ny2222

I loved Dancing on Tisha B'av by Lev Raphael. Then I met him and never enjoyed any of his other works. Sometimes it's best not to meet our heroes.

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Really surprised no one has mentioned Gore Vidal's "The City and the Pillar"; all of John Rechy's books - particularly "City of Night"; James Baldwin's books; and many of Mary Renault's Greek history novels. These were all pioneers in bringing gay themed literature to the mainstream. Although the men all presented a very dark picture of being gay, their works were indicative of the times. "The City and the Pillar" was actually re-published after many years with a more up beat ending.

You might be interested in author David Leavitt especially "A Place I've Never Been" and "The Lost Language Of Cranes".

I read a lot of the Gordon Merrick novels before I came out. I mentioned somewhere else that "An Idol for Others" was in the (small) book section at Hudson's (a somewhat-swanky Detroit department store that's been bought and renamed so many times I don't know what it's called any more), and I'd hang out there & read them while Mom & the sisters were shopping. I bought a few for myself once I had my own place. I read a few of them all the way through, but most, I've just skimmed through and read the sex scenes. Peter & Charlie's first encounter and the "measuring session", and a couple of the scenes in "The Great Urge Downward" are still favorite reads.

1. If it's well-written and reasonably accurate as to physiology, why does it matter? (I acknowledge that there are sometimes reasons to quibble with some of the psychology and ways in which romance is thought of, but it's also true that not all men are unsentimental and unromantic, just as not all women are sentimental and love traditional romance.)
2. The female readership may be predominantly straight, although there are no good or definitive studies, but a not insignificant number of the most well-known, prolific authors identify as queer (bisexual, lesbian, trans or genderqueer, if the specifics matter). Ones I can think of off the top of my head:
 
K.A. Mitchell (lesbian)
Harper Fox (lesbian)
Josephine Myles (bisexual)
Alex Beecroft (genderqueer)
Erastes (bisexual)
Aleksandr Voinov (trans)
James Buchanan (trans)
 
I haven't read all these authors, and I don't feel the same about all the ones they've read, but Mitchell, Beecroft and Fox are among the best there are. I enjoy Myles' stories, just not as much as the others; Beecroft writes mostly historical, while I prefer contemporary, and leans toward the more descriptive/flowery end of the spectrum of writing style.
 
CS Pacat is a woman. So is Josh Lanyon.
 
But an even more important point is this: there is no longer an impenetrable barrier between gay and straight love stories. Increasingly, romance novelists are writing so-called "mixed" series: ones where some of the couples are m/f and some are m/m or f/f. Where one character is bisexual and doesn't feel that changes because of the gender of the person they're with. They are writing trans characters in relationships with cis characters, both same and oppsite sex. They are writing asexual characters. They're writing genderqueer characters.
 
One New York Times and USA Today bestselling writer is currently working on a manuscript about a character who heads a tech firm remarkably similar to Apple who is as irascible as Steve Jobs and as gay as Tim Cook but who has a son and is closeted. She's already written a secondary f/f romance in one of her historical novels set in Victorian England. She has tweeted her support of gay rights, an analysis of the opinions in the Obergefell case (as a former clerk to Justice Kennedy, she has insight into this most of us don't have), and told people that if her stance on social issues bothers them, they would not like her books.
 
This expansion is driven by female and trans male writers, editors and publishers, not by cis men. I think it constitutes social progress. Maybe you don't.

To answer the question:
 
There's general gay fiction that skews literary with mostly unhappy endings and not a lot of on-page sex and then there's gay or m/m romance wth happy endings (both kinds) and a predominance of on-page sex. I've read more of the latter and tend to prefer it if for no other reason than symbolism: see, queer people can have and are deserving of love and happiness, too. That's still something of a fucking revolutionary message and is part of the reason I prefer to read female writers. They're committed to the happy ending. So far, too many of the male writers I read seem defensive or brittle or write in an unadorned Hemingway-influenced style that gets boring after awhile.
 
That said, here's a smattering of both, starting with cismale gay men:
 
Tales of the City and sequels, Armistead Maupin
Boystown and other books by Marshall Thornton
Afflicted, Brandon Shire
Victor J. Banis, who wrote a lot of pulp of varying quality back in the day
Jeff Earno (don't remember titles)
Anything by Eric Arvin
Wade Kelly
 
Of literary novels, I tried reading Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming Pool Library but didn't like it well enough to finish.
 
There are other men like Rick Reed, TJ Klune, Sean Michaels and Damon Suede who write genre but whose books I haven't read. (I read a sample of Suede's Hot Head and decided not to buy the book; Klune was accused of plagiarizing his first novel from a movie, fwiw.)
 
