What Books Are You Reading in 2023?

Previous thread

My reading resolution will be to not to feel obliged to finish books. A good third of Our Missing Hearts was enough to convince me it was terrible but still I ploughed on. Life’s too short, DLers.

I'm going to finish "Tokyo Ueno Station" today, which I started recently as part of a group reading challenge; otherwise, I would've abandoned it early on. THE most depressing story I've read since "Wicked", although "Swimming in the Dark" wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs.

Next up: "A Five Year Sentence" by Bernice Rubens (an author I learned of from these DL book threads).

Hi, r3, I think I'm the poster who first brought up Bernice Rubens. After reading THE WAITING GAME, which I quite enjoyed, I tried a couple of others, but none came quite up top to that one. If you find one you like, please post about it.

I read 51 books in 2022. But I must have started at least a dozen more, most of which I read at least 100 pages. My final book was Ian McEwan's LESSONS, which I loved and posted about in the last thread. Highly recommend, at least if you're over 65 like I am. Not sure the young would be into it.

Yesterday, I went back to TRUST by Hernan Diaz, which has landed on every Best of 2022 list this year but I couldn't finish the first time. I found it utterly boring and artless. Now that I've finally finished it (totally predictable ending!), I still don't get the praise. If anyone can explain why they loved it, I'd love to hear from about it.

My first book this year will be LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY by Bonnie Garmus, which I'm really looking forward to, have heard great things. Cover art looks very Chicklit but I hear it's much deeper.

Onward, readers! Happy New Year!

Peter Blauner's new novel comes out tomorrow.

Has anyone read the Richard Osman books? I want to read a “cosier” mystery.

"Spare" - By Prince Harry. Looking forward to it 🙂

Finally reading the new McCarthy, "The Passenger," and it's...strange.

Master of the Senate by Robert Caro.

The Richard Osman mysteries are great fun and probably not as "cosy" as you might think, r6. But very charming and clever. I've only read the first 2, but very much looking forward to reading the new one. They will make an incredible BBC mini-series someday.

Currently reading the Plantagenet and Tudor royal family series of books by Phillippa Gregory. They are historical fiction but based on real events. To me, they are an interesting history course.

Is Mary Renault worth reading? Suspicious of women who write entirely about gay men but I feel like I’ve read on DL that she’s a good writer.

Her books are available for download on my library app - curious if they are worth checking out.

R12, The Charioteer was pretty good

R4 I think I'll read it, thanks for the recommendation.

I'm referring to Lessons.

Could not get 20 pages into LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY. Utter chicklit nonsense.

R10 do the Osmond books deal with aging and dementia in a “despairing” way? I’m fine with realism, but I don’t want to be plunged into a depression.

R12, I love Mary Renault, they’re terrific fun. Simon Russell Beale wrote an introduction to The Charioteer.

Don't let that concern keep you from the Richard Osman books, r17. They're terrific.

[quote] [R10] do the Osmond books deal with aging and dementia in a “despairing” way? I’m fine with realism, but I don’t want to be plunged into a depression.

They have much more to do with collecting dolls and purple socks.

Thanks r19, I’ll give them a go.

And the purple socks sound… interesting, r20!

Reading the third Chips channon book, finished the previous two.

Renault doesn't write entirely about gay men. Her universe is classic Greece, and of course there is a lot of homosexuality therein. But you shouldn't miss The Persian Boy, about Alexander the Great.

Sorry hear TRUST is disappointing; his In the Distance is wonderful.

Currently reading Count of Monte Cristo and The Once and Future King.

Want to read, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, also Demon Copperhead and The New Life.

I couldn't get into Demon Copperhead. It felt like a too-clever college assignment: Write a version of Dickens set in a different environment. Phony nonsense. I also found I simply wasn't interested in hillbillies.

I'm re-reading Villette by Charlotte Bronte, which i've not read since college. it's really great.

But did you finish it, r24?

r25, I read it as part of a course on the Brontes and really enjoyed

Do any of you use Audible for your books?

I love Audible, r28, for specific kinds of titles, light comedic novels or mysteries. And on the other end of the spectrum, for classical literary fiction, provided I find a great narrator. It’s how I made it through Anna Karenina the first time.

I loved "Trust," was not at all disappointed.

Reading "Prairie Fires" by Caroline Fraser, a recent biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Well written and very interesting, I'm learning a lot I didn't know, especially about Laura and Almanzo's larger-than-life daughter Rose. She'd actually make a great TV show!

[quote] But did you finish it, [R24]?

When a young writer sent George Bernard Shaw a manuscript novel to comment on, Shaw returned the manuscript and said he did not enjoy it and could not recommend it to any publishers. The writer wrote back to Shaw very angry because he had purposefully glued the edges of the top of some pages near the back of the book just to see if Shaw had broken them in order to read the whole novel, and obviously he hadn't. Shaw wrote back, "One does not have to eat the entire apple to know that it is rotten."

I did nit finish Demon Copperhead, Only read about 50 pages but it was certainly enough to know I wouldn't like it.

In that same vein, r30, I want to read the bio of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling: The Life She Wished to Live.

Yes, R28!

I downloaded Fletch by Gregory McDonald on Audible. I never saw the Chevy Chase films but I’m hoping for some 1970s, Jim Rockford-style California crime.

These days, I'm reading [italic]Something to Answer For[/italic] by P. H. Newby, the first book to win a Booker Prize. Has a distinct Graham Greene feel to it.

Did anyone else read "The Foundling" by Ann Leary. I'm about 50 pages in and find it pretty boring. Does it get better?

Just put it down and started "They're going to Love You" by Meg Howrey and already like it better.

I picked up a little book called “Shakespeare in the Theatre: The National Theatre, 1963-1975: Olivier and Hall” expecting it to be super academic. But it’s showbizzy and full of gossip.

I loved Leary's "The Good House" narrated by Marybeth Hurt.

I also enjoyed THE GOOD HOUSE when I read it years ago.

And was recently shocked to discover that Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline play the two leads in the recent film. Those roles should have been cast with the likes of Tyne Daly and John Goodman.

Yeah, that would really have brought in more viewers, r40.

No one can put seats in seats quite like Tyne Daly.

Well, no one is going to pass on great worth of mouth for a film in which Weaver and Kline are entirely miscast and ruin, r41.

Would you approve of Kathy Bates and Goodman (and actually the male role could have been cast with any number of overweight schlumps with a little star power)?

The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis is getting great reviews, so I'll be reading that.

R38 ooh, spill the gossip about the luvvies.

R43-After his last 4 novels, I want to read NOTHING by that obnoxious raging queen. His writing is adolescent garbage. I've always believed American Psycho was written during a 4 day coke bender.

And yet you endured four of his novels before making this assessment. That's quite a commitment to adolescent garbage.

I just finished "The Palace Papers" by Tina Brown, for the first week of January. It was pretty good (I really enjoy Brown as an author - love her writing style), however, on a whole, I didn't learn much new from the book.

I now started "Shy" this week by Mary Rogers, as it has gotten great reviews since it's release a few months ago. A few chapters in and 'ehhh'. It's distracting because of all the footnotes on every page, to explain what she's talking about if the average reader is not a Broadway fan.

R46-I kept waiting for something to match the brilliance of Less Than Zero. The Shards is just a rehash of that same story, but with more homosex.

R48 speaking of Less...

Two novels so far this year: Elizabeth Strout's latest in her "Lucy" series, Lucy by the Sea - her style continues to be so deceptively simple. A heartful meditation on life during COVID, childhood never leaving us, family, and aging. Beautiful prose with a lot of space.

Second novel (not finished yet): Andrew Sean Greer's Less is Lost, a sequel to is 2017 bestseller Less: A Novel. Gay author and his long life and various loves. After Strout's careful and simple sentences, Greer's baroque, overworked and too heated prose is exhausting. The story is... so far... worth the effort to keep going. Complicated prose of a gay novelist? Hollinghurst he is not.

The last chapter of Less Is Lost made me cry my eyes out. Really beautiful.

I am laboring to finish Demon Copperhead (I am occasionally masochistic).

I recommend both Cormac McCarthy's Passengers and Stella Maris: best books I read in 2022.

I just finished Benjamin Labatut's When We Longer Understand the World and enjoyed it.

Upcoming: Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong, Chas. Dickens's Dombey and Son, and Feynman's Six Easy Pieces.

^^^oops, When We Cease to Understand the World

Curious about Ninth House now that there's a sequel. Any opinions?

“They’re going to love you” is a quick read and quite well done so far.

One of the main characters, James, is a DLer if I’ve ever seen one.

DOMBEY & SON is one of my favorite Dickens. Never understood why it was never a more popular title except maybe because it never got a big screen adaptation. But it still should.

“The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck”

[quote] And yet you endured four of his novels before making this assessment. That's quite a commitment to adolescent garbage.

If he had said he had only read one, then you of course would have bitched he was not giving Ellis enough of a chance.

Tastes differ. Deal with it.

[quote] DOMBEY & SON is one of my favorite Dickens. Never understood why it was never a more popular title except maybe because it never got a big screen adaptation. But it still should.

They were all set to do a big BBC Andrew Davies adaptation of it a few years back and then the BBC announced they were cutting way back on production costs and scrapped it.

Just finished 2021's OLGA DIES DREAMING by Xochitl Gonzalez and I'll be surprised if many other novels I read this year come up to it. What a fresh voice, with humor, pathos, sex, politics and everything else

Her first book and a truly sensationally written story of a smart and sophisticated 40 year old Latina woman in 2017 trying to juggle her professional and personal life and the guilt she has over her capitalist leanings. Also, there's the wonderful character of her handsome charismatic older brother, a Brooklyn congressman with many secrets. And their mother who abandoned them as teenagers to work for the underground liberation of Puerto Rico.

An incredibly impressive debut. Has JLo already purchased the film rights?

JLo is a far cry from forty.

JLo could produce it for Ariana du Bose, r60?

I just picked up Sam Heughan's memoir "Waypoints" from the library (didn't know he wrote one). Has anyone else read it ? Whatcha think ?

Trying to get into the very well-reviewed HORSE by Geraldine Brooks. But I'm not sure that the characters nor multi-plot lines are engaging me. Has anyone read it or any of her other books?

I tried it r63 and gave up. Found it boring.

Reading Edmund White now for the first time.

I'm rea ding Alan Greenspan's history of American capitalism, and sure enough, there's a lie on almost every page so far

I'm also reading "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" b y Pter Zeihan and while it has some correctives to the usual narrative, I suspect it will end up in the same place. For instance I remember when living in suburban Georgia that Jakarta Indonesia had electric lights, running water, flush toilets, and paved roads more than fifty years before any of that came to my section of Georgia (and this part of GA still don't have sewers). US is still a peasant nation in a way Europeans don't understand. But I suspect it will follow the mistakes as the other toadies who confuse markets and capitalism which are antithetical in real life.

"The Long Emergency" by James Kunstler. It is a survival guide for the economics of "today."

[quote]I'm re-reading Villette by Charlotte Bronte, which i've not read since college. it's really great.

That's interesting; I've only read Jane Eyre, but I did read a bio of Charlotte Bronte & Villette was not well received at the time by her publisher because it felt like she was still covering old ground. I think the most fascinating sister was Emily - probably a virgin & most likely agoraphobic, yet she writes one of the most iconic love stories of all time. Charlotte at least had some life experiences to draw up for JE.

Edmund White wrote several great books, and several that are pretty bad. But he is an icon, still producing books well into his 80s. He has a new novel coming out later this year.

[QUOTE] Reading Edmund White now for the first time.

Which one, R64?

I'm reading The Cloud of Unknowing , the William Johnatkn translation as well as the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

I just finished Louise Erdrich’s THE SENTENCE and really struggled to finish it. I’m really just not ready to read COVID fiction yet. She didn’t put any spin on that part of the novel at all. It was just like watching msnbc in May 2020.

Not recommended.

I’m not a fan of Geraldine Brooks, r63

R69, which ones are great? There are so many - I didn't know which to download from the library.

