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The front runner by Patricia Nell Warren was just about the best book I ever read. Of course I love anything by David Sedaris and Michael Thomas Ford. I also enjoyed The Summer They Came by William Storandt and the Mark Manning mystery series from Michel Craft. Anyone else ?

I used to read a lot, but I'm sort of going blind so now I read on the computer...thank God for Bartleby.com.

My favorite writers: Lion Feuchtwanger, Thomas Mann, Philip K. Dick, E.F. Benson (the whole Lucia series), Patrick Gale, Robertson Davies (hey, I'm 1/2 Canadian), Jim Thompson (After Dark, My Sweet; The Grifters; The Getaway; Pop. 1011)

Philip K. Dick's "Ubik", while science fiction, is a devastatingly funny critique of consumer culture. I'm surprised no one has made a movie of it, they've made movies of so many of his stories.

I will be starting, "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini. I read "The Kite Runner" several months ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it. This should be a great read! =0D

Just finished my US History survey class, so now I am reading Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. After that, Queer Theory/Sociology Edited by Steven Seidman and if I have time before school begins again, Sodometries: Renasisance Texts, Modern Sexualities by Jonathan Goldberg.

palahniuk does no wrong in my eyes.

i appreciate bret easton ellis too.


um... sedaris and augusten burroughs are pretty damn great.

and then, of course, are the classics. gotta get some dostoevsky and joseph campbell.

and yes- i enjoyed harry potter.

Recently I've read the first two in the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife. I don't normally like fantasy, but I thought they were pretty good. It's like The Chronicles of Narnia, if you take out the Christianity and replace it with Nietzsche.

I know my dad really liked The Kite Runner, but I haven't read it yet.

I bought the "Dark Materials" set for my nieces. It seemed only fair since I gave them the "Narnia" books last year.

This week, I'm working through "Specimen Days" by Michael Cunningham, "The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius" by Joyce Chaplin, and "The Pirates! in an adventure with Ahab" by Gideon Defoe.

Haha, I am reading The Amber Spyglass right now. It is kind of amazing that you need a couple physics classes to appreciate some of the minutiae. After this, I'm thinking something heavier by Kant.

Who Killed Martha Moxley:
Mark Furhman wrote.

The Kenndey cousin Mark Skakel was recently convicted of her murder.

True Crime paper back.

Great read!

sickothesame saidAfter this, I'm thinking something heavier by Kant.

Sicko, you are joking, right?

SockMonkey said[quote][cite]sickothesame said[/cite]After this, I'm thinking something heavier by Kant.

Sicko, you are joking, right? [/quote]

Do you hate Kant? Or do you just love/trust/believe in pure reason? I'm going to attend a seminar on his critiques of pure reason, so I want to brush up.

I do not hate Kant. I do not know a lot about him, though, beyond the concept of the categorical imperative. I took a seminar once where we read the Third Critique, the one on aesthetics. I cannot say that I got a lot out of it. There was something about looking at the sea, or the Alps, and feeling overwhelmed by their magnitude, the dynamical and mathematical sublime. It was not a bad experience. But the only way I would try reading something like that would be in a class. There are some things I just don't get much out of unless I am reading them with other people.

I just finished "How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read", which made me laugh one minute and furious the next. What more can one ask for in a book?

I'm also finishing up Reichen Lehmkuhl's "Here's What We'll Say", which was OK.

I may tackle the new translation of Abert's "W. A. Mozart" next, but at ~1350 large pages, I may never finish it.

I also want to read Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope."

Since I am on break for the next month I am chilling out with Camille Paglia's Sexual Persona. Her stuff in Slate magazine is fantastic.

At the risk of sounding pretentious, but what can after Kant

I'm in the middle of reading Eugene Onegin by Pushkin in the original Russian for the first time.

I always loved Angelas Ashes, and I just recently read Go Ask Alice, it was great. And yea, call me a dork, but I loved the Harry Potter series and the LOTR.

