HooBoys Book Club Spring 2002

[Guest RushNY]

Yes i KNOW its been done before,but times move on people read different books and i thought it might be interesting to see if anyone has read anything great they might wanna share recently ,me i just finished American Tabloid by James Ellroy which i thought was great probably because i wasn't expecting it to be.Anyone else with any suggestions feel free......................

[chrismac]

>Yes i KNOW its been done before,but times move on people

>read different books and i thought it might be interesting

>to see if anyone has read anything great they might wanna

>share recently ,me i just finished American Tabloid by James

>Ellroy which i thought was great probably because i wasn't

>expecting it to be.Anyone else with any suggestions feel

>free......................

 

In my bookclub over the last 5 years, I can recommend the following titles (synopses on Amazon.com):

 

Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson

Look to Windward (Sci-Fi Fantasy) - Iain M. Banks

Calculating God - Robert J. Sawyer

Slapstick, Galapagos, Deadeye Dick, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse Five, are the best from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr - my personal favorite author. Hilarious satire on American culture, and just about everything else.

Hornito; My Lie Life - Mike Albo (great novel about gay life in NYC-Greenwich Village)

[chrismac]

Oops - hit post message key before I was finished:

 

Don't want to forget "Rules of the Wild" my Francesca Marciano. Another great novel, very well written.

 

If you're looking for heavier stuff:

 

Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (a little difficult for many to get through, but a fascinating story)

Earth - David Brin (futuristic story about our planet, ecology, the human race, astrophysics).

 

By the way Rush - please don't take this as harsh or an insult, but sometimes I find it difficult to get through your longer posts because you don't use a full stop (period), thus forming huge run-on sentences (and I should talk - look at mine :-)).

[Guest Fin Fang Foom]

Nancy Drew "The Secret of Red Gate Farm" by Carolyn Keene - original 1931 text.

 

It's FABULOUS!

 

Literarily yours,

 

FFF

[Bilbo]

I got a gig doing massages on the staff at a gay newspaper and one of the perks is I get to take home a lot of books ... free and of the moment. Always with a gay angle, of course. I think that my favorite new writer is Chris Kenry. I suggested "Can't Buy Me Love" to y'all last year - good book set in Denver about two lovers starting an escort agency.

 

"Uncle Max" is his second book. For my money, heh, it's not quite as good as the first one, but still primo. The cover artist didn't catch the mood of the story at all. It's a dark comedy about a teenage boy coming out and being inspired by his Uncle, a sort of Auntie Mame character only a thief by profession.

 

Kenry has also collaborated with three other authors on a book called "Summer Share", which I haven't gotten to yet, and am reluctant (see above) to judge any too accurately on its cover.

 

I (the son of a librarian) love these threads about books and will try to report on any of the perk books which are good enough to recommend.

 

Also, for Christmass, my nephew thought that he was introducing me to Terry Pratchett's discworld series when he sent me the first three books of it as paperbacks. Wonderful light reading, not as thick with puns as many SF&F gets when it aims for the funny bone. I recently finished what I think is the most recent of these, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, and plan to send it to him as his thank you note. Not only funny, but even a bit towards frightening at times.

[skins1]

"A Child Called IT" David Pelzer

"The Lost Boy" David Pelzer

 

Both the above are an autobiography about child abuse -- the 3rd worst on record in California. What this kid went through and overcame is amazing. What's more amazing is how successful he is now.

Very sad but a book you won't be able to put down.

 

"Prayers for Bobby" Leroy Aarons

 

A book about a gay kid growing up in the late 70's, early 80's and how he comes to terms with being gay and his tragic choices. But it is also about his mother a real churchgoer who prayed her son would be "healed," then ultimately became a crusader for gay and lesbian youth.

this one will have you in tears and asking yourself, "WHY?".

[Guest pshaw]

"The Sorrow of War" by Bao Ninh - a North Vietnamese "All Quiet on the Western Front"

 

"Black Rain" by Masuji Ibuse - a fascinating novel based on the diaries and eyewitness accounts of survivors of the Hiroshima bombing

 

Gay authors:

 

"A Density of Souls" - I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Christopher Rice's first novel. I actually liked it better than anything I have read by his mom Anne Rice (which admittedly isn't much}.

 

"Glove Puppet" and "Pussy's Bow" by Neal Drinnan - This guy can write.

[Guest jizzdepapi]

help jizz?

 

for the life of me, i can't remember the titles of two borrowed books that i've read that i'd love to add to my collection. maybe someone knows the titles.

 

one was about a drag queen from New Orleans who moved to Texas, changed her "clubby looks" for a demure, prim and proper leading lady of the town.

 

the other is about a girl growing up who attended a Catholic school (in the south, I think.) there might be more than one novel written about this but this is the one with the scene where she gets expelled because the principal finds her bloody panties (yuck!) after she loses her virginity to a randy Catholic boy in a shed behind the school. in case there are several novels with a similar scene, this one stands out because she explains to the principal that the boy she was with suffered from the stigmata and she had used her panties to clean up. the rest of the book is just as hilarious, though church ladies might be shocked.

 

if anyone knows the titles of these books, please share them. i highly recommend them. very funny reads, both books, but with lots of heart.

 

best,

jizz

[Guest jizzdepapi]

Fin: any truth to the rumor that Nancy Drew and Hardy boy novels were penned by the same author?