74, I enjoyed OUR YOUNG MAN.

r64, I started with "Our Young Man"

[quote]That's interesting; I've only read Jane Eyre, but I did read a bio of Charlotte Bronte & Villette was not well received at the time by her publisher because it felt like she was still covering old ground. I think the most fascinating sister was Emily - probably a virgin & most likely agoraphobic, yet she writes one of the most iconic love stories of all time. Charlotte at least had some life experiences to draw up for JE.

First of all, I'd strongly recommend Villette - it's exquisite and I would say has plenty of differences to Jane Eyre.

I've read a biography of the sisters and there's nothing to say that Emily was agoraphobic. Emily and Charlotte went to Brussels together and Emily worked as a governess as well. Emily went for walks with a friend at home and had a dog. As for life experiences Charlotte was almost certainly a virgin as well until the last year or so of her life and by that time she'd already written Jane Eyre and Villette. I suppose the difference that you're thinking of is that Charlotte would become very infatuated with men - her professor at Brussels and her publisher in England - and pursued them but they did not reciprocate. Emily may or may not have had infatuations as well but was more introverted and didn't pursue them. Charlotte was also the one who pursued publication of the Bronte sisters' novels which is to her credit.

Maybe agoraphobic isn't the right word, but she left Brussels early & never really left home after that - she was the primary caregiver for their father & drunken brother up to her death. But she never lived in the world for any length of time (aside from a stint as a governess, I think, which is supposedly when she got the idea for WH after hearing about some sort of local family feud) and I guess the distinction I'd make with Charlotte is that JE is almost more about obsession while Heathcliff & Cathy have a passionate love, hard to imagine for a woman with so little life experience (if you will).

But I will definitely take your recommendation on Villette

None of the sisters liked working as a governess and preferred to not do it as much as they could. I think perversely *not* having romantic or sexual life experience may actually make for some of the most famous love stories, maybe because they were repressed and did not have the disappointments that come with experiencing relationships for real. Jane Austen was also a spinster (Pride and Prejudice is one of the great British romantic novels as well).

Twilight Man by Liz Brown. About the wealthy son of "Copper King" William Clark and his boytoy. Only about 50 pages in and it's really good.

r74, start with A Boy's Own Story, his breakthrough book. Then The Beautiful Room is Empty, Farewell Symphony. Also his memoirs are good: City Boy and Inside a Pearl; lots of sex in these. I also loved. States of Desire, a non-fiction canvassing of gay life across. the country. Written in 1980, pre-AIDS, it's a fascinating. sociological and historic document. The Unpunished Life is a literary memoir if you like that sort of thing.

^Sorry, Unpunished VICE.

Thank you r81 - I appreciate it! Will do.

Someone recommend a good mystery series.

Which ones do you already know?

The original dozen or so Inspector Morse mysteries by Colin Dexter are terrific. There's an active thread now on DL about the books, the tv series and the two spin-off series.

I love madcap romps like the books of Joe Keenan, and dramatic soap opera-y books like those written by Dominick Dunne. Just campy, funny, easy-breezy reads. Any suggestions for books like those?

R84-The Christopher Fowler series about detectives Bryant and May from the Peculiar Crimes Unit are witty, clever, and so satisfying. There are 17 books in the series, starting with "Full Dark House". Set in and around London with historical facts thrown in about every aspect of British life. I loved them! Plus, you can imagine the pair being played in a series by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.

I just finished Tracy Flick Can't Win, what a great read! Thanks to all who recommended it; it was a perfect lazy afternoon book.

I think I recommended it here, r89. So glad you enjoyed it! Apparently, Reese Witherspoon has signed on to reprise her role as Tracy in the film (no surprise).

OP, if you enjoy du Maurier, The House on the Strand is a really interesting novel by her.

JAMAICA INN has replaced REBECCA as my favorite DuMaurier.

The Coroners daughter was given to me. Im not a big reader but my sister and some other friends borrowed it from me, as they all told each other how great it is...then recently it got a new york times rave....my sister and friends say it the best book they ever read. They are hoping ans praying for a sequel...ive started it and its fantastic. Set in Dublin.

Looking forward to Up With the Sun. by Thomas Mallon, out in Feb. Novel about Dick Kallman gay Broadway actor whose life had a sad ending.

Thanks, r94. I just ordered it.

R87. Oh, then I think late Henry James would be right up your alley—try The Wings of the Dove. It could be a Frasier episode!

I just put Up With the Sun on my Amazon wishlist

R22, is that the new unexpurgated version of the diaries? Are they worth reading? I found his diaries fascinating and frustrating. You could tell they were holding back the good stuff. Is there a biography? He was Prince Paul of Yugoslavia’s boy.

The Sacred Fount is nothing if not a madcap romp!

The Diaries are published in 3 big-ass volumes. Sure hope they didn't expurgate.

I just read "God Save Texas" by Lawrence Wright and I'm spitting fire, ready to nuke that pathetic shithole off the planet. He of course is a right winger even though his affect is on the level of Truman Capote. He insists what wonderful sincere people are those psychopaths George and Laura Bush, and he tries to humanize Abbott, Perry, and the rest of the freak show and splain away their g uns! And of course he has anecdotal evidence of the perfidy of liberals. What human garbage

Recommendations for a Hamish MacBeth style mystery series? A character driven whodunnit that is engaging and gripping (and possibly funny, though that’s not a necessity). It doesn’t need to be super “cozy”, but I am caring for a family member and don’t want to engage in torture and the mind of a sociopathic undersexed deranged spinster and paedophiles during my time off.

I finished I’m quick succession Notes On A Scandal and the Val McDermid book that Wire In The Blood based off and while it’s great writing, I am actively trying to avoid this sort of ironic, psychological cynicism right now.

I like the Richard Osmond books, and Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse, and Cadfael for reference. A legal drama may be good as well, I like what I can recall from Scott Turow, John Grisham, Steve Cavanagh and Lisa Scottoline.

Though they'd be considered "period" mysteries now, have you read any of the Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford series or Reginald Hill's Dalziel & Pascoe series, r102? They'd fit your description.

Ruth Rendell is excellent

R102 oh Lordy, I have to give Wexford and Dalgleish a miss, my parents watched them religiously in my childhood and I couldn’t bear them. Which is odd because I loved Morse.

The books are all far superior to any of the TV series, r102.

Any stand-alone a or series a bit more contemporary than the Wexford series? I checked my local library and they literally have a single book in the series.

I was a huge fan of Rendell from as far back as the early 1980s and she could pretty dependably come out with at least one, if not two books every year, both Wexford and stand alone titles, at least into the early 2000s. She was so prolific she came up with a nom de plume Barbara Vine and wrote some of her books under that name.

But I think she inevitably hit a rut and her books became mostly predictable and dull. I think the most recent book of hers I enjoyed was called THE GIRL NEXT DOOR from around 2014. But her best books were in the 1970s and 80s, IMHO.

There have been DL threads devoted to her over the years and I'd suggest searching for them.

What non-Rendell, non-James crime writers do you like, r108?

R50 I thought Less is Lost was, as a whole, a mess. I thought the last chapter and "the chasing the train" through the US was like a sloppy story treatment for a Netflix special. I am not hard-hearted - I tear up at commercials.

I read the first Less book and was taken with it enough to read the second. I can see another in the series, but I'll sit the next one out.

I am reading In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson about the cluelss academic and his family, that Roosevelt appointed Ambassador to Germany. He sat in Berlin and watched as Hitler gained control of the government and the Nazis gained power, passed a bunch of laws and engaged in thuggish attacks on anyone who didn't salute the Reich. Very harrowing tale. And so many similarities to what we are seeing here.

I love the chapters about his slutty daughter fucking Nazis, R111. That family was a complete mess.

r109, I'm repeating myself here but I think the only mystery writers who I've consistently liked over many years beside Ruth Rendell are Reginald Hill (RIP) and his Pascoe/Dalziel series and many of the old Julian Symons novels from the 1970s and 1980s, all more Hitchcockian than whodunnits.

Some of Symons' titles I've enjoyed are The Blackheath Poisonings, The Narrowing Circle, The Belting Inheritance, The 31st of February, The Colour of Murder, The Players and the Game, The Man Who Killed Himself, The Progress of a Crime, Sweet Adelaide and The Plot Against Roger Rider. They may be hard to find now, probably all out of print, unless they've been reissued in the UK.

Just finished The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. It's fun, and a little wild at places, but it reads too much like a movie scenario, with only sketchily drawn characters and events, and so I didn't get the cosy, immersed feel you get when reading a good book.

To add t r114: Alex Michaelides is, in fact, also a scriptwriter. Uma Thurman apparently gave him writing tips and he's also inspired by Billy Wilder. But those tips only really work for a movie, which is visual, and less so in a book, which benefits from greater density than a film script.

I wouldn't trust any novelist who went to Uma Thurman for writing tips.

Well, she was once married to (ahem) novelist Ethan Hawke, r116.

We had very different reactions to "God Save Texas," r101. Some of your criticisms might be fair, but Lawrence Wright a right-winger? To me he seems like a classic liberal boomer, perhaps some neolib tendencies like a lot of journalists of that generation. But I thought he was clearly and unequivocally critical of the rightward lurch of Texas state government, particularly Dan Patrick and his ilk. As for the Bushes, maybe he should have been harder on George, but the fact is that he knew them before George became president which is always going to complicate one's view of a person.

Maybe I'm a Wright apologist because he's one of my very favorite journalists. His "Remembering Satan" is my favorite true crime book; his Scientology book, "Going Clear," is investigative reporting at its juicy best. I've been meaning to read his al-Qaida book forever.

I've worked with Lawrence Wright, he wrote a play in which I was involved. He is indeed a liberal but thoroughly boring and academic, at least as a playwright. Nice guy, though.

as far as mysteries go, I have always enjoyed Michael Connally. IMO he is the best. If you have never read him do it. And John Grisham always delivers. He writes more than legal thrillers. So anything he writes you should read.

What are some of your favorite Michael Connellys, r120?

Is David Baldacci worth a read?

Only if you buy your books in supermarkets, r122.

So… no?

R121, I'm not r120, but I recommend starting with the first Harry Bosch novel, The Black Echo. Here's a list of all of Connelly's books, in order.

R116, she gave him screenwriting tips, which he applied to his novel.

My final recommendation is James Lee Burke. Excellent. Anything he wrote.

Michael Connelly 's Bosch series and his Lincoln Lawyer series are gold. I really enjoyed them, and Amazon has both of them streaming now as to distinctly different detective series.

Molly Ivins and An Richards took the same tack of condescending to GWB, too dumb to realize what a bold criminal he really is. Sold access to his dad to Bahrain and Qatar. Invented a ridiculous accounting fraud to overstate Harkness earnings three times (which Ken Lay copied at Enron). Committed eminent domain fraud to become wealthy as owner of the Ranger, he got a 10% shares bonus. Literally every dime he has ever made has been by criminal means. ANd that includes president, to which he was never elected. Maybe his subsequent art sales have been legit, but he has not "nice" by any standard.

R129 I love your post but I think you're in the wrong thread.

R129 And the MC for the Golden Globes was just so incompetent!

[quote] Well, she was once married to (ahem) novelist Ethan Hawke, [R116].

Marilyn Monroe was once married to playwright Arthur Miller (a much better writer than Hawke), and I wouldn't have gone to her for writing tips either.

I do not believe writing talent and know-how are somehow passed to another party through semen.

R132 Tell me about it.

I am reading the Whalebone Theater after the recommendations on the previous thread. I'm about 150 pages in and find the British children (who basically speak like adults) so grating. Should I give up? I can't stand the main girl with her precociousness and the extended passages about them all putting on a play. Does it get better?

R134-I not only gave up, I gave it to a neighbor for Christmas. Boring.

I hated it too, R134 and bailed on it much sooner. Life is too short to read irritating books. Give up!

Sorry, you've all bailed on The Whalebone Theatre. The story takes a dramatic turn, actually several dramatic turns with the beginning of WWII and the three children each find their own way in the war effort at home and in France.

I loved it. One of my favorite books last year. But to each his own.