I recently started on Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots: Why we tell stories and am amused by Booker's, in my perspective, antiquated reading of literature.

His assumption of the masc. / fem. dichotomy and of the virtuous / profane dichotomy within the former comes across as "so last century" after my having attained at least some feminist awareness [poorly written, I know].

His reference to gay persons as individual "homosexuals" (who apparently are unable to understand the potential joys of anal sex for straights and are a modern sensationalist creation rather than anything wholesome onto themselves) makes his work feel all the more detached from my understanding of our world.

Mind you, I started disagreeing with him in the very beginning where he inserts an equal sign between Beowulf and Jaws on grounds that should give the two an unequal sign.

Right now I'm reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by good old Freddy Nietzche. On the plate after that are Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals by Kant, Being and Time by Heidegger, and Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul.

I never had the chance to take a philosophy course while in college, so now that I've finished my last undergrad semester I'm going to spend the next 5 months reading a lot of philosophy before I head out for the Peace Corps.

Well compared to all that preceeding erudition my current readings seem like fluff in comparison, but for the moment it's 'Seeing' by Saramago, 'The Famished Road' by Ben Okri and 'The Battle for Spain' by Antony Beevor, well that last one if I can get past the first chapter, but I've been distracted.

Kierkegaard's "Either/Or" (The Seducer's Diary)

"The Poorman's James Bond" by Kurt Saxon

Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (I can't put it down)

Thich Nhat Hahn- "The Miracle of Mindfulness"

And my favorite weekly periodical- "Nature"

i'm currently reading 'four meals' by meir shalev. rich, imaginative, wicked and funny.


just remembered 'the curious incident of the dog in the night', by mark haddon. god i loved that novel.

I read ALL the time. Right now i am reading "Patrick" by Stephen Lawhead, "Becoming Like God" by Michael Berg and "The Adonis Complex".

Best book i ever read "Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden

Books that stuck with me: "Juniper" and "Wise Child" by Monica Furlong, "The Earth Strikes Back" an anthology, and "Christ The Lord: Out Of Egypt" by Anne Rice

To be surrounded by such intelligence!

I used to read voraciously; stuff such as

Naked Lunch, The Sound and the Fury, A Movable Feast,

Shakespeare...

Now I consider myself lucky if I can get through

Chef's catalog!

So sad...

god love to read,
1. Same-sex marriage and the constitution by evan gerstmann
2. The age of reason, by thomas paine...great american
3. Natural atheism, by david eller

Because I took the day off, I'm relaxing and re-reading "The Gumshoe, The Witch, and The Virtual Corpse" by Keith Hartman.

Fantasy stuff, but it's fun.

In the last year or so I've managed to read almost the entire Dune series (12 books), there are two or three more in the series yet to read. I'm currently reading His Dark Materials by Pullman, started a week after Turkey Day and I'm on the 3rd book. Next on the list is Confessor by Terry Goodkind. After that, Who knows what I'll pick up?

I'm usually reading a couple things at the same time. Right now I'm working through Shakespeare's "King Lear." It was actually first performed on Christmas Day, so despite the subject matter I still get the itch to read it every holiday season. "Lear" has me in full-on Shakespeare mode now, so I'll be revisiting "MacBeth" next. Cheery holiday reading, no??

On the lighter side, I'm also working through Gregory McGuire's "Wicked." It's fun so far.

zDrew--

I like "The Tempest" best. I once sat through an RSC production of Macbeth where the actors sat on three benches laid out in a "L" shape...each actor took several roles, and they played the entire script out in like 90 minutes with minimal costumes and no scenery. Interesting but a bit hard to take.

Best Shakespeare production I ever saw was at the Stratford Ontario Shakespeare festival a thousand years ago, with Maggie Smith playing Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream. When she danced with the ass-headed Bottom at the end of the second act (or the second act the way they played it, I think it's really the third) the lights came down slowly on the two of them and vanished into a pinpoint spotlight that finally showed only their faces before disappearing completely. It was the first time I ever felt real romance and magic in a theater.

