LGBT Books

[marmalade]

There's a LOT of bad gay literature out there. I thought a thread like this might help to wade through the crap.

[newtothis]

Great idea, marmalade.

So finally I have a place rave about the Jas Anderson Trilogy (Freeform, Banged Up, Some Kind of Love) by Jack Dickson. I got the second part as a Christmas present from someone who knows my love for HBO's OZ and it's just as good (and brutal). Each book is a story of its own so you don't have to read all 3 books, but I really got into it and desperatley wanted to know what happened before and after.
As a little warning, it is a little hard to understand all the Glaswegian expressions at first.

Can anyone help me with Edmund White? I read The Married Man and really enjoyed it. Then I read Hotel de Dream and had to force myself through it. So should I just give up or can someone recommend which of his other books I might like?

[marmalade]

Those sound really interesting; I'm definitely going to have to check them out. The problem I have with a lot of gay fiction is the tropes. Either I get to read something heartbreaking because no gay couple can last and one of them has to die, or I get minimal plot squished between sex straight out of Letters to Penthouse. Okay, not all gay couples are BDSM, but you wouldn't know that based on the fiction, would you?

Case in point: the Allison Caine mysteries by Kate Allen. Really fun books, good stories, good relationships. And then boom-- all of the sex scenes have a heavy top/bottom dynamic that bothers me a lot. The one attempt I made to delve into gay vampire fiction made me laugh so hard I had to put it down. The sex was that badly-written.

I know there's more out there but after those two I almost don't want to read any more.

[Deleted]

I just finished The Essential xxxxs to Watch Out For by Allison Bechdel. Um, not gay "literature" by any means but awesome nevertheless. I loved it. I had never read the comics before! And I'm actually kind of glad I got to read them all in one fell swoop. I like immediate gratification. The storylines were so good and compelling that I can't imagine having to wait two weeks for each tiny installment if I had been reading it the normal way. The "graphic novel" format is such a different and interesting way to read books. I actually bought the book for HGTV for xmas -- and immediately commandeered it for 3 days. Woops.

I am about to finish The God Box by Alex Sanchez. It's a YA novel recommended by my MIL. It's probably not something I would have chosen on my own. It's about a small-town, teenage boy struggling with his sexuality because he believes it's a sin. It doesn't relate to my life experience at all. But it has actually been pretty interesting learning about that part of coming out that a lot of people do have to deal with.

[Smilla]

I haven't read any LGBT novels in a couple of years, but my 2009 was dominated by gay poets, including the excellent work of Mark Doty, the late Paul Monette and David Trinidad. Tonight, I wrapped up Carol Guess's Femme's Dictionary, which I bought because I realized the other day that I actually haven't read all that much lit by gay women. I am totally exicted to find her new Tinderbox Lawn now.

[SGleason]

I just finished The Essential xxxxs to Watch Out For by Allison Bechdel.

I highly recommend her autobio-graphic novel Fun Home. All about her growing up with a dad who was closeted, and what happened to them both as she came of age and came out. It's ASTOUNDINGLY good.

[Deleted]

I loved that one, too, SGleason!