R80 here. I just finished Twilight Man last night. Really fascinating book, if you are into LGBT history you'll enjoy it

I'm interested in lesbian and gay history, r138. I have no idea what "LGBT history" is, beyond the fact that the term "LGBT" is an oxymoron and there is no such thing as "LGBT". The only history there can be of it is how this monstrous construct was fabricated and the harm it has done to gay people and perverted our history.

R139 The "anti-T" folk are starting to sound like the flat earthers. Did Jewish Space Lazers force us to put the T on the LGB? Do the T folk drink babies' blood at pizza joints?

R139 sounds ridiculous. People have been using the term LGBT for at least 30 years. But they suddenly pretend it's offensive just to make a point. You right-wingers accuse others of being "special snowflakes" but you get awfully bent out of shape over words. Republicans have done way more harm to our community than any word.

What exactly is the common history of lesbian, gay and transgender people, r141? Perhaps you can recommend a good book.

R141 Exactly. Every time one of the anti-T, right wing reactionaries burb up their vitriol ("anti-woke" being a telltale sign of the disease) it's important to remember that they are in league with International Reaction - from anti-Gay Russian Christian Nationalist autocrats to Kenyan evangelical demagogues to radical Islamicist Wahhabism) who want to imprison if not execute people who love those of the same sex.

Again: "anti-woke" "anti-trans" for the most part means = "gays are immoral, illegal, and should be imprisoned or killed"

R142, for one, Republicans are currently trying to ban books about gays AND trans people. They are trying to limit discussion of gays AND trans people in schools. Gays AND trans people have faced discrimination in the US military. Laws banning gay marriage would limit who trans people can marry.

That's happening now r144, not in history, and it still doesn't give gay and trans-identified people a common history nor is it even really a common experience. It's like saying Jews and Muslims have a common history because they've both suffered discrimination in majority Christian countris. In any case, the truth is many children who would have grown up gay but who adults decided to trans and thus ruin will now be able to grow up gay. If Jazz Jennings had grown up in Florida with the new rules, he wouldn't have had his body destroyed to fulfil adults' ridiculous gender ideology and would be a healthy gay man today.

I once hooked up with a kid who had a Harry Bosch fetish.

I've been reading Eliot's "Selected Essays" from 1932, because it's the only complete set of his Elizabethan-through-Victorian poetry criticism. His disgusting prissy style is such a fine representation of an American imitating a High Church Englishmen with MANY noble and distinguished relationships. But underneath this self-parody is a cuttingly astute and sound critique of British poetic minds and methods.

Also, I've been reading Keats' Letters. Poor, dear boy.

Black people also faced discrimination in the US military, r144. According to you we should all consider ourselves BLGBT and there is a common black, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans history.

The ban on homosexuals and things like Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a very gay experience of discrimination. Stop trying to erase that gay experience and that gay history by mixing it up with other things.

As this is a book thread, here's a link to a story about a trans Navy Seal who wrote a co-wrote the book Warrior Princess about his experience with Anne Speckhard, a psychologist at Georgetown University School of Medicine. Except now he's realised it's all a load of rubbish and has detransitioned and feels as though he was exploited by people like Speckhard (who is brushing off his detransition, as though it means nothing).

R145 in Florida trans kiss are being "investigated" bu the state and Ron de Santis is asking for lists of trans kids at colleges. Trying to defend Florida makes you look stupid. Florida also stopped high school kids from doing a play with lesbian characters

R148, Trump banned trans people from the military. Saying trans people have faced no discrimination in the military is stupid.

Bringing up "ex-trans" people is stupid, since "ex-gays" also exist. Should we use Milo as an example?

Oops, "trans kids" not "trans kiss"

R145 and r148 is the same right-wing troll. Milo?

Just finished Dan Chaon's SLEEPWALK. I've been a huge fan of his early Hitchcockian novels, AWAIT YOUR REPLY and YOU REMIND ME OF ME, but this one, not as much.

A harrowing yet oft times hilarious dystopian tale, set in the near future, it's about a middle aged guy who is a courier, often for unknown sources, zig-zagging through the US, delivering suspect packages, transporting prisoners, planting explosives, spying, guarding abandoned factories and compounds and occasionally assassinating people. The drone-filled, comfortless, blasted out world that Chaon paints is sadly all too believable and it just depressed me no end, though I did force myself to finish the book as it's so well conceived. As I'm in my early 70s, I guess I can at least console myself with the fact that I'll probably be gone by the time it all comes to this.

Curious if there are any other Chaon fans here.

R152-I used to be, but he got tiresome and all DeLillo-ish after a while and I just stopped reading him.

I just started reading this. I wanted to know the back story.

[italic] The History of Friedrich II of Prussia, called Frederick the Great [/italic] , by Thomas Carlyle.

I read “Sleepwalk,” r152 and can’t say I loved it. The story was compelling if overlong. Most writers, even good writers like Chaon, could use a good edit.

I'm reading two good books of essays by writers I admire: [italic]A Left-Handed Woman[/italic] by Judith Thurman, and [italic]Let Me Tell You What I Mean[/italic] by Joan Didion.

In search of lost time.

The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry. I’ve seen the film several times but had never read the novel. There’s quite a bit more sex in the novel, including bestiality.

R11 Those sound very interesting. Thanks!

Frank Tallis' Vienna Blood series. His Jewish Psychiatrist/ detective, Max Lieberman and his Police inspector partner remind me of Sherlock Holmes. Smart plotting and it's set in the 1890s-1900s. I love them.

Thanks for the Frank Tallis and Dan Chaon recommendations!

The Secret of the Bull, by Jose Raul Bernardo.

R11 Phillip Gregory is good, but Sharon Kay Penman is even better if you love historical novels

I just finished Judith Thurman’s new essay collection “The Left-Handed Woman.” She has a wide range of interests, fashion, languages, fiction, feminism. I think every piece was first published in The New Yorker.

Barbara Kingsolvers' Demon Copperhead is terrific. Definitely NOT a beach read, though. Riveting.

The house by the cerulean sea

Flying Cloud

Spare. And no, I’m not joking.

It’s so interesting that it shows how banal royalty is from the inside. It makes it all seem like one big joke. Like actors forced to take part in a movie they know is shit, but just carry on anyway.

Harry is so not made for royal life that it’s almost a sad waste. He mentioned sloths of the family that sip drinks all day and bask in their ranks/titles. But those are the very people at least enjoying their privilege.

This also makes William that much more interesting but also so familiar. He seems like my older brother in many ways.

The book is good on its own merits. I don’t care about the feelings or drama of either side, I’m just enjoying a peak behind the royal curtain. From a male perspective (less about the shit I want to know like curtesy protocols) it delivers.

He also shows that William and Kate have a fun side. But boy are William and Harry fucked up men.

The people in the family don’t hug each other which is so weird. Everyone in that family seem so so weird in aloof, including Harry.

Warning, some may find this boring, but that’s normal for autobiographies.

The New Yorker review gives a great deal of credit to Harry's ghostwriter, JR Moehringer. Is he recognized prominently on the title page?

Big thanks to the poster that recommended "Jamaica Inn" - listened to it on Audible & got me through a long car trip. Loved it!

I'm leaving for Europe in two days. I've got a 10 hour flight and nothing to read...

R170, the ghostwriter should get credit, but it’s a celeb memoir, they all have ghost writers. It enhances rhs tory which is all I care about as a reader. Some of you are acting so weird. Never has a celeb memoir has so many DL members suddenly up in arms to give ghost writers some flowers.

When I read and hear reviews that Harry is such a fine writer, I'm going to stick up for the guy who probably did most of the writing.

R171 - Jamaica Inn read by actor Trevor Eve was one of the first audiobooks I ever encountered. He did a terrific job!

Years ago, my boss was a minor political figure. Big Fish in a small pond. He worked with a Ghost writer on his memoir, and some of us staffers sat in on their sessions. Basically, the way it works is the principal is going to have a taped conversation and a Q&A and the ghostwriter transcribes, cleans it up, edits, etc. So the main guy collaborates. There's no invention. And with Harry's life so well documented from the day if his birth, a lot of time was probably spent in recollecting events and feelings from all that.

Reading the farewell symphony. My god he got a lot of dick!

Yes, he did! And he has spent most of his writing talking about it.

R178 yes, I’m not complaining, his body count is just unreal. And he’s not afraid to share the filthiest, most embarrassing, desperate hookups in such detailed, vivid language 😂

A friend works for his publishing company. She says his books don't sell, but they continue to release them because of his stature. His new one out next spring is about a ballet dancer and his older lover.

Oh, and he has a husband and a much younger boyfriend. And he's 83.

Speaking of sex, I'm in the middle of Allan Hollinghurst's THE SPELL from 1998. I'm really enjoying it quite a bit but I'm not sure there's much to it other than scenes of sex, bitchiness and drug and alcohol consumption. Sometimes, that's enough, though.

The Spell is the one Hollinghurst novel I didn't enjoy.

Tender is the Night- is it worth reading?

To the ones asking for mystery series, 3 current authors I enjoy with police procedurals:

Jane Casey and her Maeve Kerrigan series (she is a young policewoman in a London murder unit)

Cara Hunter(takes place in Oxford)

Gytha Lodge

Thank you r184!

Reading Milk Fed by Melissa Broder. It's a quick read - extremely dark and quite funny.

Deliberate Cruelty

For cosy English mysteries, try Robert Goddard.

Start with "Into The Blue", a great Goddard mystery.

I liked "Into the Blue" and "Caught in the Light." "Painting the Darkness" and "Fine Art of Invisible Detection' are on my TBR pile.

I'm also starting "The Shards" by Bret Easton Ellis, just got it in the mail today. I enjoyed his last book very much.

Has anyone read any of Jonathan Tropper's novels? This Is Where I Leave You? Everything Changes? Looking for something a little lighter but not too light and I'm intrigued with his Amazon reader reviews.

Farewell Symphony really goes off the rails when he has his 15 year old nephew come live with him after the kid is discharged from a psych hospital. He talks about the kid’s large penis size, says he’s a little in love with him, then pays for the nephew’s 13 year old Mexican girlfriend from the psych hospital to come live with him, repeatedly talks about her sexy body and how much sex the two kids are having.

I have no idea how I went from reading about him fucking 1000 men (no complaints there - he really paints quite a picture) to reading about these kids. It’s like a bad fever dream.

I guess the 1970s were a very different time.

I finished Kari Slaughter’s “Triptych” the first Will Trent crime novel. Good plotting, overlong and you know who did it very early on.

The Shards is very good. It's like an amalgamation of all his earlier stuff. Very, very gay and rather disturbing in parts.

Thanks for the Robert Goddard recommendation!

Reserved Shards at the library - thank you

R193's description makes it sound like the book was written by the nephew troll!

Model by Michael Gross

R193 But it was released in the 90s, right? I guess you are saying that White's essential perspective is grounded in the 70s.

Actually the only White I've really liked are the first two "young and unfocused" novels, Forgetting Elena and Nocturnes for the King of Naples. Short, poetic, almost experimental fiction.

Yes r200 but I guess he’s describing the 70s? Regardless very bold talking about your teenage nephew’s penis size.

White’s nephew did live with him for awhile in adolescence and/or young adulthood, so I think he drew some of that from his own experience. I think he started as a very good writer, but, the older he got the gassier the writing became, though I did like Our Young Man, his fairly recent short novel about a model. But all in all, I think Andrew Holleran is a much better and more consistent writer.

I think if White wrote less, he'd write better. Holleran's output is relatively small, but the prose is exquisite.

Just saw an ad for "The English Führer" by Rory Clements. Looks interesting (just came out).

I have a friend who is a college professor who once worked with Edmund White, and I asked her afterwards what he was like. My friend, who is a nice person and doesn't like to badmouth other people, thought for a moment and then said, "He's the sort of person where, if you have a different opinion of an artwork or of a book than he does, his response is to be sad for you, because he's convinced his own opinions are the only ones worth having." (She is his age and much better educated, btw.)

Love that R205 thank you

I've started the audio edition of [italic]Remains of the Day[/italic]. Good narration, which helps with the slow introspection; I have not seen the film.

Film is excellent, r207.

Am reading The Paper Palace, from Miranda Cowley Heller, i am enjoying it but (like other first novels) she throws in everything, including the kitchen sink.