Jprichva -

I was never a theater kid, but I had bit part in "Tempest" way back in school. It was the scene where Arial is messing with the shipwrecked sailors...it was a blast! And Prospero's closing soliliquy (taken as Shakespeare's own "retirement" from the theater) always moves me.

This goes along with another thread, kinda, but by the way, my favorite modern-day cinematic "adaption" of a Shakespearean work was the movie "O" (spun from "Othello"). It was gritty and powerful.

This week I'm reading "Between the Bridge and the River" by Craig Fergusen, which I'm finding to be a truly, wickedly funny novel. If you're easily offended or deeply religious, do not read this book, as its humor is very harsh (but seriously, I've almost wet my pants laughing on multiple occasions).

Also reading Mark Haddon's "A Spot of Bother" (only a few pages in, but it has great reviews all over it).

Happy holidays!

I just started Stephen Colbert's "I am America (And you can too!)

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy still remains a favorite.

Read constantly. In the elevator, to and from the car, at night, all the time. Love books.

Right now I'm reading, "Survival" by Julie E Czerneda

Just finished reading the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Was an excellent read and well researched thesis on the economic vampirism that has spread across the globe. Highly recommend it!

I think the Hitchhiker's Guide may be the funniest sci-fi ever written. What kind of brain thinks up a terminally depressed robot?

I said this upthread, but if you like dark comedy in your sci-fi, try Philip K. Dick's "Ubik", a strange and comical critique of consumer culture set in a sci-fi adventure.

Currently reading The Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Lefevre which was actually written in 1923 but is still very applicable to today's stock market. For all those on this site, highly recommend Fantastic Voyage by Kurzweil and Grossman which deals with life extension and what we can do for ourselves to increase significantly our healthy lifespans...be forewarned, it can be a little biotechnical. If you really want to expand your grey matter, What the Bleep Do We Know!? by Arntz, Chasse, and Vicente. And, for sheer cannot-put-the-book-down entertainment, the first 12 books Robert Ludlam wrote including all the Jason Bourne tales.

Ugh. What the Bleep made me want to curse and throw things.

I'll be doing my annual reading of John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" in January. Love that book and read it every year.

Also going to look for a book on the Knights Templar or the Crusades because I've been obsessed with "Assassin's Creed" on Xbox360; it has tickled the history geek in me. Up for whatever tickling I can get these days.

Irishboxers: make sure you know what you're looking for in Templar literature...there's a lot of historical stuff out there, but there's even more that's quasi-historical and/or sensationalized. Especially after "DaVinci Code" came out, there's been a lot of sensationalist interest in the Templars, the Crusades, etc. I have a couple bibliographies on the subjects somewhere or another that I could dig up if you were interested.

Here are a few I keep returning to:

The Green Murder Mystery - Classic 1920's-30's detective fiction, by S. S. VanDine - try your local used bookstore.

The Fancy Dancer - Patricia Nell Warren - one of her other amazing books

In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality - John Gribben - Quantum Physics for Dumb Jocks

Inside the Third Reich - Albert Speer - The personal memoires of Hitler's architect telling the truth as he saw it from the inside of the hurricane. Pehaps one of George Bush's intimates will do the same someday.

- Joey

Just done with 'Inferno' by Dante Allighieri.
My all-time favs:
'The Stranger' by Albert Camus,
'Process' by Franz Kafka and
'The Old Man and The Sea' by Ernest Hemingway

I finished reading HOLDING THE MAN by Timothy Conigrave a few weeks ago and I throughly enjoyed it. I really makes you cherish your youth and reflect on your own coming out story. I am currently readign a book called World War Z, a story in which the world is over taken by Zombies. Happy Reading Guys, whatever you choose to read.