Women:
 
Jordan Castillo Price, my favorite gay romance/fiction author. The first couple of books in her best-known work, the Psycops series, are weaker because they're among her first pro novels. (She started out writing fanfiction.) But the rest of the series doesn't nake sense without them.
K.A. Mitchell - don't read if you don't like reading explicit sex; however, her books are far from stroke fiction.
Amy Lane - queen of angst. For me, the quality of her books varies, but Chase in Shadow, whose depiction of how gay porn is made may be as fictional as all depictions of sex work in romance novels (for one thing, the performers all live in the same geographic area), is one of the most emotionally intense books I've ever read. There are others I like too.
Harper Fox
J.L. Merrow
P.D. Singer
Josh Lanyon (quality varies, but the best books are among the best in the genre. I'm not as fond of the Adrien English series as everyone else is.)
Kaje Harper
Heidi Cullinan, although I find her ambition/good intent often exceeds her reach.
Tamara Allen (historical, no explicit sex).
 
Ouside the romance genre, I recommend Cecilia Tan's coming of age series about an 80s rock musician, Daron's Guitar Chronicles. This also has no explicit sex, which is weird, because Tan mostly writes m/f erotica and erotic romance.
 
Litfic/gay fiction: Anything by Mary Renault, herself a lesbian. I've only read The Charioteer. That Renault is welcome and is thought of as an icon of gay fiction (just as Radclyffe is an icon of lesbian fiction for and by lesbians) whereas later female writers are not welcome says something.
 
The ladies write about group and multiple sex (there's a subgenre called menage that is mfm (no sexual contact between the men) or mmf (sexual contact between everyone)). While most books end with a committed couple or trio without suggesting that other people might be welcome to join in on occasion, that's as much a function of a desire for narrative finality as an adherence to monogamous norms. The sex in their books is sometimes awkward but is mostly joyous and transformative. There is less of a disconnect between the physical and the emotional than I see in books written by men. (Also true in the mystery genre in my experience.)
 
Also see these posts in the Book Forum? thread. I particularly recommend Joseph Hansen (excellent writer, interesting and well put together mysteries) and Richard Stevenson (laugh out loud funny and more sexual content than is the norm without being anything like a stroke book).

Mercy Celeste and Kade Boehme are two of the better female writers. For my taste.

But many of the m/m novels written by women focus on how sex feels, smells, tastes as well. The emotions during such scenes aren't about love but lust or maybe protectiveness or how well the top is being served if the characters are into kink. Not that there aren't some books by women that go pretty far in the sentimental direction - there are - but a lot of male-authored books seem episodic and meandering.
 
To the extent the gender of the author is known, I find sex scenes written by men, whether straight or gay, boring, perfunctory and very much insert tab A into tab B. If you're going to write them like that, why bother? From what you're saying, that may be authentic, but it's not exactly scintillating reading. And really? Little goes on in the minds of both participants during a blow job, hand job, frot, or anal sex? Wow.
 
I've read a lot of them too and still find a wider variety of looks, personalities, body types and careers in m/m romance compared to m/f, but lately I've read more m/f because there's more of it, it's less expensive, and the review site I got m/m recommendations from is defunct.
 
I also forgot to mention Alexis Hall. Despite the name, Hall is a dude, though he identifies as queer, not gay. I've read his columns and blog and a short story of his but none of his books. I started reading For Real but stopped because I realized it required more sustained concentration than I could muster at the time.

Raven...Wow...a lot of neat stuff there. You smart!!!
I am just going to throw this out and PLEASE don't hurt me lol...it is not a judgment thing just an observation.
I do agree with a lot of what you are saying. I just find it hard sometimes to relate to some of the male/male things that a women writes. (please don't hit me lol). I don't mean that in a negative way. I think mostly this applies to the not well written at all (regardless of the sex) authors and there are a lot of them in this.
I know that CS Pacat is a women and I love here two books. To be honest (again this is going to get me in trouble) I don't think a man could have written that story that way. On the other hand The Cranberry Hush was written by a man and to be honest I don't think a women could have written the story like that. I am just saying there are differences in how each views life....and I think that is a good thing??? I like the differences.
I know I said I prefer male writers and I am formally going to take that back.
When it is well written, I like them both and how they view the M/M relationship
Pretty diplomatic..yes???
 
NY

Thank you and hi to all you Austen and Dostoevsky fans!
 
AdamSmith - Save yourself time and read Gogol's short story "The Overcoat." (Some wag of a Russian writer - I don't remember who - once said "We all came out of Gogol's Overcoat.")
 