Anyone read it?

R207. If you enjoy that, read Never Let Me Go. Very different (except for somewhat unreliable narrator), but equally good and heart-breaking. Ishiguro really is an artistic genius.

Anyone else reading the new gay novel THE NEW LIFE by Tom Crewe? I'll be very interested in hearing your thoughts. I'm almost 1/2 way through it and it definitely has its ups and downs.

R210 Ishiguro is a hard read for me. His simple, quirkily simple sentences. His slippery narrative perspective. I read his latest, Klara and the Sun, this fall. Almost two thirds of the way through I was thinking, "this is so turgid, unpleasant, I don't care about this robot, these humans aren't appealing or interesting, it all seems so artificial and mannered...." as i feverishly turned pages and was overwhelmed with both joy and sadness at the end. What a weird writer.

I would find it tedious, but I was fully prepared for not much "action" before starting Remains. Good audio narration is helping here.

Just finished "The Shards". I feel like I've just awakened from a nightmare.In Fact, I'm feeling the same way I felt when I first saw "Apocalypse Now" at the Ziegfeld. I turned to the guy I was dating and said, "This is either a masterpiece or the biggest piece of shit I've ever seen. I can't decide".

R214 Right. One review called him "the Shock Jock of literature." Joe Rogan as a novelist. Not my cup of tea (and I went to HS in Los Angeles).

Bret's ego knows no boundaries.

Lily Tuck "The News from Paraguay"

I starts out annoyingly chick writing, but then she starts throwing in gross sex scenes and even grosser medical ones, and now that I'm halfway through she paints the Paraguayans as so bad I have to think there is some racism behind it.

some gratuitous homophobia as well

Books are awfully decorative.

I'm currently tackling Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky.

R217

Travel literature is my absolute favorite genre. Paraguay seems a very shady place from what I've read of it. A book I recall liking a lot ...

R212, loved your post and I understand perfectly what you mean though my experience was slightly different re Klara an the Sun, found it overall arid but was something that changes your perspective about being human. On the other hand Never Let Me Go is probably on my top 3 favorite books.

For me, KLARA AND THE SUN was sort of a "noble experiment" but ultimately I found it too heartbreakingly depressing to be able to finish it. I stopped about 3/4 of the way through with no regrets.

Otoh, REMAINS OF THE DAY is one of my favorite novels of all time. I've tried reading a couple of Ishiguro's other books including AN ARTIST OF THE FLOATING WORLD, but couldn't get into them. I don't know why, but I've avoided NEVER LET ME GO, I think because of my perceived notion of it as science fiction, for want of a better term. But I must try it.

I absolutely love the Ishiguro books I’ve read—The Remains of the Day, Klara and the Sun, and The Unconsoled. I look forward to reading others.

How do you pronounce that word, OP?

I love Ishiguro as well, but found The Buried Giant bloated and tedious.

I don’t like the kind of science fiction that NEVER LET ME GO is because cynicism is built into its DNA. That’s not itself a bad thing, but but when that cynicism is linked with a dourness and helplessness I loose interest in the journey because the destination is all too obvious.

I finished Bernice Rubens' [italic]A Five Year Sentence[/italic] yesterday. Although it wasn't the ending I was hoping for, she nails irony! Her style reminded me of Jane Gardam. I have Rubens' [italic]Sunday Best[/italic] on my TBR list.

Where are you finding the Rubens' books, r228? Your library? Used copies? I know she's not easy to find these days.

Finished Farewell Symphony finally. Painted a vivid picture of gay NY in the 70s and 80s, very sad when AIDS killed off everyone he knew.

That being said, I'll always associate him with the graphic scene when his abusive ex-bf drugged him and forced an enema up his ass, causing him to shit everywhere.

Yeesh.

Available to purchase as Kindle books, R229. Forgot until just now that I bought [italic]Mr Wakefield's Crusade[/italic] as a used paperback.

Duh. I'm such a dinosaur, I forget there is such a thing as Kindle.

I cannot read a book online or on a Kindle.

Read books, hardback books, pages to turn, the kinesthetic validation of movement in the story, print not glaring back into your eyes with artificial light, the attention span allowed to be what the body needs - not shortened by the conditioning of devices.

Nothing to click. Nothing to scroll. Simply the sacred beauty of one human using language to make beauty.

R233 is mostly right, but certainly at the DL, of all places, she MUST know that I'm reading her by referring to her "artificial light" comment by wondering if she spends every sunny day on a grassy hillock reading "Mandingo Drum" (because only that light is good enough for her) and grinding her crinolines into the violets as she pantingly flips the pages,

All true, r233, but if you like to travel with six or seven books on a long trip, an e-reader is so much easier to deal with.

I can no longer read the fonts in most books. It's just too small. Kindle, which enables me to enlarge the type, makes it possible for me to continue reading.

Right now it's "Collision on Tenerife." Worst accident in aviation history.

A Kindle doesn’t have the glare of a computer or phone; that is in large purpose the appeal of them.

You all must read Tom Crewe's THE NEW LIFE. I can't quite say I enjoyed it as it's more an intellectual experience than an emotional read (even with all the gay sex), but it's a very smart novel based on the true-life collaboration of Havelock Ellis and John Addington on the first treatise on homosexuality, or Inversion as they call it, in the 1890s and the personal and sexual lives of the two men and their wives (and John's hunky lover). This will be a controversial read for many, I expect, but worth the engagement.

R239, that sounds good. I just put a request on it at my library.

Stay with it, r240, it has its ups and downs but really pays off by the end.

The New Life sounds really good, put it on my Amazon wishlist

R233, there's nothing to click on a Kindle or other e-reader either and you can always turn the light off. People with e-readers tend to really love reading and you can still read physical books even if you own an e-reader.

Moreover, r233, per the discussion on the Bernice Rubens books, sometimes with e-readers you can easily find books that it's hard to find in print.

Finally tried Ben Lerner. Leaving the Atocha Station. Two of my most trusted critic friends are totally at odds over his books, one loving the other loathing. Have to say I lean to the negative. It was a trial to finish this solipsistic, navel-gazing, humorless narrative (which many fine critics deem "hilarious.") At least this will save me from his subsequent books. Anyone hear read Lerner?

R245, I read The Topeka School and was impressed with it, enough to read Leaving the Atocha Station afterward.

R244 No, of course there's nothing to "click", but how do you scroll down a page or turn a page. My assertion is that there is something different that happens with the brain when it engages text in a digital form - with all the kinesthetic, light/eye dynamics that requires. This is brain science, though I also value writer's comments about this phenomenon: Zadie Smith wrote a great essay years ago on "the flattened brain" that results from digital absorption.

R247, on an e-reader you simply tap on the screen to turn the page - it's very easy to do one-handed. An e-reader is very different from a tablet or phone screen and you can turn the light off (which is, again, a different kind of light from that on a tablet or phone screen). The only purpose of the backlight on an e-reader is so you can read in the dark, especially so as not to keep your partner awake. You should try discovering what Kindles and other e-readers are actually like before commenting on them.

I can't find any references to this essay by Zadie Smith.

R248 Chico, I've used Kindles before... for many, many hours when they first came out. It was an essay in the New York Review of Books, perhaps 7 or 8 years ago. You have already made up your mind and determined that an opinion in contradiction to yours is, by definition, flawed, incomplete, disingenuous. So be it.

My ideas about how the digital environment dampens the spirit, limits the view, alters brain function... .have been developed over the past 30 years (I used to code - C++ and other languages - I wrote HTML on some of the very first websites, I am not a luddite without cause. There's brain science on this - even this morning there was a study released on how looking at screens delayed development in toddler's brains.

I don't begrudge you text in the way you choose to have it. I do think humans are changing, not for the better. So be it.

For me one of the great pleasures in reading is holding a book, turning the pages, admiring the feel and look and texture of the paper and print, rejoicing in a beautifully designed cover (though those can be rare). I love well-made paperbacks as well as hard covers. I have a great little book light clip from Amazon that works brilliantly at night in bed.

Anyway, I'll never give up books.

R248 A cursory search identifies Zadie Smith as a frequent critic of the digital environment/social media. Start, if you want, with "Generation Why", and essay in the NYRB in 2009 (?).

R250 Exactly. I think our weakness is to accept whatever technology is fed us... without clear thinking as to why, what impact, what is lost. We become mindless consumers of a Matrix that is not woo woo cool, but rather just purposefully changing us into monetizing monads for the greater economic gain of International Capital. Like that...

R247, Even asking "How do you scroll?" shows you know how to scroll!

On the Kindle, one simply swipes left, you know, like with a page in a book.

I switch from book form to Kindle form, if I own both, depending on my available light or what I feel like carrying along with me.

I own thousands of books, but I also love my two Kindle Fires!

Lol, no r249. You have already made up your mind and are determined that an experience which is different from yours is, by definition, flawed, incomplete, disingenuous. I - and others here - enjoy reading from Kindles and other e-readers. You are the one insisting that our experience is flawed and wrong and believe that only you can define the best way of reading for everyone else.

R251, I found nothing by Zadie Smith on a "flattened brain" as a result of computer screens and certainly nothing about a "flattened brain" as a result of reading from a Kindle.

Why do you keep confusing social media and the digital/online environment with reading a book on a Kindle?

It's ironic that the reason I'm immediately able to look up Zadie Smith's essay "Generation Why" is because I'm on my laptop. It's about Facebook and says nothing about e-readers, i.e. it's completely irrelevant to whether reading a book on a Kindle can be an enjoyable experience.

How exactly do you read and write on DL if not through a digital screen?

Dear one, we probably shouldn't hijack this thread... but there is a flaw in your response. I've experienced both - the "experience" is mine in both instances. I've determined, based on my own conscious witness to what happens to me, and then further explained by significant amount of brain science, that the digital point of contact (the physiology) and social media/flattening individuals to 1/0 (psychology and consciousness) is pejorative. And the digital tool and "social media" in general are absolutely associated, to my thinking. Not yours.... uh... so be it, yah?

Using the tool to critique the tool: I am a Jesus-and-the-Beatitudes socialist. I believe modern crony/international capitalism is destructive - to the planet, to the human spirit. It instrumentalizes and diminishes the human. It oppresses the human for corporate profit. Yet I buy my food, my clothes, my books, my entertainment... from the institutions of Capital. I suppose you might say, with cause, I am a hypocrite. I'd say I am a realist who hasn't given up totally....

I find it a bit tough to read Crime and Punishment in bed so last night started Sunset Swing, the final instalment of Ray Celestin's City Blues Quartet of mafia-tinged crime novels set in four different American cities over the 20th century, with a jazz soundtrack and protagonists Pinkerton and police detectives Michael and Ida Davis.

The novels are atmospheric, intelligently and gorgeously written, even though Celestin is a Brit trying to capture the soul of a certain aspect of America.

To r255, aka Andrew Marvell 😉, I ❤ you. I, too, am a Beatitudes Socialist.

Sweet Mary Mother of Christ and God's Red Eye!

They've let the Bolsheys in to set up a dating service at R255/R257 (et al.)!

Is anyone familiar with CITY ON FIRE by Don Winslow, a sexy drug war thriller about Rhode Island drug lords? Seems to have gotten rave reviews last year.

I tried it R259 and couldn’t get into it.

Thanks, r260. Good to know. I took it out of the library so I'll give it a whirl but no biggie if I'm bored.

I'm about 100 pages into the Robert Goddard book Into the Blue, recommended upthread, and while it's perfectly enjoyable, as a thriller it feels a bit dated in its plotting and characters (it was published in1990). I guess I'm looking for a little more edge. But I'll give it another 50 pages or so.

CITY ON FIRE is serviceable Winslow, but doesn't come close to his masterpiece, "The Force". Now, that is a killer novel.

R261, I think it's safe to say that Goddard writes "cosy" thrillers. But I like that.

Finished a couple books in the last week. I finally read "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner, which certainly deserves its reputation as one of the best American novels ever. Challenging, yes -- but not as tough to get through as "The Sound and the Fury." It was also funny, bizarre, vivid and memorable. If they wanted to make it more relevant to a modern audience, they could retitle it, "This is Where Trump Voters Came From."