At this time of the year all I want to read is fluff.

The last two weeks I read Clive Barker's new book Mister B. Gone about a demon, a printing press, Johannes Gutenberg, and another skirmish between Heaven and Hell.

Rumpole Misbehaves by John Mortimer. A football kicking boy in trouble with the law, a dead prostitute, and She Who Must Be Obeyed threatening to study for the Bar. It's all par for the course for Rumpole.

Alan Moore's The Black Dossier. Only Alan Moore, comicbook genius and mad man, could take Mina Harker and Allan Quartermain and make them modern sexy characters. The true history of Orlando and the Prospero speech at the book's end made this book a must buy for me.

Reading The Code of the Woosters right now. Never read any P. G. Wodehouse before. Thought now would be a good time to start.

A friend of mine used to cat-sit for Patricia Nell Warren years ago, when that lady was off researching one of her books. So I watched my friend's apartment while she was gone (Warren had a cattery in the Catskills in those days...appropriate, no?)

In appreciation, Warren sent me an autographed copy of the Fancy Dancer via my friend--I never met her myself, though. So I read the book, and I was stunned. It was moving, well-written, and HOT. I second Joey's recommendation.

I probably read too much for my own good, a problem I've had since I was 5. Unfortunately, I end up reading more textbooks than anything lately, but I've finished some stuff recently:

Dune (probably one of my all time favorites)
Angels & Demons
The DaVinci Code
A Short History of Nearly Everything
A Sand County Almanac
Things Fall Apart
Letters to a Young Poet (It's not much a book, but a collection of letters, hence the title)
Antigone

I love Shakespeare and usually have one of his works lying around that I pick up and start rereading. I think Macbeth and Hamlet are my favorites.

It is really great to see people are still reading and relating to Patricia Nell Warren's books. "The Front Runner" was the first "gay" novel I ever read and as an athlete the story really moved me.

Patricia's latest book is "The Lavender Locker." I've read the piece on Ana María Martínez Sagi that is included in the book and found it fascinating. I'm confident that the rest of the book is a worthy read.

Patricia is a real pioneer in our community. In addition she was the first women to run the Boston Marathon back in the day when it was an all-male event.

Thanks for the heads up, zdrew. I always flip through history books to make sure I like the tone of the content (objective and non-sensational). Will most likely do a search on BarnesandNoble.com and sift through everything to narrow it down.

Hated DaVinci Code, btw. Horrible cliches, overuse of adverbs, and just bad sentence structure. I read two pages and put it back on the shelf. Tried to read it a year later and only made it a page. I might be one of the few who feels that way, but that's how it is. The movie was more tolerable because I didn't have to deal with that horrid writing...just some rote acting by Tom Hanks (who seemed bored). Thumbs up for Sir Ian, though!

Have a good holiday gents!

To zdrew78:

Have you ever seen Michael Almereyda's film version of Hamlet with Ethan Hawke as Hamlet? I also recommend Derek Jarman's version Of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. I used to love teaching both Lear and Hamlet -- two of my favorite plays by Shakespeare.

I recently read "A Thousand Splendid Suns" and loved it as much as "The Kiterunner"...i also enjoyed "Dry" by Augusten Burroughs (the guy who wrote "Running With Scissors").

One random book that i found very charming was "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon...the innocence of the book really caught me off guard...currently reading "A Spot of Bother" by the same author...jsut started it so i'll let u know how it is.

Right now I am reading "Vintage" by Steve Berman. It is a ghost story featuring a gay teenager who befriends an 18 year old boy killed nearly 50 years before. Very good so far. I have read so many books this year I have lost track, but this one may turn out as one of the best.

I think "The Front Runner" was the first gay novel I read, it is very good and amazingly written by a straight woman.

I was surprised to see that PSBigJoey was reading "The Greene Murder Case" by S.S. Van Dine, probably the first mystery I ever read and still one of my favourites. I have read all of Van Dine's books, a real throwback to 1920's New York City.

