934 "Call It Sleep." I've always meant to get to that.

r431, I'm also r374, the poster who mentioned Call It Sleep. I read about 100 pages but ultimately found it too depressing and bleak and, at this point in my reading history, not covering much new territory about the Jewish immigrant experience in NY. Some great prose but I just couldn't get into the plotting and characters.

I loved Shy! By far one of the best and most honest show biz biographies I've ever read. Like spending time with your best friend who knew everybody in the NY theater world and has a fascinating opinion about them. And Mary's take on her own life and career is fascinating, funny and very poignant.

Looking forward to reading Kingdom of Sand. I just found it second hand at our local book co-op.

Thanks, r428, I'll definitely pick up Singer's Gun too.

I actually liked "Sea of Tranquility" quite a bit, but I understand why some were disappointed. It's a lot less tight and fully formed than her previous two books. At times it feels like not much more than a strung-together collection of set pieces. That said, I thought it had some beautiful writing and some interesting ideas, and as always she is very good at setting a mood.

One of my favorites and most trusted Booktubers just gave a pretty scathing review of the sequel to the Pulitzer Prize winning Less, called Less is Lost that’s coming out on September 20, 2022. I was all set to read Less in anticipation of reading the sequel, but now I may hold off on even reading the first one. It all seems unfortunate.

I'm trying The Netanyahus again (maybe this time i'll be lucky enough to finish it).

I find incredibly surprised that the first time a gay author win the Pulitzer since The hours is with a so so novel like Less (to be fair i like it more than his previous novel, so probably i have a problem with Sean Greer writing)

I loved Less. Thought it was beautifully done.

Maybe the sequel is trash but Less is worth reading.

I've tried reading LESS at least 3 times but never get past about 20 pages. Maybe I'll try again this fall.

Christopher Bram is mentioned above.

Has anyone read his "The Notorious Dr. August"?

anyone know of any good gay mens' book clubs in NYC, preferably with a mix of ages and not focused on best seller trash?

R439 I don’t, but it’s interesting you should ask about book clubs as I just today joined a virtual one through a newer app called Fable. My favorite used book store Booktoker just launched one to read My Policeman, and while I read it a few months ago I thought I would join and hang out. But I the see potential for doing a DL book club on the app in the future perhaps. I see quite a few Gay book clubs already that you could join, there one that just started for Less.

I love Andrew Holleran's writing, but I never could finish his The Beauty Of Men. I fear he's stuck down there in Florida and nothin' much iz a happenin' except Elder Gay circling-the-drainhole navel gazing. Tell me his new novel isn't that!

The most absorbing gay book for me this year so far is A Secret Between Gentlemen: Lord Battersea's hidden scandal. One for fans of Brit history, it's about about a monstrously rich plutocrat married to a Rothschild, who came a cropper in a gay scandal around 1900, and it was all hushed up. Instead of just focusing on gay history it also addresses what was going on in England at the time, which is refreshing.

Sitting on my coffee table is another biography – Shared Secrets: The queer world of Charles Finger, about some obscure Arkansas guy (a tautology: isn't everyone in Arkansas obscure?), but I haven't got to it yet, so can't comment. And the 3rd Vol of Chips Channon's diaries is coming in the autumn, so that's on order as a must.

This summer I’ve read Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, Thomas Asbridge’s book on the Crusades, and Rabbit Run, my first Updike.

The Asbridge book took a while — it’s very well written but very long.

I also read The Spanish Civil War: a Very Short Introduction by Helen Graham. I’m thinking of maybe reading a history of the North Africa campaign next, or a biography of Commodore Vanderbilt. After that, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

R441, I liked A Secret Between Gentlemen. It's a long read but fascinating

I ended Days without end, it's good but i expected way more

Thanks R440, I have read My Policeman and thought it worthwhile. I hated Less. The Fable link makes it hard to find specific interest, (i.e. gay) or else I'm doing something wrong.

I assume your reference to the one started by you local book store to read My Policeman, was an in person one since I cannot find it on Google. If I'm mistaken and it is a virtual one, could you please post lind?