I also quickly read "Go Ahead in the Rain" by Hanif Aburraqib, about the seminal rap group A Tribe Called Quest. A lovely, beautifully written appreciation.

Next am reading "The Furrows by Namwali Serpell, which made the NYT's 10 best books list last year.

Don Winslow can [italic]write[/italic], r259. I haven't read that particular book, but you might try one of his earlier books, e.g., [italic]Savages[/italic] or [italic]the Death and Life of Bobby Z[/italic], then move into the drug-trafficking novels, which are heavier. He has an earlier series with Neal Carey as the main character; they're okay, but a bit twee.

I read Fleishman is in trouble and frankly i can't understand the NBA nomination.

Now i'm reading Naomi Novik's Uprroted and it's a very entertaining fantasy novel

I only saw the Fleishman series, but it was hard to believe such trashy storytelling (missing mom who no one notices!) has its origins as a celebrated literary work worthy of NBA nomination, and the author’s ridiculous name makes me angry just reading it and turns me off immediately. I don’t care if she’s the most revered celebrity profiler for high end magazines, that is nothing to be heralded for, she’s basically an upmarket National Inquirer writer.

Has anyone else read the Booker prize winning The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Sri Lankan novelist Sheehan Karunatilaka? The protagonist is a gay man who appears alive in flashbacks or as a ghost trying to to solve the mystery of his murder.

It’s a challenging read but really brings to life Sri Lanka and its multi decade civil war.

I read Seven Moons. Was in awe of the technical prowess, but can't say I enjoyed the experience, mostly because I'm not a fan of magical realism. It was a struggle, Interested to know the writer's sexuality, since speaks of a wife and kids but chose to make the narrator a gay man.

R269 Not sure what happened (I mean I loved Isabel Allende etc.) but if I read a review now that even hints of "magical realism" I stop reading. I think it's the digital world, social media, superhero cinema ... "special effects" in prose? Nah.

R269 This Booktuber attended the press conference after the awards ceremony and one of the journalists asks him about that around the 36.00 mark:

Thanks, r271. I have to say that the narrator's being gay didn't much affect the story—other than he was an outsider in his culture, as well as a political dissident. But I'm wondering if there would have been pushback had he been a white British novelist writing as a Sri Lankan.

Speaking of Isabel Allende, I have no interest in her fiction, but liked her memoir [italic]My Invented Country[/italic]. Chileans can do the "Mama's Boy" thing right up there with the legendary L. A. Persian sons!

I usually hate books like this, but finding this quite useful. Written by a psychiatric some years ago and talks about how to process emotions.

R274 92% of all self-help books in the last 20 years could just be avoided by becoming a Buddhist. Much more efficient.

R275 so true. This book is articulating Buddhist principles in a way that really resonates for me. I’m even taking notes.

MARY 😳

To be honest i don't think a writer has to justify writing a main character gay if he is straight. The characters in The promise (amazing novel) are straight and Galgut is gay.

Even i find some of the Booker nominees (Exit West, Such a fun age, The sweetness of water) pretty bad, the truth is the winners are pretty great the last decade, way better than the Pulitzer

The best "gay" novel I've read in recent years is THE GREAT BELIEVERS by the straight Rebecca Makkai.

Can't wait for her new book, btw.

I agree, r277. Just wondering if today's environment would allow for such "crossing." Andre Aciman wrote a modern gay classic and he is (presumably) straight. Styron wrote black characters in NAT TURNER, but doubt hes get away with that book today.

[quote]I've avoided NEVER LET ME GO, I think because of my perceived notion of it as science fiction, for want of a better term. But I must try it.

I thought Klara & The Sun was a pale imitation of NLMG, so if you couldn't take Klara, Never Let Me Go will be too much. As side note - not a book- did you watch "After Yang", reminds me of these books, though it has a much more poignant ending for the AI.

I've started reading "We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland" & it's very interesting. I love Ireland & I admire how they've embraced progressive politics while the US rolled backwards, but there's so much about the country I didn't know/didn't understand, more than just the typical famine/war against Britain, etc. type info

I liked The Great Believers a lot too. I remember completely sobbing towards the end when you see what happens to the main character. Unpopular opinion though: the gay sex scenes were not believable at all. I have had the same problem with Hanya Yanagihara. Straight (or bi) women do not write gay sex well.

We Don’t Know Ourselves is quite good, I had no idea that midcentury Ireland was in such a backward, antiquated state and really hadn’t joined the modern world, and then what amazing progress they made in the second half of the 20th century despite The Troubles going on. I also had no idea about their attraction to the American Old West and the idea of the cowboy. It was one of the top five nonfiction books on The NYT top ten books of the year. After a few months and you’ve digest it, consider reading Patrick Radden O’Keefe’s Say Nothing about the Troubles. Both are impressive works of investigative journalism, and O’Keefe’s work as an American to get so deeply into the Irish psyche is doubly impressive after you’ve seen O’Toole do it from inside out using memoir as a locus.

I'm winding down with Remains of the Day. That butler comes off as a bit uptight and self-loathing, but the times were what they were.

How to succeed at being a cunt in business

Count me as a reader who didn’t like The Great Believers at all. I found it overwrought and not believable in the descriptions of life in the 80’s for a gay man petrified of contracting AIDS. And I was exactly the cohort Makkai was writing about. I was shocked at how well received it was.

I remember reading it right after Christadora by Tim Murphy which was a much better novel from every perspective, in my humble opinion.

Loved Christadora. Wept at the end of that.

I liked Christadora more than any novel so far this century.

I loved Christodora but also loved The Great Believers. Maybe I'm forgetting but I don't remember a lot of sex scenes in either novel.

My gape

I don’t remember the sex scenes from great believers either.

I remember the sex scenes in “a little life” to the extent that the main character hated sex with his partner and dreaded it because of his childhood abuse. Fun times.

I'm finally getting around to finishing "My Pet Goat." It's hard to believe it's been over 20 years!

R290 read “My Gape” the protagonist in this novel is all consuming.

That’s strange, I remember reading about the actual Christadora in the Village Voice at the time, but I’ve heard nothing about the novel. Is the author building upon first hand experience?

I know I’m late to the game. I’m reading Kate Atkinson’s “Life After Life.” It’s a great stunt of a plot if overlong. The main character is a bit bland but the other characters like the mother, the aunt, the cook are very entertaining.

I loved LIFE AFTER LIFE and its (sort of) sequel A GOD IN RUINS, as well as so many of Atkinson's early books. But she's really come a cropper with the last few, especially her latest SHRINES OF GAIETY. It has a great set up, oozing with terrific period detail (the 1920s corrupt London night life scene) and a big cast of interesting characters. But there's no plot. She just gave up on it 1/2 way through. A big disappointment.

I’m enjoying Andrew Lownie’s Traitor King, about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and was just thrilled beyond measure to come across a reference to our own dear Datalounge, citing an anecdote there shared by “a couple of elderly posters.”

r296, what does it say?

I’m still after contemporary crime series! I’m back into Lord Peter Wimsey, Hamish Macbeth and Inspector Morse and would like something from the past 10-20 years.

I tried a novel by Stella Remington, former head of MI5, and wasn’t impressed at all.

Can anyone recommend Louise Penny? Eh, Canadian DLers?

[quote]After a few months and you’ve digest it, consider reading Patrick Radden O’Keefe’s Say Nothing about the Troubles.

I've read that book - I loved it! That's actually what drew me to "We Don't Know Ourselves.." because that was such a careful examination of this insular little world that actually seemed kind of inexplicable to the rest of the (non-irish) world. But after reading "WDKO", it makes more sense in that Catholic vs. Protestant in N. Ireland is less about religious ideology but more about who rules since the Catholic Church *was* the defacto government in Ireland after the 1916 Civil War.

Desperate for reading material, I picked up Damien Galgut's "The Promise" . And put it down in defeat 10 min later.

I'm reduced to reading authors whose work I've previously enjoyed, since I can't find anything new/current of interest. Such as:

The Furies - John Connolly

The Survivor, Orphan X, Prodigal Son - Gregg Hurwitz

Set in Stone, Fault Line, Panic Room - Robert Goddard

R297, the book quotes Charlie relating a story told to him by Walter Chrysler Jr. about Chrysler and the Duke’s joint adventures in cocksucking trade. Up until that point the book had been very interesting but rather stodgily written, and it was fun to see the DL interrupt all that with, quoting Charlie, “Walter and David sucked so much cock our lips were chapped for a week.”

The Duke and Duchess sound like a truly dreadful pair.

R300, I get what you mean about The Promise, i made 3 attempts or so and always gave up around page 8. But last week I persevered again and am now loving it. He does this thing of moving around the thoughts of the different characters in the same scene which is confusing at first. Once you get used to it is very good and original.

I just read Wahala, from Nicky May. Enjoyable at some parts but ultimately irritating.

Loved The Promise as well. And can highly recommend Galgut's Arctic Summer, based on the life and loves of E.M. Forster.

Just ordered Thomas Mallon's latest UP WITH THE SUN, his fictionalized bio of sit-com actor Dick Kallman who was tabloid fodder as a murder victim with suspiciously gay intentions. Rave for it in today's NY Times. I can't wait to dig in!

I find new books of interest via the websites of the posh London bookshops Heywood Hill and John Sandoe. (Although I once got treated in a really off-hand manner at the latter, which soured a nice day, so they get no biz from me.) Gay websites now are only interested in gender issues and drag, not books, but Twitter is useful for reading tips. If you like obscure English titles, see this account. Any other good gay book sources?

R299 You may enjoy some of the essays in Colm Toibin’s new book A Guest at the Feast, which just came out. He talks a lot about his youth and schooling and one of the priests he was very friendly with was a molester, but I get the sense they didn’t find him attractive or thought he was too much of a talker. There’s also a whole section of essays where he basically eviscerates many of the the recent Popes. The first part is about his testicular cancer, he mentions a boyfriend from California, I wonder who that is. There’s some literary review essays as well, a mishmash of stuff.

I follow Daunt Books and Waterstone's on Insta for new book ideas. Very helpful!

r306, a New Yorker profile last year identified Toibin's partner as Hedi El Kholti, an editor of the literary press Semiotext(e).

Huge Christodora fan here too. What an absolutely beautiful novel - and so much more of a gay sensibility than The Great Believers. Has anyone read Tim Murphy’s new book, Correspondents? I should just pick it up.

I would also recommend Philip Dean Walker’s At Danceteria and the recent sequel Better Davis (which was actually blurbed by Tim Murphy who is a huge fan of the book). For those who want to read more of the gay-centered early days of the AIDS epidemic. Walker approaches the subject from a lens of celebrity.

I read At Danceteria recently. Enjoyed it a lot.

[quote]He talks a lot about his youth and schooling and one of the priests he was very friendly with was a molester, but I get the sense they didn’t find him attractive or thought he was too much of a talker.

Thanks; I like Colm Toibin so I'll have to check that out (I recently read "The Master" and that was a good book, though not one of his best). The description of the molester sounds like something out of "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" - some kid that's too ugly annoying for a pervert.

R311 It’s partially pulled from a Mike Birbiglia joke, he says that even though he was an alter boy for years he was never molested, because they knew he was such a talker. Colm seems to me like a talker too.

I have it from a friend who’s a successful novelist and an incredibly and smart person that Makkai is a monster in real life. The Great Believers held my attention, but mainly for the sections set during the height of the epidemic (and I lived through that person and was a student at Northwestern)—the present-day parts not so much. I liked Christadora a lot more. The Angel of History may be the best AIDS-related contemporary novel I’ve read. Best overall AIDS novel, for my money, is The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket by John “Chekky” Weir.

Just reserved those at the library thanks R313

R313 here. I typed too fast--my friend is not only a successful novelist, but a very nice person, who nonetheless, does not suffer cruelty and meanness (though writes about it in some of her novels with devastating effects). So, her description of Makkai is all the more damning. She hates "A Little Life" even more (and she has written very well about gay men in her novels)--and I agree that the latter is one of the most meretricious books I've ever read.

R315, would your friend the novelist like it if you were to share her name with us, so that we might read her books? I did not like A Little Life either, and I just love that you used the word "meretricious" to describe it.