Not sure if he is my favorite, but I enjoy Haruki Murakami's books, mostly in Japanese. I like "Kafka on the Shore" the best. I tend to enjoy contemporary books but I recently read "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, and I thought it was brilliant. During this holiday break, I'm looking forward to go through a couple of more books .

JBEdwards--

I believe Patricia Nell Warren is a lesbian.

jbedwards saidI have read all of Van Dine's books, a real throwback to 1920's New York City.

JBE,

My copy of The Green Murder Mystery was on a shelf in my grandmother's house when I was small. She gave it to me in the 60's. It's falling apart.

Recently I've been haunting the local used book stores in hopes of finding more - but so far only one, The Scarab Murder Case, has shown up. There are a small number on Amazon, but if you have a better source, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

I'm reading a book called "Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Choice" right now, and it's awesome so far. It's interesting the number of legislative issues there are that concern genetic modification....and congress knows nothing about them.

Anyways, just wanted to add it to the list

I'm in the middle of Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor. I fell in love with his writing after reading Lolita and I became even more intrigued by his work when I found out about his synesthesia.

Something easier to read, good nice story line, from UK writers:

Barbara Vine's 1. "chimney sweeper's boy" 2. "Grasshopper"

Catherine O'Flyn "What Was lost"

And the very fantastic gripping Stef Penney's "The tenderness of Wolves".

If you want a hard read, try some Faulkner, like The Sound and the Fury.

Currently reading William Gibson's Spook Country. Not as good as his last one, Pattern Recognition, which was a masterpiece.

Just finished Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies. Looking forward to seeing her speak in SF on April 15. Need to read her followup, The Namesake, and see the film.

Love Sedaris. Just saw him recently.

Love Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Looking forward to the film adaptation.

Love Ian McEwan's Atonement; the novel is stunning. Looking forward to seeing the film.

Loved The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (love the film too and own the dvd) and At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill.

Love Haruki Murakami (prefer his short stories over his novels)

Love Neil Stephenson (Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Trilogy)

Love Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (and the film too!)

Love the Book of Salt by Monique Truong

-Hao

Currently reading:

Graceful Simplicity: Toward a Philosophy and Politics of Simple Living, Jerome M. Segal;
States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age, Charlene Spretnak;
and still trudging through the 780, ungracefully translated pages of Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa.

" Dr. Mary's Monkey" by Edward Haslam. Non-fiction work, set in New Orleans in the early 60's, dealing with a secret labratory, cancer-causing monkey viruses (!!!), Lee Harvey Oswald, global health issues and the Kennedy assassination. Complete with pictures and documents. Fascinating!!!

I am an avid reader. I love biographies about gay people, and gay fiction. I also enjoy sci fi and fantasy.

I just read Michael Thomas Ford's "Full Circle" which I loved, one of the best books I have ever read. I have also read his "Last Summer" and "Looking For It".

I also read anything by Christopher Rice. He is a real talented up and comer author, definately takes after his mother.

And I have read alot of James Clavell's books."Shogun" is my all time favorie book.

Began my Christmas reading today with Rape: Sex Violence History by Joanna Bourke. I look forward to getting further into it as Bourke seems to have quite a bit of insight into the topic (granted, she wrote a book on it).

I recommend it to anyone with even the slightest interest in the perpetuation and in the perpetuators of human suffering. The preface and introduction contain more insight into rape than majority of humans appear to have beyond the typical.

Hrm... Just finished _Son of a Witch_, the sequel to _Wicked_. It was a nice surprise to see the main character starting up a same-sex relationship about halfway through the novel, although I'm still at a loss as to whether to consider him gay or bisexual. One of the other characters effectively treated him as poly, claiming he had both a husband and a wife. Ah, well, I guess I'd just chalk him up as "experimental".

