What are You Reading?

[Guest MikeThomas]

Just started All the Light we Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.  Won a pulitzer.  World War II.  Great so far.  Hardcover, Audible and Kindle.  Home, walking and plane.

[BtmBearDad]

About half way thru “The Killing Snows” by Charles Egan. It’s been praised as “the definitive novel of the Irish Famine”. What I find particularly fascinating is that the inspiration for the storyline came from a box of letters, newspaper clippings, pay receipts, and other ephemera from the 1830’s and 1840’s the author found in one of the out buildings on his family’s ancestral farm (much like the inspiration for the song “Kilkelly”). I also like that the author’s ancestors, like some of mine, are from the same townland in the West of Ireland, so many of the historical, cultural, and geographical references are familiar. 
 

BBD

[RealAvalon]

On 8/30/2022 at 10:31 PM, rn901 said:

Right now, a good mix of fiction and nonfiction. On my list for the next month or two are:

Thomas Paine and the Promise of America by Harvey J Kaye
Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military by Randy Shilts
The Married Man by Edmund White
Of America by Susan Sontag
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Oldies but goodies 

[+ Lucky]

The Shards, by Bret Easton Ellis. 600 pages of sex and drugs.

[BuffaloKyle]

I'm currently reading forum posts 😇

[Rod Hagen]

On 9/11/2022 at 9:46 AM, Lucky said:

The Shards, by Bret Easton Ellis. 600 pages of sex and drugs.

I listened to The Shards last year when he first told the story on his Patreon.  Amazing.  Light on style, compared to his other work, and heavy on structure, especially compared to his other work.  VERY good story, enjoy!

[+ Lucky]

I finished reading my ARC of The Shards. At 600 pages long I think Ellis asks a lot of the reader. It's especially slow at the beginning. But once he had me in the soap opera of Buckley High I was hooked. Ellis writes well about sex. His character masturbates each day if he is not having actual sex, and most of the characters are horny too. But it's better than just a sex novel. Give it a try!

The publication date is in January 2023.

[+ WilliamM]

Just started a biography of  Supreme Court Justice  and close friend of Franklin Roosevelt Felix Frankfurter  by Bad Snyder.

Title is a bit overblown: 

Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment.

Yikes

[rn901]

5 hours ago, WilliamM said:

Just started a biography of  Supreme Court Justice  and close friend of Franklin Roosevelt Felix Frankfurter  by Bad Snyder.

Title is a bit overblown: 

Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment.

Yikes

There was a decent review either in the NYtimes or WashPo. Can't remember which one.

[rn901]

Here it is

Review: “Democratic Justice,” by Brad Snyder - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

[Rod Hagen]

16 hours ago, Lucky said:

I finished reading my ARC of The Shards. At 600 pages long I think Ellis asks a lot of the reader. It's especially slow at the beginning. But once he had me in the soap opera of Buckley High I was hooked. Ellis writes well about sex. His character masturbates each day if he is not having actual sex, and most of the characters are horny too. But it's better than just a sex novel. Give it a try!

The publication date is in January 2023.

He didn't plan to publish it as a book.  Last year he told the story on his Patreon (he's a very good narrator), and reddit was blowing up weekly with people wondering wether or not it was really real or just sorta real.  If you look on reddit you can see pictures of the girl BEE dated then, daughter of a famous closeted director who did die of AIDS.  You can also see real yearbook pictures of some of the other characters, names changed of course, from the "story".  

So part of the fun was tuning in weekly and asking ourselves, is this real? Was this real?  Why can't I find anything online about "The Trawler"?  :-)

The goal was to bring more subscribers to BEE's Patreon, and The Shards accomplished exactly that.  But, when the story finished, his publisher pushed hard on BEE to publish it as a book.  So, he edited it down; I know, at 600 pages it's hard to believe it's been edited at all, but as serial I remember him saying it was longer. 

Glad you liked it.  This, being BEE, and California, there's talk of adapting it for film.  It'd make a very good, nostalgic, violent, sex-filled movie.  

And yes, I love how he was so honest about masturbating regularly.  :-)

If you like, if anyone here likes, Bret Easton Ellis, I highly recommend subscribing to his Patreon, he's an enjoyably discursive interviewer.

https://www.patreon.com/breteastonellispodcast/posts

 

 

 

[BananaBagel]

I’m excited to start Less Is Lost and then Lucy by the Sea. 

[Rod Hagen]

On 7/18/2022 at 9:22 AM, Rod Hagen said:

Now reading....

 

This book was amazing.  Just finished it.  I've never been a bar person, but one of the many things I think he did a fantastic job of was clarifying for me my disconnect with millenials and especially Zillenials:  “The kids today, it turns out, want rules. They need a provisional constitution for what their new spaces will be,” he writes. “We did not go out to be safe. I didn’t, anyway,” he says. “I went out to take risks.”  There was another great quote, summarized here: Jeremy and his friends and the generation before them looked to older gays for guidance.  However, today's gay youth are not apprentices, they are disrupters.  I love that.  Highly recommend the book.

 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2022 by Rod Hagen

[Guest MikeThomas]

Apparently today’s young gay men are triggered if someone grabs their ass in a bar.  In the 80s and 90s, if someone grabbed your ass, you were either pleased, or not pleased, but never triggered.  