R315. I would not feel it my place to name her. But she has had a number of successful best sellers that are also beautifully written literary fiction.

It's too bad, r317, that this isn't a place where you can feel comfortable naming such an author. But that's the kind of place this is.

Is her name Emily St. John Mandel?

Well, if you and your literary pal found A Little Life meretricious, must be so.

What's a "book"?

Ban all these fag books from the schools!

I'm right now reading The Highly Sensitive Person. Wrote totally 4 me! Imma fragile lil flower.

Don't tease, but I'm starting a manga book called A Man and His Cat. I'm liking it, so far.

R323 You’ll probably like Quiet by Susan Cain too then.

Re Whalebone Theatre—I was love love loving it for the first two-thirds but I’m struggling to finish it. Once she gets to France the book seems to sit-and-spin.

R320. Why so defensive? I hated the book and so did my friend, who has had success as a writer. If you loved it, fine—I have friends whose opinion I respect who lived it. I can’t for the life of me understand why (they are gay men), but their taste is better or worse than mine. And yes, I do think it is a meretricious book. Sorry if that upsets you.

Funny, I had just the opposite reaction and felt Whalebone Theatre didn't really get going until she got to France.

R327 “who loved it,” not “lived it” (Thank God!)

Correspondents reads like it was written by a different Tim Murphy. Just couldn't get through it.

I totally agree with The Irreversible Decline Of Eddie Socket. But Paul Monetee's Halfway Home comes in a very close second. That one had sobbing while I read it.

R323. I was at a dinner with Elaine Aron about 25 years ago, when The Highly Sensitive Person was just emerging. It was a social event and I found her likable and warm. Her husband seemed arrogant and full of himself.

^Paul Monette.

Am I the only one who's read the memoir [italic]Lot Six[/italic] by David Adjmi?

I would highly recommend Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. It focuses on the Trojan War told from the perspective of Patroclus, Achilles’ best friend and in Miller’s telling, his lover.

Miller’s Circe is also great. I never found Greek history interesting until I read these two novels.

Even for a Kindle reader like me, I needed printed versions for both novels because I was constantly referring back to the list of mythological characters.

R334, i read The Song of Achilles and though I enjoyed it , the Achilles/Patroclus relation was a little bit like fan fiction, not to speak about the sex scenes. Surprisingly, i like more the scenes in Troy, she conveyed well the mix of boredom and violence involved in the war.

She’s not very respected by some serious historians but i will still read Circe.

As to the above discussion, A Little Life was horrible (meretricious is a very alt word for it).

^aot

Apt

R327. Should read “their taste is no better or worse than mine.”

R335 Yep, A Little Life was the worst novel I've read in many, many years. I did march all the way though to the end, so I guess that recommends something. because what is it, 1000 pages?

Read I’m still a woman to me

R339, why would you read a 1000 page novel that you hated? There are so many books out there.

I loved it, by the way, but that’s beside the point.

I know a lot of people who hated the book but RUSHED to see it onstage. Made no sense to me.

Ohmychrist, Primetime is over? Currently reading Turgenev's A Sportsman's Notebooks, which are character sketches of rural life in Russia in the mid-1800s. Before that I INHALED Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy. This was the third time I've read it, and it gets more gripping and fascinating every time I do. There's a so-so movie of the first book, but the whole trilogy needs an expensive BBC (or whomever) miniseries. (I picked the books up again because I'd just seen Benediction, Terence Davies' take on the life of WWI war poet Siegfried Sassoon, who plays a large role in the trilogy.)

Going to London next month and tried to buy tickets to the Ivan von Hove production of A LITTLE LIFE starring JAMES NORTON but it was sold out on the first day tix were made available! This version will be in English whereas it was done last spring at BAM in German with German actors and subtitles. I passed on that as I hated the novel but want to see Norton live and nude! Hoping for same day cancellations.

I recently bought the Pat Barker WWI trilogy at a used book store, eager to read them all, but thought REGENERATION rather dry (am I heartless?). Do the other books get better?

A LITTLE LIFE last spring was in Dutch, not German.

So, I am the guy who read all of A Little Life, even though I thought it was heinous slab of overworked prose, cheap pandering classist social culture cosplay, and dark and craven dislike for its characters. Why did I read the whole thing? Curious how far she'd go down the hill to make sure that Jack broke his crown.

Not to hijack this thread, but I'd really like to know from those who loved the book.... what made it so good to you? Not trolling, I am genuinely curious how a literate modern reader ... well, you get it.

I thought A Little Life was emotional manipulation of the highest order, and while I prefer high literary merit, I can also be impressed when a writer can achieve other things with their craft, especially when it’s done with such precision and deftness.

Agatha Christie was a shit writer, but she knew how to plot and construct a thriller, mystery like no one else, which is very meritorious.

I think it's a fool's errand to debate A LITTLE LIFE. Defenders and detractors are cemented into their opinions, and I've found very few that are mixed. Passions reign on both sides, and a discussion here isn't likely to change a single mind.

[QUOTE] I read At Danceteria recently. Enjoyed it a lot.

Have you read the sequel, Better Davis and Other Stories? I guess it’s more of a companion or “sister” collection in the same way that Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House and A Visit from the Goon Squad are.

Reading Halfway Home now. Ooooof. Brutal.

R349 Hall monitor has spoken.

Well, the Hall Monitor is right in this case. Exactly my thoughts and experiences with that book. My smart husband and some of our smart friends loved it. I and some of our other smart friends hated it.

R353 Point taken, no need to continue. But my interest was NOT the usual "oh, BAD" vs "oh, GOOD"... but actually I was interested in WHY people react those ways. Our level of discourse continue to flatten and diminish in the narrow halls of social media I guess. So bet it.

Well, A little life was a surprise hit, not only in sales but it was nominated to several awards (including the National Book Award and the Booker). It was the "it novel" that season and generated a lot of debate.

Being that popular is quite normal that a lot of people hated it. Yes, the novel has 1000 pages (at least the spanish version) but it's not difficult to read and has some positive things, but in the end is torture porn.

I remember an article online talking about the "great american gay novel" and i was surprised because they mentioned A little life, which is historically very little gay (there's not a real time line in the novel, and there's no real link to reality in it). Of course that article mentioned The art of fielding and The emperor's children. And i liked The art of fielding but the gay character (even very positive) is the only one who has no real voice in the novel (maybe because unlike the rest he knows what he wants) and the gay character in Messud's novel is only a coprotagonist (and the rest are straight). Of course is curious that they only mentioned novels written by straight writers

Just started Tom Crewe's "The New Life," which is very sexy so far.

[QUOTE] remember an article online talking about the "great american gay novel" and i was surprised because they mentioned A little life, which is historically very little gay (there's not a real time line in the novel, and there's no real link to reality in it).

That article was written by Garth Greenwell. He who writes the same book over and over again.

I’m reading a Garfield joke book circa 1981

Hall Monitor here. Have no interest in stifling discussion. Just won't participate myself, having done so often online and in person. Besides, I like to watch.

r350, am reading BETTER DAVIS now, one chapter each night at bedtime. Not as impressed with this volume so far.

I think I'll reread City on Fire, by Garth Hallberg, a novel I read around the time I read Christadora. It's a Manhattan in the '70s story that features gays (among others), a cold, cold winter, and the blackout of July 13, 1977.

Make sure, if you order this, to get the author correct. A recent novel by the same name, but a different writer, exists, which is completely different.

R360, I think that the title story is the best in the volume. Although, I enjoyed a drunken Maureen Stapleton and Elizabeth Taylor in a drag bar in that one story.

The first chapter in THE NEW LIFE is by far the sexiest chapter in the book. It certainly lures you in. I enjoyed the novel but it was more of an intellectual than an emotional pleasure.

R357 Yep, it's really amazing, not just the same "elements", but it's almost the same plot, over and over again. I guess "the plot" sort of matches his life, and he writes about his life.

So far I'm not tired of that same story...

So far I've read: The New Life (Tom Crewe) Happy Hour Spare The Age of Vice The Shards

I really like the shards. (Not BEE). Also liked The New Life - gays in Victorian England.

So far I've read: The New Life (Tom Crewe); Happy Hour; Spare; The Age of Vice; The Shards.

I really like the shards. (I'm not BEE). I also liked The New Life - gays in Victorian England. It's really well written and Tom Crewe is super smart.

Quickly gulped down "The Furrows" by Namwali Serpell, loved it. Dream sequences, doppelgangers, twists ... it's dark and compelling and, despite the heavy subject, quite fun to read, has a bit of a Hitchcock flair to it.

Now reading "Come Back in September" by Darryl Pinckney, an author more DLers should look into.

LOL. Not. I checked out a few books the fossils of DL raved about and they were garbage.

^ which were the worst DL recommendations, r368? Spill!

R369 I mean fossil with affection. LOL. Anything to do with mental health, mental illness, personality disorders. That subject is immediately suspect as there are so many charlatans in that field.

So....are you referring to book recommendations or recs on other threads, r370?

The new Jane Harper novel is her best yet.

Pat Barker has written two novels about the Trojan War and they’re very enjoyable, I think a third is expected, but they’re not as fascinating and absorbing as her Regeneration Trilogy.

I'm going to start Mercuy Pictures presents. I know some people (and critics) said it's a failed novel but i really like Marra's writing (and dark sense of humour) and to be fair i read a good amount of highly praised novels that were mediocre so i don't trust critics anymore

Please report back about the book, r374. I'm curious about it and also wondered if it was worth a look.

Anyone else a fan of Sara Gran? Her Claire DeWitt character is totally fascinating. Normally, I'd run a mile from grim stories chock full of dysfunction, but those are true thrillers.

The first one, set in New Orleans, had locals astonished at how well she nailed the setting.

"Mercury Pictures Presents" was one of my favorite reads last year. His writing is exceptional. It's the much-better literary equivalent of what "Babylon" could have been if it had only been done as a limited series.

And directed by someone other than Damien Chazelle.

R375 I read 100 pages and i'm loving it. I really like Marra's sense of humour and even it has some tough events (Maria lived in Italy during the rise of Mussolini) but it has a lighter theme than his previous novels so i'm enyoing it so far

Intermittent hot scenes are holding steady for "The New Life"...lots of "quivering" buttocks and so forth.

That opening scene in The New Life was VERY hot! I’m enjoying the book so far. Great recommendation.

I’m reading Best Actress: The History of Oscar-Winning Women by Stephen Tapert, a lovely book that I suspect would appeal to many Dataloungers. I’m learning some interesting anecdotes, such as Ellen Burstyn going on TV to ask Academy voters to boycott the Best Actress race in 1975 to protest a lack of good roles for women. Louise Fletcher, who ended up winning that year, was not happy with that and called up Ellen to say it would have been nicer if she had made the suggestion in a year in which Burstyn was nominated.

Louise Fletcher would have been most appropriately nominated as Best Supporting Actress the year she won Best Actress,

What are the group's opinions on the fiction of Louise Erdrich? I've just started her Pulitzer Prize winner THE NIGHT WATCHMAN but I'm not sure I'm going to care much about her male characters.

I did not care for her novel, THE SENTENCE, R384. It took me over a month to finish it because I was so bored by it.

R384, I really liked The Round House and LaRose.

Thanks for the recommendation of Mercury Pictures Presents, gang. Gosh, it’s good.

Reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I was told I didn't have to know a bloody thing about gaming to enjoy it. I was told correctly. It's a lovely book.

For me, Tomorrow x 3 started out really well but by the second half I was badly turned off by the heroine's actions and the gaming scenarios became utterly boring. Get back to us when you finish it, 388.

Truth of the matter T3 was the best embraced book across all readership last year and on many top ten lists both literary and popular. To me it was A Little Life that was 1/3 the size, three instead of four friends and only 2/5 the trauma. It cuts down enough of what some people hated about A Little Life to be enjoyed and appreciated by a much wider audience.

I'm loving Mercury Pictures. Of course I loved the first part of The great circle and not that much the second part of the book, but even with that this half is more than what i got for the whole The sweetness of water.