[Guest RushNY]

Sorrryyy:),yeah i know i think my English teacher would be spinning in her grave if she saw some of the stuff i type i know this may sound strange but as a younger person i actually was pretty good it had punctuation,commas and everything LOL

[Guest tmbg]

I've tried very hard to complete Christopher Rice's, "A Density of Souls." It just isn't holding my interest. Has anybody been able to finish this book?

 

Cheers! Ritchie

[Guest Fin Fang Foom]

>Fin: any truth to the rumor that Nancy Drew and Hardy boy

>novels were penned by the same author?

 

It's a slightly complicated answer to a simple question.

 

Nancy Drew was written by "Carolyn Keene" and the Hardy Boys by "Franklin W. Dixon".

 

With the exception of three titles, the first 26 Nancy Drews were written by Mildred Wirt, and the first 15 Hardy Boys by Leslie McFarland. Starting in 1961, most of the "original" books began to be "updated" and rewritten - most of that carnage was wreaked by Harriet Adams. She was the sister of the man who created Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys but who wrote none of them - he died in 1930, right after he had Mildred Wirt write the first three Nancy Drew books. The Hardy Boys began in 1927.

 

Informatively yours,

 

FFF

[Guest jizzdepapi]

jeez, that's complicated. you really know your stuff. did most of these people sleep with each other?

[+ Charlie]

RE: help jizz?

 

I think the first book was called "Splendora", but that may just have been the name of the character. It was a delightful read.

[Guest pshaw]

>I've tried very hard to complete Christopher Rice's, "A Density of Souls." It just isn't holding my interest. Has anybody been able to finish this book?

>

>Cheers! Ritchie

 

Well, as I indicated in message #6, I not only finished it but I also enjoyed it. :-)

[FrancoDiSantisxxx]

Gay Book Club Selections

 

>Hornito; My Lie Life - Mike Albo (great novel about gay life in NYC-Greenwich Village)

 

Mike Albo is a great writer, along the same vein is Plays Well With Others - the author's name escapes me at the moment but the title is correct, as well as the two books by Rupert Everett -- one of which is essentially a thinly disguised autobiographical telling of his own experience as a rent boy Hello Darling, Are You Working? I recently checked out from the library James Robert Baker's "posthumous" book testoserone though I cannot say I liked the books this author published after Tim and Pete . When I travel, I always go through thrift stores and in Palm Springs I picked up two works of fiction: William Mann's The Men From The Boys and Paul Golding's The Abomination.

 

As much as it may pain me to admit, I am also rereading a very trashy book by Gordon Merrick - Perfect Freedom - but only for the pictures and because it is a perfect book to get sun tan lotion on....

 

 

If you can not be with the one you love, read a book.

[Guest Thunderbuns]

>Nancy Drew "The Secret of Red Gate Farm" by Carolyn Keene -

>original 1931 text.

>

>It's FABULOUS!

 

Wasn't there another girl detective series around the same time as Nancy Drew. I picked up what was supposed to be a complete set at a garage sale in Montreal, several years ago, but it got lost/stolen/fell of the back of the truck, in my move to Vancouver.

 

I think the name of the sleuth was Kay Tracy - if memory serves me correctly.

 

Thunderbuns

[Guest tmbg]

Thanks pshaw, I overlooked your post.

 

Maybe I'll give the book another try.

 

Cheers! Ritchie

[trilingual]

One of the seminal "gay" books has recently been re-released: "Auntie Mame" by Patrick Dennis. Too much fun, even after all these years.

 

Just finished reading "La Fiesta del Chivo," by Mario Vargas Llosa, about the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic seen through the eyes of the conspirators who assasinated him. I think it's recently been translated into English as something like "The Feast of the Goat." Vargas Llosa has written a lot that's been translated to English. "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" is autobiographical and often hysterically funny. There's another funny one called something like "Pantaleon and the Visiting Service" about this poor shnook army officer who's sent to the Peruvian Amazon to set up a traveling whorehouse service for the soldiers at god-forsaken posts in the middle of the jungle.

 

For the budding Brazil Nut colony among us, try to find "Perverts in Paradise" by João Silverio Trevisan. You may still be able to locate it through one of the gay bookstores, or on the web. This is a fascinating sexual history of Brazil, from the discovery to the present, by a brilliant writer.

[Guest pshaw]

>For the budding Brazil Nut colony among us, try to find

>"Perverts in Paradise" by João Silverio Trevisan. You may

>still be able to locate it through one of the gay

>bookstores, or on the web. This is a fascinating sexual

>history of Brazil, from the discovery to the present, by a

>brilliant writer.

 

I stumbled across a copy of "Perverts in Paradise" at a second-hand bookstore in DC's Dupont Circle area and read it only last week. I was apprehensive that it might be a bit dry, but, as Trilingual points out, it was quite entertaining. It certainly helped to whet my appetite for my upcoming visit.

[Guest pshaw]

I can't promise that you will like it, Ritchie, but I really think that Rice is a promising writer, especially when one considers that he wrote "Density of Souls" when he was 20 or 21. I'm sure that there were other novels more deserving of having been on the NY Times Bestseller list, but I honestly enjoyed the book from beginning to end.

[NY Observer]

I didn't particularly enjoy Density of Souls.

 

I did like Can't Buy Me Love.

 

Reading Electroboy, right now, will report back in my review, so far it's quite enjoyable.

 

I think one of my favorites is The Dreyfus Affair by Peter Lefcourt (think that's the name)..it's a gay baseball book.