Thanks, R439

link

R445 I think you need to download the app to really see/search the different options, but it’s free to do so. It is clunky to search, but scrolling through by the titles of the club names like Sapphic and Proud, Queer YA, Johnee’s Queer Reads, Big Queer Bookclub, etc. there seem to be quite a few of them already. I don’t think you can sort the clubs by interest or theme, but many also have a Gay flag or rainbow emoji to look for quick identification.

The My Policeman book club I’ve joined is Shelf Life at City Books with Arlan Hess. You can look up a book title and it will show you all the book clubs that have chosen that book.

Bootsy, the next Rabbit book -- "Rabbit Redux" -- is my favorite of the four, and probably my favorite Updike (I've read I think seven of his novels in all).

Piss is Delicious

One Of Us Is Dead is a fun Desperate Housewives bitch fest

I just finished The Nickel Boys. Don’t let the prologue discourage you from reading on like it did to me the first time I picked it up. The second time I picked it up (yesterday), I plowed through until I finished today. It’s based on an actual “reform school “ for boys in Florida in the 1960s. Rare is the book that can elicit so many emotions from the reader. It’s not a lengthy book but Colton Whitehead packs a lot into those pages. Highly recommend.

I was pretty horrified to read that the book of gay memoirs, Oh What A Lovely Century, penned by an upper class Englishman that was a published earlier this year was subject, like Enid Blyton, to inane edits to make it palatable to a readily triggered modern readership....e.g. in terms of racial matters, 'coloured' was changed to 'Black' and 'Red Indian' to 'Canadian'!! Which makes one wonder what else was edited out from it. Presumably all the usual under-age buggering of the gentry!

R452 is probably triggered by books about black people. We know how much his fellow conservatives like to ban books!

R451 I was completely dissapointed by The nickel boys. I loved the Underground railroad so i expected big things from The Nickel boys, and even it's a good novel, it doesn't deserved The pulitzer at all (to be fair it's way better than The Netanyahus)

Have you read Harlem Shuffle, r454? That was my favorite Whitehead novel.

Never read any Whitehead. Which are the best and in which order?

Jesus R453: are you really that stupid that you can't grasp the point? I guess you are.

R457, are you going to repeat GOP talking points about people today being "easily triggered" when there was more censorship in the past?

r456, I would start with Nickel Boys. Great story and also short. As I said upthread, I loved Harlem Shuffle but it might be a bit harder to get into, what with all the Black lingo and Harlem references and locations. I hope Whitehead writes a sequel.

The Underground Railroad is magnificent but very depressing. It gave me a whole new perspective on what slavery in the US was really like. I don't think I can ever watch Gone With the Wind again, lol.

I started Sag Harbor but didn't get very far. The characters were a little young to hold my interest but maybe I'll return to it someday.

I’m finding Nightcrawling incredibly depressing and hard to read.

Did anyone love it?

If you really want to cure yourself of ever thinking of watching GWTW again, read "The Prophets" mentioned upthread

Vladímír by Julia May Jonas. An assured, sexy, frequently disturbing debut novel that grabs hold of the reader early and then maniacally careens towards a fiery climax. A campus novel mixed with a reverse-gender Lolita situation. I couldn't put it down.

Highly recommend.

R455 Harlem Shuffle was not published in Spain yet.

I have to admit that i thought The Underground railroad was going to be the typical overrated novel with big theme, but i fell in love just when i started to read it. So my expectations were that high that i felt dissapointed with The Nickel boys (even if it's a good novel).

The Netanyahus is probably the worst Pulitzer winner that i've ever read (that's only because that crap of The idiot didn't won), non interesting story and very boring

Goodbye Without Leaving by Laurie Colwin. I've read it more than a few times (but not as many as her Happy All The Time), and it never fails to make me laugh. I wish someone would adapt her novels for the screen (four-to-six episode miniseries would probably work best), but I'd probably be disappointed in them. Casting would be key, and her comedic tone would be hard to get right.

Modern gothic southern horror story, "Summer Sons". Engrossing.

I had to give up, at least for now, on Anthony Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena after 75 pages. It was just too bleak and horrible, set in Chechnya before, after and during the wars. And I don't know enough about all the politics to give me the proper context for all the drama.