And talking about The sweetness of water i'm curious about The prophets. I hope the comparission between both books was just the press being lacy (two debut black writers, slavery themes) and not in quality, because Harris' novel was a big dissapointment and i hope Roberts Jr novel is way better

Just ordered De’Shawn Charles Winslow's new book "Decent People"....very much liked his first novel "In West Mills."

For those who like sexy books, "That Was Something" by Dan Callahan has several hot scenes, particularly towards the end...I could picture it being made into a movie.

I was expecting In West MIlls being published here but i think it's not going to happen

I looked on this thread and didn't see mention of Stuart Davis's Booker Award Winner Shuggie Bain and its sequel out this year, Young Mungo. Odd, given their gay theme and critical acceptance. Just ordered them today, look forward to reading two books straight through.

No one has read them?

R394, they’ve been discussed in other threads. I love both of them.

R394 Yes, I’ve read them, and no Young Mungo is not a sequel, though there is an Easter egg that you won’t get unless you read them in publication order. The author is Douglas Stuart and I gave both five stars, but I think Mungo is actually superior, despite it being overlooked for literary awards.

Stuart Davis is this year’s Adele Dazeem.

Where is your "here," r393? In West Mills is available in the US.

R396 Thanks, I thought in the review I read that the character(s) in Young Mungo carried over from the previous novel.

I'll read them in order, because I am pretty Aspie/OCD about order.... I am vegan as well, so not interested in eggs of any description.

I loved both Stuart novels. He's the real thing. Missed the Easter egg though. Don't mind if you spoil it, although others might.

I also read both Stuart novels and loved them. What is the "Easter egg" of which you speak, r396?

And yes, both books were discussed enthusiastically here in earlier threads.

I'm sure it's been mentioned upthread and is currently being discussed more thoroughly on the Theatre Gossip #513 thread, but Thomas Mallon's UP WITH THE SUN is a must read for all DLers. Juicy, gossipy, sexy, funny, sad, page-turner. I really couldn't put it down.

In Shuggie Bain, he moves into the bedsit and one of the few things he brings are some of the figurines that his mom had. The book ends and there’s never any justification for the introduction of them, especially since they are very much an allusion to The Glass Menagerie. He/they appear in Young Mungo in a very subtle, blink and you miss it way.

I started reading last year’s National Book Award winner, The Rabbit Hutch, and so far I love it. Every page seems to give me something unexpected. A nice change from the last novel I read, Demon Copperhead, which felt almost by-the-numbers.

Wow, r403. Are you Doug Stuart?

R405 Huh?

Finished the Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket. Thank you for the recommendation. So beautifully written, my god. Just stunning.

MARY!

I read "Wear and Tear: The Threads of My Life" by Tracy Tynan. She is a retired costume designer who worked on some big Hollywood movies like "Blind Date" and "The Chamber," as well as low budget ones like Alan Rudolph's "Choose Me." Her husband is the director Jim McBride, and she did the costumes for some his movies too, including "Breathless" and "The Big Easy." Her parents were both writers: Elaine Dundy, the novelist and biographer from New York, and Kenneth Tynan, the theater critic and celebrity profiler from England. They both led very active (and drunken) social-climbing lives and had busy careers; she was an only child, more or less raised by a series of au pairs in London and New York until she was sent away to boarding school, which she loved as an escape from her empty home life.

After her parents divorced, her mother spent 5 years at Austen Riggs, where Tracy would visit her on school vacations, and her father eventually remarried and moved to Los Angeles. She always had to find her own way in life, and she has many interesting stories to tell and is a decent writer. Her honesty about her relationships and struggles is sometimes funny and sometimes sad. Her father threw a big party for her 21st birthday, which inevitably turned into a party for himself and his celebrity friends; he actually proposed postponing the party for a couple of weeks so Princess Margaret (whom Tracy had never met) could attend, but it ended up going ahead as scheduled on her actual birthday without Margaret (a few years later, Margaret did attend Kenneth's memorial service at St. Paul's in London). When her father was dying of emphysema (and still smoking in the hospital) and she told him for the first time that she loved him, he poured himself a glass of champagne and quipped, "This is beginning to sound like a bad hospital movie." In the 80s, Dundy moved to L.A. to be closer to her daughter and family, but because of her mother's bipolar disorder and narcissism, Tracy was unable to spend more than 20 minutes at a time with her and rarely saw her. When Dundy died at 86, she left a list of celebrity friends (including Gore Vidal and Gloria Vanderbilt) she wanted Tracy to notify; when she called them she found that, "I was comforting them instead of vice versa."

She uses her lifelong passion for clothes as a framework for the book: this can feel a bit forced, as many of the chapters don't have much to do with fashion, but the chapters about her own career are very interesting. When she was hired for "Choose Me," she met with Genevieve Bujold to discuss the costumes for her character, and they agreed to go with a lot of pink outfits; the budget was small, but Tynan spent a lot of time scouring costume shops and bringing pink clothes to Bujold's house for fittings, which went well. When the shooting started, Bujold told Tynan out of the blue that she no longer liked the pink plan, which left her scrambling to find replacement costumes for Bujold to approve (they mostly came from Tynan's own closet); part way through the shoot, Bujold apologized to Tynan, saying her nerves had been shot, and she agreed to wear some of the pink outfits. They became friends, and Bujold asked her to work as her stylist on her next movie, "Tightrope," and choose her dress when she presented an Oscar in 1985. Tynan said that in her 25 year career, Bujold was the only actor who ever apologized to her for difficult behavior. The nicest thing about her book is that her gift for sustaining long lasting friendships (including with many ex boyfriends) shines through, without any bragging. She comes across as a genuinely kind and lovely person who built a rich life without much guidance from mom and dad.

Love in America by Julien Green. He was a French writer who came to America in 1919 to attend the University of Virginia (both of his parents were from the American South), he was gay and much of the book deals with his attempts to come to terms with his sexuality

Tracy Tynan sounds like a nepobaby dabbling dilettante.

I'm actually enjoying Louise Erdrich's THE NIGHT WATCHMAN quite a bit after a slow start. I asked about it upthread.

It just took almost 100 pages to get her writing style and figure out who all the characters are and their relationships (many Native American tribal). This is why in my old age I'm often content to have the time and luxury to give a book as much as 100 pages. You'd think growing older I'd have less patience, but it's just the opposite....with reading, at least.

Re-reading Styron's exquisite "Sophie's Choice". All these years later, his beautiful words still take my breath away.

I just read I am I am Iam, from Maggie O’Farrell, and i liked it more than I thought. It is subtitled 17 brushes with deAth, and it goes from the time she was almost was ran over by a truck aged four, to a meeting with a murder on a hike to a terrible birth experience and neurological problems all her life.

Here, more than once i saw her written off as frau literature, so i am curious about the why. After this one i began The Hand that first hel mine and 80 pages in i m not loving it.

I really liked an early book of O'Farrell's called THIS MUST BE THE PLACE but was severely disappointed with the other few books of hers I subsequently read. So I never even attempted the well-reviewed HAMNET or THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT. I think frau lit is a perfectly appropriate genre for her, even when she's writing historical fiction..

I Am, I Am, I Am has one of the most mind blowing twists just towards the end, where she just barely escaped something far worse than death.

I am going to read my yearly John Connolly and i'm thinking in reading Elantris by Brandon Sanderson.

I was funny because in my book forum someone called Sanderson woke (Sanderson is a mormon conservative, but it seems he is not a bigot like Orson Scott Card) which was quite surprising and made me curious about his work.

R398 I live in Spain. Here racial themes are not bestsellers like in the USA, of course some novels are published (some very good like The vanishing half or The underground railroad, some pretty bad like The sweetness of water or Such a fun age) but unfortunately In West Mills was not one of them. But maybe in a future, some novel are published pretty fast (The girls or City on fire) and you have to wait some years for others like Billy Lynn's halftime walk or A constelation of vital phenomena.

And talking about Marra, i really liked Mercury pictures (his first novel was published years later than in the USA but the other two were published pretty fast)

I loved Hamnet and liked The Marriage Portrait a lot. They're hardly frau-lit.

Speaking of The Girls I see that Emma Cline has a new novel coming out soon, excited for this.

Where should I start with Faulkner? Which is the best introductory novel?

AS I LAY DYING is often considered the most accessible.

The instruction manual for my Waterpik flosser

As I Lay Naked

Thanks r420

I couldn’t read “The Marriage Portrait.” Men, gay or straight, was not the readership for it. The viewpoint is so feminine and I couldn’t get into that.

Is she the sole author, R418? Her boyfriend claimed coauthor-ship of her first novel.

Did you read Hamnet or any of O'Farrell's previous novels, r425?

Sorry, that was for r424.

I enjoyed "Hamnet," but couldn't get through more than a few chapters of "The Marriage Portrait." The main character felt too forced into the Girl Boss Child Prodigy trope. If I wanted that, I'd read YA.

Bible NIV

Just finished "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn". Thanks to all the DL'ers who recommended it (in a previous thread). What a wonderful read! I was surprised about the modernness of it - the sex encounters, bigamy, periods, etc. - surprising to me in a mainstream 1943 novel. Now I want to see the 1945 film again, haven't seen it in decades.

IMHO the film is even better than the novel, r430. Definitely seek it out.

Francie, esp. through her 1st person narrative, comes off as somewhat bitter in the book but entirely sympathetic and sweet in the film. But, of course, the film doesn't follow her into adulthood as the book does.

Spare

My copy of "I Have Some Questions For You" by Rebecca Makkai arrives today.

Mine, too, r434! Can't wait.

I tried reading Mercury Pictures Presents, based on some recs here, but just couldn't get into it after 60 pages. The tone seemed so uneven, sometimes sincere, sometimes snarky and anachronistic. But to each his own. I know there are readers here who disparage Rebecca Makkai.

Anyone read the Glen Duncan werewolf books? I stumbled on the first one last week and am enjoying it. Some gorgeous prose.

Loved halfway home by Monette. Any others of his you recommend?

Rebecca Makkai is extremely competitive with fellow writers and definitely someone to “keep close” as the old adage goes.

How can an author be "extremely competitive" with another author? An author can't control who or how many will buy their books. What does that even mean in her case?

R439 Well, for example, I'm sure she thought she was a shoe-in for the Pulitzer for "The Great Believers." She certainly has a rep as someone who "needs" to be "head of the pack."

So thinking something makes you competitive? I guess I must be very competitive.

And she should have won the Pulitzer. Who won it that year?

Makkai’s new novel did not receive a starred review from Kirkus Reviews (a well respected trade review) which is interesting, especially for a writer whose last book was a Pulitzer Prize nominee.

“ Fans of The Great Believers (2018) should be forewarned that this book does not have the profound impact of its predecessor…”

Well, the half dozen or so reader reviews for the new Makkai are very high and even the one 3 star review makes it sound fascinating.

In other news, my Amazon copy which I pre-ordered and was supposed to arrive yesterday is now not arriving until Thursday. Damn! Does that mean that copies are already scarce?

r441, the winner that year was Richard Powers, THE OVERSTORY.

R443-No, it means Amazon is having more and more trouble with its drivers and delivery people. It's happening all the time in NYC now.

Not to me. All my Amazon deliveries have been spot on.

The overstory deserved to win. Loved that book.

Makkai sounds like a pain in the ass. The great believers was fine but nothing life changing. I’m reading Paul Monette now (thanks to this thread) and his writing about that time period is much stronger. Same goes for irreversible decline of Eddie Sockett (also thanks to this thread).

R44 I loved THE OVERSTORY a lot as I was reading it... and, for me, it was one of those books I immediately forgot about. I know, trees and ecology.

It's interesting how some books and characters stay with you and others don't...

I've been reading HOLLYWOOD, THE ORAL HISTORY by Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson. At first it seemed a little overwhelming as I wanted to get right into the aspects of Golden Age history that most interested me, but I just began in the middle of the 740 page book in the biggest section called The Studio Workforce.

As the text is all fairly short sections of interviews it's actually very easy to skim or skip over interviewees who don't interest me. I wish it was a little juicier with stories I hadn't heard before, but there's so much there, it's quite entertaining. And a book I can leave for awhile and come back to once I've finished another book.

