Comments on: Friday Staff Survey: Me Fail English? That’s Unpossible!

By: jimbo

jimbo — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:51:40 +0000

The last of the wine Mary Renault Her immersion of the reader into re-imagined Athens is so complete that it was years after my first reading as a teenager that I asked myself where all the women were and what the hell Alexias and Lysis actually did. But that's a good thing! L'etoile rose Dominique Fernandez I read this at 17 and it provided a context for activism and for my emotional conflict that I would never have found otherwise. A Kestrel for a Knave I found out I was working class and poor reading this.

By: Commenter guy

Commenter guy — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:16:35 +0000

Charlie, Death in Venice is such an under appreciated gay classic. Its still the best testament out there to being true to ones own desires.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:31:38 +0000

Here’s my top three favorite books.

1. Call Me by Your Name, by Andre Aciman: A beautiful and controversial combination of literature, philosophy, and eroticism, this first novel is like remembering your first love affair, with all the passion, tenderness, and heartbreak.

2. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen: I first read this hilarious novel in high school, and couldn’t stand it, but it made tremendous sense (and I understood the humor) re-reading it in college, where I could really see aspects of myself in Elizabeth, Darcy, and even Lydia.

3. Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann: I realized I was gay when I read this novella in college and saw that von Aschenbach’s passion for Tadzio was almost exactly like my feelings for similar young men.

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:34:59 +0000

I’m sorry but Jack Kerouac makes me want to vomit. I hated Desolation Angels when I had to read it in my Sophomore year Studies in Fiction class with my one armed teacher and I will forever hate it.

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:01:24 +0000

Hmm… nobody said “Letters to a Young Poet” by R.M. Rilke? Greatest German author of the 20th century, at least amongst us West Coast gays…
anyways, it’s DEFINITELY worth reading. and it’s short and terrifically written.

By: Beatriz

Beatriz — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:12:07 +0000

I love this topic, I’m going to have to read Slaughterhouse Five now…it came up twice.

1. I know why the caged bird sings – Mia Angelou
2. On the road – Jack Kerouac
3. Merrick – Anne Rice

By: Drew

Drew — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:11:32 +0000

@michael How can you not love A Confederacy of Dunces? He leads a labor uprising by painting “Crusade for Moorish Dignity” on a soiled bed sheet. He goes to movies just to call them “filmed abortions.” He has to lie down because of his valve!

Just defending this book to you makes me want to reread it.

Seriously though: The Violent Bear It Away, Blood Meridian, and Cloud Atlas (which probably isn’t as good as the first two, but which I’m choosing anyway.)

By: Rocky

Rocky — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:06:23 +0000

I noticed the lack of female authors too. For me, it was actually a toss-up between Rabbit, Run and To The Lighthouse, but I chose the former, b/c… well… b/c I guess I’m a part of the problem in a major way. But reading Lighthouse is like wrapping yourself in a blanket – a sad, haunted, tattered but lovely blanket. Can somebody please suggest something happy for me? Geez. Oh, and somebody needs to explain Catcher in the Rye to me. Am I the only person that wishes Holden Caulfield was a real person so I can punch him in the face?

By: adam

adam — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:48:32 +0000

i wouldn’t have thought of it if someone hadn’t brought up books written by women but i think the handmaid’s tale by margaret atwood is pretty perfect. in fact, atwood rarely misses the mark (though i’ve come to understand that she’s not for everyone)

oh and zack, you should really read the comic adaptation of city of glass. it’s phenomenal too.

By: michael

michael — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:23:22 +0000

It’s funny, two of my most despised novels made it into others’ top threes. If it wasn’t for a book club, I wouldn’t have finished them. Here are my one sentence reviews of them:

1) Middlesex: If I had wanted to read 100 Years of Solitude, I would have read 100 Years of Solitude.

2) Confederacy of Dunces: While some can find humor in him, the lead character is so completely annoying and disgusting that, if the book is in the least autobiographical, then I know why the author killed himself.

Too much?

By: Kyle

Kyle — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:30:09 +0000

1. The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight - Funny, serious, intimate and epic, the residents of a group house in Buffalo, NY, negotiate their identities between Islam and punk rock (props for the first positive queer Muslim character I'd encountered in print). 2. Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac - IMHO, better than On the Road; Kerouac wrestles with the competing impulses of hedonism and spirituality. 3. The Whistling Song by Stephen Beachy - How can a single novel be simultaneously cynical and hopeful, poetic and gritty? Just simply amazing: find it!

By: Whitney

Whitney — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:59:34 +0000

Wow, 38 out of 42 books written by men. I can’t help throwing some women authors into the mix:

1. Nada by Carmen Laforet — think of it as a “female” Catcher in the Rye, if you must.

2. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf — on the struggle of women writers, incidentally.

3. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — a beautiful novel about Nigeria during the Biafran War.

…and some lesbian-authored/lesbian-themed books, for good measure:

1. The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith — a cult lesbian romance originally published under a pseudonym (Claire Morgan) in 1951.

2. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters (or anything by Sarah Waters, for that matter) — an erotic historical novel set in Victorian England.

3. Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking by Aoibheann Sweeney — a lesbian coming-of-age from coastal Maine to New York City.