Well, now that the big novel is past me, I'm hitting Phillip's _Body for Life_, and some Douglas Hofstadter and random mathiness for fun. I'm not precisely thrilled at reading BfL, but, well, the 30th bday is this week, and... well, 'nuff said.

One more thing I would like to add :

Why do so many gay authors include a reference to the Wizard Of Oz in there books??? This is like gay brain freeze to me!In many books Its like the author wants to remind us that his character is gay by having him say or think something about that movie because all gay men know it and love it. I just find this stereotype to be annoying and totaly unnecessary to be thrown into almost every gay book out there no matter how large or small the reference. And by the way I do Love The Wizard Of Oz and I do read many other kinds of books.In some of the books I have read, I get it,it works but it just seems so stupid in all the others.

I think someone already mentioned "The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time" by Mark Haddon; I also enjoyed his most recent book, "A Spot of Bother". Currently, I'm reading "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides which won a Pulitzer Prize...so far it's pretty good. However, all-time favorites are "Giovanni's Room" by James Baldwin and "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen.

Just finished The Catcher in the Rye-JD Salinger, others on my list
The Jungle-Upton Sinclair,
The Grapes of Wrath-John Steinbeck
World War Z-Max Brooks, fun book.

Aero saidstill trudging through the 780, ungracefully translated pages of Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa.

You should read anything and everything by David Lowry. Autumn Lightning is the first one to read. I used to read it on the train to Kendo practice and it really psychs you up.

Currently reading "Electroboy" by Andy Behrman. Really enjoying it.

Just finished Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union and really enjoyed it.
About to start The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt.

I just started Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand a few weeks ago. Give it the first 100 pages to let the story get started. I love it though!

And I love Nick Hornby. High Fidelity is my favorite but About a Boy is also good. And he has a new one out called Slam that I recieved as a Christmas gift ... it looks pretty interesting.

And I have to agree with BiGuy about my boys Chuck and Bret Easton Ellis ... loved The Rules of Attraction, and Less than Zero.

I'm realy into reading and LOVE cult books. One of my all time favourites is Bret Easton Ellis. Less than Zero was one of my core books when I was still in school. I love Hunter Stockton Tompson and Tom Wolfe. I'm busy reading Good Omens by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman (who are both always excellent for a good laugh.) Starting these dark materials as soon as I'm finished. Tom robins - fuck yeah! I've read the entire Harry Potter series except for the last book so I guess I have to read that too. Shit there are just to many to name.
The fact is that reading is fun and what one reads does'nt matter as long as one reads as much as posible and then make some extra time to read some more.

I loved the harry potter and LOTR series...

some days ago i finished reading 'Love in the time of cholera by Garcia Marquez'... it was amazing... check out my review of the book at www.efadulhuq.blogspot.com

and right now i am reading the Islam Quintet by Tariq Ali
.......

oops... forgot to say: i love Rushdie's novels as well!

fitman34 saidI finished reading HOLDING THE MAN by Timothy Conigrave a few weeks ago and I throughly enjoyed it. I really makes you cherish your youth and reflect on your own coming out story.

So glad and surprised that this book has reached the States. I read it right after publication, and it made me terribly sad, but it has great power. I inhabit the same world and uncovered all sorts of indirect connections to Conigrave.

I am reading Butterfield's essay on the Whiggish interpretation of History, and Lefevre's Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Obviously time for some literature.

I'm in the middle of Naomi Wolf's The End of America. Short, brilliant, and scary as hell. Read it! Every presidential candidate should be asked hard questions about what she's saying.

A few years ago I read everything I can get from Stephen King so I have many books of him But now I like more funny books... "The devil wears Prada" is so funny!!! And I read all the Harry-Potter-books

Anthem - Ayn Rand
The Virtue of Selfishness: A new concept of Egoism - Ayn Rand

Modern Critical Views: Sigmund Freud - Harold Bloom

Wish me luck! haha

Jack London