I forget who mentioned Middlemarch, but I disappointed a Twitter/blog friend of mine who is an English professor who teaches courses on Victorian fiction and George Eliot, among other things, by returning it to the library after reading the first two sections. (At the time, I didn't know the library has a policy of indefinite renewals.) I may try again, but not for another year. I have too big a backlog of unread books on my Kindle. Not now, because I need to wrap this up and go pick up needles for my diabetic cat, but at some point I'll post a link to my friend's blog, Novel Readings.
 
And I saw a reference to Go Ask Alice in a recent literary Twitter discussion as one of the few books composed entirely of diary entries. (The main discussion was about Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which is partially told through diary entries.)

I can't think of another writer who writes mysteries with gay characters and sex scenes as consistently as Lanyon, but here are a few who write some mysteries, thrillers and the like whose books also have sex scenes:
 
Harper Fox - her Tyack & Frayn books have all the elements you are looking for plus supernatural/paranormal activity, which I guess makes them urban fantasy even though they're set in the country. One character is a (British) police officer. Her other books are worth reading, too.
 
Jordan Castillo Price - Her Psycops series is about a practice of the Chicago police department to pair people with paranormal abilities with "regular" partners to investigate crimes their particular abilities apply to (truthtelling/mind-reading to dishonesty, communicating with ghosts to homicide). The main characters are not partners at work (one is "normal," one sees ghosts, so the investigations touched on in the books are murder investigations) but meet through work. Everything else of hers, much of which is sci fi or speculative in nature but all of which is set on Earth, is worth reading, too.
 
J.L. Merrow has a couple of mystery/paranormal series. Some of her books are also very funny.
 
Now that I think about it, most of Rhys Ford's books are mysteries or have a mystery element, especially the series (the name of which escapes me) with the PI main character. Her books are action-packed and more violent than most. Many are set in California. (She's from LA.) She also writes some alternate universe stories with paranormal and mythical elements.
 
Then there are the three series by Nava, Hansen and Stephenson mentioned in my original post, but by comparison there isn't much sex in them (keeping in mind I only read the first in Nava's series). They do, however, put more emphasis on the mystery element than most of the work of the authors mentioned above.
 
ETA: If you like mystery/detective novels that don't have a clear gay element but are somewhat sensationalistic, for lack of a better term, try anything by Wilkie Collins, contemporary and friend of Charles Dickens. My favorite of his, Armadale, is vaguely homoerotic (two of the main characters are distant relatives with the same name, Allan Armadale) and features the best female villain - maybe the most interesting villain ever - in all of literature written in English. (Her name is Lydia Gwilt.) But everything else of his is worth reading, too.

I'm just chiming in unannounced but
 
"Go Ask Alice" is a wonderful read. Will make one appreciate their life and childhood more, no matter how piss poor your upbringing was-- this girl, on her day to day entries just make you want to ball your eyes out. A true inspiration to keep yourself away from drugs. Shows you how truly damaging they are on yourself and those dearest to you. The ending is sure to leave you praying and wanting to help others more.

I've always been a reader, too, and read widely and well. After being diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, I found that deep, or truely thought provoking novels tended to trigger my anxiety, about the ephemeral nature of love and life. I turned to mysteries with gay characters and vivid sex scenes to fill my need to read without stirring up painful philosophical or metaphysical issues. Good writers in this "Gay Detective" genre are hard to find. My favorite is Josh Lanyon, but the poor man can't support my reading habit by himself. Does anyone have any suggestions?
 
I'm still trying to treat my Disorder with counseling and medication, and would love to follow some of your suggestions for both rereading and new reading. Maybe this year. I miss it so much.

I loved "The Magic Mountain." I think I even read it twice.

I am also a fan of The Brothers Karamazov. Jane Austen leaves me cold. Speaking of cold, I very much enjoyed Call of the Wild as a teen and have read it several times since.

I tend to prefer Science Fiction, and Historical Fiction. I guess I have a problem with the here and now. I recently read Margaret Atwood's Maddadam, the last in the group that began with Oryx and Crake. She is a wonderful writer who paints an amusing and frightening view of where we are possibly headed. I'm in the midst of reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora. This is brilliant complex hard science fiction (meaning that the emphasis is on real science and extrapolated technology). It is fascinating. I adored Coleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series covering the late republican period through the civil wars, Sulla's dictatorship, the triumvirate, and finally Julius Caesar's rise and fall.
I also adore Jane Austen, Persuasion and Emma being my favorites.