But then I picked up Andrew Holleran's The Kingdom of Sand and I'm just racing through it. Much more humorous than I was expecting. Love his quirky voice. Highly recommended, especially for all gays over 60.

I'm 3/4 way through LINCOLN HIGHWAY and at times it feels like a Frank Capra movie. I do like it though the boy Billy is not the most credible character.

I put a hold on CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD at the library. M. Night Shaymalan has made it into a movie with Jonathan Groff and the book at least sounds interesting. Anyone here read it?

R467. It’s a compelling, if very disturbing read

Von Tussle, bitch! Von Tussle!!

R467-I've read it and Jonathan Groff is completely wrong for it. I don't see it as a movie at all.

I just couldn't get onboard The Lincoln Highway. It all seemed incredibly artificial and dishonest to me. Young guys like those characters then and now just don't behave like that and sure don't talk that way. I can imagine that Towles perhaps thought he was writing a Capra-esque tale but it was all just phoney baloney to me.

I started reading 'Beautiful Ruins' and it's not doing anything for me. I was sucked in by the Douglas-Sirk-looking cover.

Oh no! I loved Beautiful Ruins! One of my fave books of the last 20 years. Are you old enough to remember the Taylor/Burton Cleopatra scandal, r472?

R473 I liked the 1962 Italy setting, but as soon as it jumped into the "now," it lost me. I generally don't enjoy reading anything about current reality; I get enough of that every day.

I'm not old enough to have lived through Burton/Taylor, but I'm enough of a film & gossip buff to know about it.

R466 I loved a Constellation of vital phenomena, it's a tough reading but it has a lot of humour (dark humour). I connect really well with Marra's writing.

I'm finishing The light fantastic, Pratchett is always funny.

I'm starting Reina roja (Red queen) by spanish writer Juan Gómez-Jurado which is a thriller (it was a bestseller here) and one of the main characters (to my surprise) is gay

Thanks for you response, r475. I still have CONSTELLATION... at my bedside, bookmarked where I left off, and hope top get back to it.

I know given its dark theme and 700+ pages "A Little Life" is definitely not summer reading, but....

summer is almost over and,

Ivo Van Hove's 4 hour staging is coming to BAM in Brooklyn in October.

I know the book evoked very strong and very diverse reactions.

Any comments from DL readers?

Ivo van Hove should stay the fuck out of the U.S.

Who else is gonna stage simulated fucking and hordes of naked men?

I didn't read Brandon Sanderson but i found funny that someone called him woke in one of my book forums (he is a mormon, not a loony like Orson Scott Card but probably pretty conservative).

After reading How much of these hills is gold (which was a bit dissapointing) i don't know what to think about Lambda awards, because Zhang's novel was nominated in the bisexual cathegory and there's absolutely nothing bisexual in that novel

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow has a great start and is a propulsive read. Everyone’s giving it the most glowing reviews.

The house in rhe Cerulean sea by TJ Klune

Well it's time to try Shuggie Bain

At this point, r483, I'd skip it and go for Stuart's follow-up novel YOUNG MUNGO. It has everything that SHUGGIE BAIN has (young confused gay in1990s Edinburgh slums, alcoholic mother, estranged dad, difficult siblings, etc.) but just a bit more depth of character and prose. Unless you've already read YOUNG MUNGO?

R479, is that from van Hove's staging of A LITTLE LIFE? Honestly though, it could be something he'd do in a staging of SOUTH PACIFIC - "Honey Bun" indeed.

R484 There’s an Easter egg in Young Mungo you won’t get if you haven’t read Shuggie Bain.

Sorry, I don't get you, r486.

But I'm intrigued.

R487 google the meaning of “Easter egg” and it SHOULD make sense to you.

No R485, It's from IVH's staging of "The Damned" at the Park Ave. Armory in NYC maybe 5 or so years ago.

Enjoying “Secrets of Happiness” by Joan Silber

R484 Young Mungo was not published here yet

The secret hole

Where the hell are you, r491?

R493 Spain

Link to new fall thread:

Everyone, please join us in the new thread.