[+ Lucky]

1 hour ago, MikeThomas said:

Apparently today’s young gay men are triggered if someone grabs their ass in a bar.  In the 80s and 90s, if someone grabbed your ass, you were either pleased, or not pleased, but never triggered.  

I should think that going to a gay bar with a hot ass implied consent to being groped!  j/k!

[+ Just Sayin]

I just finished "Alec" by William di Canzio; it builds upon the E.M. Forster novel "Maurice" and tells the story of Maurice's relationship with Alec, an estate gamekeeper.  It's a fairly lusty tale with a happy ending and it's one of those books that you wish wouldn't end.  Here's a link to a review in Plentitude Magazine: https://plenitudemagazine.ca/tales-of-our-forefathers-a-review-of-william-di-canzios-alec/

  

[+ Charlie]

11 minutes ago, Just Sayin said:

I just finished "Alec" by William di Canzio; it builds upon the E.M. Forster novel "Maurice" and tells the story of Maurice's relationship with Alec, an estate gamekeeper.  It's a fairly lusty tale with a happy ending and it's one of those books that you wish wouldn't end.  Here's a link to a review in Plentitude Magazine: https://plenitudemagazine.ca/tales-of-our-forefathers-a-review-of-william-di-canzios-alec/

  

That sounds like E. M. Forster meets D. H. Lawrence.

[+ WilliamM]

Shy; The Alarming Outspoken Memoir Of Mary Rodgers by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green.

The late Mary Rodgers was the daughter of  Richard Rodgers, the composer of  Broadway hits Oklahoma, Carousel, The King and,  South Pacific and The Sound of Music. His friend, Oscar Hammerstein wrote the lyrics.

, @Kenny knew her

I can  verify the out spoken part from reading the book.

 

 

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by WilliamM

[+ WilliamM]

Confidence Man

by Maggie Haberman

[Jim_n_NYC]

I used to be more of a reader of historical fiction (think Mitchner or Clavell) but have turned more toward pure non-fiction since I've gotten older and it's just as interesting as the fiction stuff.  I tend toward more historical stuff and have seen a few of the books I've read listed here.

Currently, readying the 'Six Wives of Henry VIII" by Alison Weir.  I got hold of a whole slew of her ebooks and I'm trying to read them in chronological order.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Jim_n_NYC

[+ Just Sayin]

I just finished "100 Boyfriends" by Brontez Purnell; it won a 2022 Lambda Literary award; funny, sexy, and, upon further reflection, sad.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Just Sayin

[KateNickolson]

I just finished reading the book "
Responsive Web Design" by Ethan Marcotte. The book is very relevant at the moment. Why? Yes, because the Internet is developing very rapidly, the number of devices from which users go to sites is constantly increasing. The book literally opens our eyes to some points. Using the example of a specific project, the book tells how to make the site not only look good on the monitor, but not "clunk" on the screens of many mobile devices. The author does not forget about some "hints" for older browsers custom website development, which, admittedly, is still used by a large number of users. I liked the book.

[Luv2play]

On 7/30/2022 at 7:18 PM, Charlie said:

I realized while reading the Owen Wister biography that somehow I had never read anything by Jack London, so a few days ago I took Call of the Wild out of the library. I have just finished it, and I feel strangely exhilarated by the experience. I feel like howling.

It's an incredible read. Especially for anyone who is a dog lover and loves the outdoors, particularly in wilder areas away from cities. 

[+ Charlie]

I just finished Vaclav Smil's How the World Really Works, and it is one of the most enlightening books I have ever read, since it succinctly explains exactly what the subtitle says: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going. Smil recognizes a truism of human nature, that most people want a simple answer to how to solve an extremely complex problem, in this case global warming and its consequences, and shows why the simple answers--like persuading everyone to switch to driving electric vehicles--don't work. He points out that there are other simple answers that would actually have much more impact--like banning the production of anything made with plastic, or making raising of meat for food a worldwide criminal offense--that are obviously impossible. The modern world as we know it is totally dependent on the utilization of fossil fuels, and will be until far into the future, since we can't give up electricity, steel, air transportation and fertilizers for growing food, all of which are heavily dependent on the burning of fossil fuels, without radically altering our global economy and lifestyles in ways that few people will put up with.

It is not a particularly long book, but every paragraph is packed with facts. It also demands that the reader have a high tolerance for statistical analysis, because the book is loaded with math, with many references to subjects measured in things like terabytes and gigajoules. (For those who need it, there is a whole chapter devoted to explaining the mathematical terminology.) There are also 71 pages of footnotes and references for everything covered in the text. Since I used to teach a course in writing research papers, I am a sucker for footnotes and bibliographies, but even if you skip over them, you will learn a lot.

 

[Rod Hagen]

On 5/10/2022 at 8:18 AM, Lucky said:

I hated Shuggie. The author's next book, Young Mungo, was a little more acceptable. Either way, he takes the darkest parts of Glasgow to feature.

Just read Young Mungo.  I think Shuggie Bain is a better book, but I liked Mungo quite a bit.