Thanks for reminding me of "The Devil in the White City". I started to read it many years ago. Barely got past a few chapters when I was called out of town for work, which turned into four plus years of traveling. It's been sitting on my bookshelf ever since. This thread has inspired me to pull it off the shelf. Thank you. Of the more prolific authors, in my younger days, I loved to read Steven King. John Grisham was occasionally a hit, but mostly a miss for me. Read "The Firm" before it became a movie. I enjoyed it, and if I remember right, the ending is different (and I liked better) than the movie. Currently reading "The Guilty" by David Baldacci, and it's holding my attention very well. When not knowing what to read next, I gravitate to biographies, mostly of famous people during the last century.

My favorite novel is Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Jane Austen is my favorite novelist. (Much of the time, Dostoevsky was in need of a good editor.) Somehow I don't think I'll find a lot of people here who share those preferences.
 
That's fine. Plenty of my Twitter friends are Austen fans. I can get my share of Austen discussion there (and have).
 
Movie and TV adaptations can do things books can't and sometimes bring in people who wouldn't or don't have time to read the books -- watching a TV version of David Copperfield is what got me to read the book after fizzling out on reading Oliver Twist because there were too many unfamiliar words -- but books also have advantages movies and TV don't. I usually wind up preferring the books. Occasionally I like both equally.

I have read all of Hansen's, Nava's, and Stevenson's books. Hansen's books particularly appeal to me because of the progress of his relationship with his younger male black lover. His books arere small gems, a word I seldom use.
 
Caution though. Lucky and I used to post a list of the books we read the previous year in early January. We stopped after two or three years after realizing how little in common we had in our reading. Right now in another forum, MrMiniver and I disagree about Tolstoy's "War and Peace." I have read the book several times; Miniver prefers the new British multi-part TV series.

The Red Fox by Anthony Hyde and P.S. Your Cat Is Dead both fiction.
 
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Fox-Anthony-Hyde/dp/0345328396
 
http://www.amazon.com/P-S-Your-Cat-Is-Dead/dp/0312321201
 
Hugs,
Greg

I kid, I kid. But I've been thinking about starting a thread about books for awhile, and Bigvalboy's New Year's resolution to read more is as good an excuse as any.
 
So what kind of books do you like to read? Read anything great lately? Or terrible? Here's a place where you can discuss it.
 
I'm a big fan of mysteries, detective novels, and thrillers, especially psychological thrillers. A couple of months ago, I read everything Rex Stout published featuring Nero Wolfe. My more recent reading probably wouldn't interest you, but the mystery series penned by Richard Stevenson (featuring PI Donald Strachey), Joseph Hansen (featuring insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter) and Michael Nava (featuring lawyer Henry Rios) might.
 
I found Nava's first Henry Rios book, The Little Death, overly cynical and a little scattered, so I haven't read more (other people swear by them). Of the other two, Hansen is the better writer but Stevenson is funnier and more political. He also happens to write about a location I'm familiar with.
 
Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire series, the basis for the TV shows, is also good, as is Tess Gerritsen's Rizzoli & Isles series.

I don't make a habit of it-really I don't. About the only author I've read is Poppy Dennison. She has 4 full length novels in series about wizards, weres, and vampires. They are called The Triad Series. Here's the entire collection on Kindle.
 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01A50F39W/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1453093230&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=poppy+dennison&dpPl=1&dpID=513RNBnzMSL&ref=plSrch
 
 
And then she has two or three other short novels about a different set of weres.
 
The weres are all hunky in these novels and the vampires ain't half bad either.
 
But I haven't searched out any other gay authors. Reading about hunky guys for me just makes the torture of not having a hunky guy even worse.
 
It's the same reason I don't really watch gay themed movies/TVand never wanted to watch Looking or Tales of the City. I'd rather watch a straight love story. Then I can be upset about not being straight which is different than the upset I feel about not having a hot guy of my own.
 
Gman

NY, I share your shame I've read the CS Pacat books and look forward to the third coming out in February. I like series and recommend Kora Knight's Upending Tad books (6 volumes), funny, romantic and hot, and KJ Charles A Charm of Magpies series. Not sure how many volumes, but fantasy based. And hot!
I was initially skeptical as these types of books seem to be written mostly by woman, but if they want to write dirty, why not? I just wish my prostate was as magical as the prostates of their characters are!

I'm not the least bit guilty about my addiction to gay novels. I read all types and enjoy a good, historical, contemporary or mystery novel as long as the plot and writing are good and there are some hot, detailed sex scenes. Reading for pleasure is supposed to be enjoyable. Don't beat yourself up. Try anything by Josh Lanyon. He has an excellent mystery series that starts with Fatal Shadows. I've also noticed that many sexy gay romances are written by women, who do pretty well, actually. I always wonder how they do their research about how it feels to have a warm tongue slide across the head of a hard cock. LOL.