Anyway, highly recommended for vintage movie fans.

R449 Good to hear, I have it on hold at the library and should get it hopefully by the end of March.

The New Life is wonderful. Really enjoying it.

R451, I’m enjoying it also.

I dumped The New Life when the Shards became available and I have absolutely no regrets, I’ll get back to New Life in a month or two or keep it for a Pride Month read.

I had just finished THE NEW LIFE when my library request for UP WITH THE SUN came in - I read it in a day and a half! It has EVERYTHING - including a mention of DL fave HELEN LAWSON!!!

100 THINGS TO HATE BEFORE YOU DIE by radio DJ and comedian Claudia Comedy . An easy read and timely. A friend told me about it, we saw her stand up before Covid and she killed. The headliner was a well known comedian and she got the laughs and was able to control the crowd.

I'm reading Killers of the Flower Moon... it is slow moving and I'm finding it boring. I wanted to read it because I love mysteries and this was on the Best Sellers list and now they're making it a movie. I don't know how much longer I can stick with it. The story is compelling but the writing style is just not.

I had the same reaction, R456 -- great story, bland writing. But I did finish it.

I read the Young Adult version of Killers of the Flower Moon, I was more interested in the story itself and not the writing and wanted to streamline it, while still still experiencing it. It was still not the most flowing read, but you might be able to cut a few hours out by finishing that edition of it.

Count me as another who found "Killers of the Flower Moon" overrated and dull. Would have been a better New Yorker article than it was a 300-some-page book.

After reading my yearly John Connolly (this year it was The whisperers) now i'm reading Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. After that i will read Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow which is published here this week

So I started the new Rebecca Makkai novel I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU last night, 50 pages in, and so far it's quite sensational. Sorry, haters. I'll report back when I'm done. Hoping she keeps up the tension.

R461, I'm one of the haters in terms of her seeming like a pain in the ass in real life, but I love her writing. Can't wait to read it. Might even buy it because the library waitlist is so long.

Keep us posted.

Finished "Up With The Sun" yesterday (dishy and fun, and immensely enjoyable), and starting "I Have Some Questions For You" today.

Gave up on I am, I am, I am. After a few chapters of hearing this woman whine about all the times she ALMOST died, I got extremely irritated and felt like she was a hysteric.

I skipped to the end and her daughter has chronic eczema? Wtf? Now I'm supposed to care about that? I felt like I was reading facebook posts from a mommy blogger.

Liked Hamnet (didn't think it was mind-blowing, but interesting enough). But found this book was incredibly grating.

I love detective novels so anything by Michael Connolly is fine.

I was reading Never, a novel by Ken Follett. I got 3/4 thru it, and got distracted by something and put it down for a minute. But I will finish it. It's pretty good.

Two turds in the toilet one got flushed

R464, wow, she almost got murdered by a psycho, had horrible disease aged 9 or 10 which led to awful labour, her daughter has a horrible disease, if she died she wouldn’t have written the book. In fact she speaks about it, she says she feels incredibly lucky she’s alive.

Finished Rachel cusk Kudos’, likedit but that thing about strangers telling her all their intimate lives became increasingly contrived. She writes marvelously though.

Yeah r468, I’m glad she survived, I just couldn’t get into it. Too many near death experiences! Started getting repetitive and grating to keep hearing about. Loved the first chapter but by this woman’s 9th near death experience, I thought why am I reading this?

Right now I'm reading to escape. I don't want non fiction or tales of woe. I am reading political who-done-its, detective novels, mysteries, and historical novels. I will read non f iction if it is about WW II and it's gossipy.

Ok, r469, fair enough, i just thought that considering the theme it was a very readable, thoughtful, book, in fairness, i did think this woman is incredibly unlucky. But overall i liked it, more than some of her fiction.

[quote] My reading project with year will be to read Daphne DuMaurier. I’m starting with Jamaica Inn.

Accompaniment.

I just started The Critic’s Daughter a memoir about her father Richard Gilman, a prominent drama critic and Yale professor, her mother was a leading literary agent of the day for Anne Rice and Michael Crichton amongst more high brow ones. It’s starting in the 1970s and they are quite affluent living in the UWS with a house in Connecticut and are at the center of the literary and drama worlds of New York and she attends Brearley, a life and time I’ve wished to have been part of too.

It’s a bit reminiscent of last years Mary Rodgers Shy (not the level of humor though) or for those who may have read Also A Poet, a daughter to father memoir about art critic Peter Schjeldahl and trying to finish his biography on Frank O’Hara- but they were the East Village Boho version of this pairing. For those who like this particular kind of Art & Culture milieu of NYC past , I think you’ll find it a fascinating read.

Any Ivy Compton-Burnett fans here? Raise your hands.

Our gay men's book club met tonight to discuss THE NEW LIFE.

Of the 12 of us there was only one person who said he really loved the book but he listened to an audio tape read by the delicious young Brit actor Freddy Fox, which I can only think helped bring some emotion and passion to the rather stingy and academic writing. Most everyone else said they liked but did not love the book, agreeing they were disappointed that it wasn't a more moving reading experience.

r474, I'm a reserved fan of Grand Old Ivy. I've only read a few of her works and she can be a challenge. But she was a true original and hard to forget once you've read her.

r475, I have to say I'm impressed that a book club could gather 12 people who actually read the book!

r477, this was actually our first meeting and thus our first book. I only knew 4 of the other 11 members and I was surprised at the lively and civilized discussion. And that everyone that was invited showed up and read the the book. Great evening!

One member had been randomly chosen to choose the next book which will be SHUGGIE BAIN. Unfortunately for me, I've already read it but it's certainly a great book and a great choice. Except it's so good there may not be a lot to say about it.

Has anyone ever read the biography written about Leonard Bernstein by his daughter? As I understand it, it was a rather unflattering picture of Lenny, but also loving. Anyway I wanted to read it because it seemed gossipy, and then I f orgot about it. I'm willing to take another look but I'm curious to know if anyone here has read it.

After seeing a film based upon the book in Palm Springs this past January, I bought Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, and its sequel, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Saenz. They are Young Adult books, so the reading is not challenging, but the author is a poet, so some of the writing is poetic. I like the first book a little more than the second. Super affirming for young gay people growing up and pretty accurate in regard to the walls we create around ourselves when we have such a momentous secret. I'm not sure I would reread it, but I would definitely pass it along to some teen or college aged kid that I thought was struggling with issues of sexual orientation. It's not explicit in any sense of the word. Sex, when it finally occurs, is only very obliquely referred to.

I read it, r479. She does have a few axes to grind regarding LB, but that makes it a more honest and unflinching portrait of the man than you could get from an outsider. I recommend it.

R478, here are some books to consider for future meetings (all gay-related or gay content):

Christodora by Tim Murphy

Mother of Sorrows by Richard McCann

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

At Danceteria and Other Stories by Philip Dean Walker

Our Young Man by Edmund White

Shelter in Place by David Leavitt

I love r482's list. I've liked every book on it a lot, except for Tell the Wolves I'm Home, which I haven't yet read. But based on r482's other choices, I'm going to order it.

I'm reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which I am liking a lot.

r483 here again. It turns out I bought Tell the Wolves I'm Home in 2013. I'm going to summon it up on my Kindle today.

Get tissues ready, R484!

I've enjoyed some Rachel Cusk, but some not so much.

Thanks for the Ivy Compton-Burnett shout-out, as I've been intending to try some of her work.

Is David Leavitt's SHELTER IN PLACE really good? I've not enjoyed a new book of his in decades. Used to love him so I'd be thrilled to hear this one is worth reading.

R487, I really loved it. The writing is so crisp and funny, the characterizations are so well executed, I just really feel into it effortlessly and zipped right through to the end as fast as possible. It’s a brilliant comedy of manners and a satire of the very near past.

*fell into it

Just ordered a "like new" used copy on Amazon for $6.20, r488. Nothing to lose at that price, really. Thanks for your rec.

I’m finding the new makkai book a bit slow. Does it pick up?

Have to agree, r491. I'm half way through, the plotting is so intriguing but the pace has slowed down a bit. Her wiring is so good it's worth it, though.

Yes R492 agree. I’ll keep reading but it’s no “great believers.”

writing, not wiring.

LOL.

[quote] I'm sure she thought she was a shoe-in for the Pulitzer

Oh, [italic]dear.[/italic]

The Makkai picks up in Part 2, trust me.

Oh good I’m glad to hear that r496

My husband says the same about Part 2! Looking forward to getting there by tonight.

[quote]Count me as another who found "Killers of the Flower Moon" overrated and dull. Would have been a better New Yorker article than it was a 300-some-page book.

I listened to this book on a long car ride home & I thought it was the perfect long trip listen: doesn't require all of your attention, but an interesting story (I had no idea that this tribe was once so wealthy), but also a lot of twists & turns. But I'm also interested in stories about Native Americans, so there's that.

I'm looking forward to seeing the movie, though the fact that it's been sitting on the shelf for so long is not a good sign.

I’ve come upon the perfect DL book club title!

The new Makkai book has really picked up. It’s so different from Great Believers - her range is pretty incredible. Really strong writing.

I'm about to start the 17 hour audiobook of "Travels" by Paul Bowles.

I finished the new Rebecca Makkai book I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU last night. Stunning read, with quite the emotional wallop at the end. Maybe, just maybe it could have used some pruning in the middle but it does come through in those final chapters.

I'm going to read Wattership down. I know the novel is quite popular in UK but here (in Spain) not so much. It was out of print for quite some time

I loved Watershipdown in high school and I’m doing a year of rereading and hadn’t thought of doing it, but may add it to the list to revisit.

[quote] Maybe, just maybe it could have used some pruning in the middle …

Did someone say ‘pruning?’

I haven't enjoyed (or finished) a David Leavitt book in a long time (since THE PAGE TURNER) but I was hearing some good things about his latest SHELTER IN PLACE and I must say it's great fun, a wonderful wicked satire of the recent tRump Presidential years as seen through a group of rich liberal privileged white people. I'm not that far in, hope he keeps it up. I'll come back with a fuller report when I'm done.

The Tiffany Welles Charlie’s Angels Case Book

OMG Lessons In Chemistry is such great fun, it’s like a wicked feminist diatribe on the 1950s and misogyny, don’t pay attention to the pseudo RomCom looking cover, it’s not that at all. It’s bitingly funny.

The Women’s Prize long list dropped today. I’ve only read one of them so far.

I don’t read a great deal of nonfiction but I’m really enjoying Myth America, which features essays from historians debunking myths about American history. Topics include American Exceptionalism, the Southern Strategy, White Backlash, etc.

I just finished reading “The New Life” by Tom Crewe. It’s a fictionalization about the writing and publication of a book about homosexuality ( inversion ) published at the same time as the Oscar Wilde trial. The protagonists are John Adlington and Henry Ellis. Standing in for gay antecedent Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis. I can’t recommend it too highly.

R512 You do realize there are 14 posts already on this thread about "The New Life", right? Must be DL's favorite of 2023.

I've been on a frau-lit bender the past week, having read Eileen (it was correctly marketed as a mystery because I had no idea what was going on until the very end), then Eleanor Oliphant is Absolutely Fine (the book was also absolutely fine but ultimately unmemorable - I laughed, I cried, I'll probably forget having read it) and just finished The Latecomer (about dissatisfied rich people who don't like one another because it's central to the plot that they don't like each other but there's no explanation or basis for the dislike). I'm starting Tomorrow x 3.... tomorrow! I love getting books through Libby on my Kindle. I definitely do not miss having to lug books back and forth to the library.

R80, I read Twilight Man. Interesting in reading what happens to boy toys,

Libeskind's "Breaking Ground." And here I thought Frank Lloyd Wright was an egoist. He's a shrinking violet compared to this clown.

For example he starts out subtly claiming to be the best accordion player ever.

The Patricia Highsmith diaries 1941-1995, ok but the 81-95 years are only a small section of the 1000 page book. The latest translation of the Kafka diaries by Ross Benjamin. The Benjamin translation includes material that was left out by Max Brod including Kafka's more sexual musings including some on men and also includes names and details of people who were edited out of the original diaries.

'Come Back In September.' Darryl Pinckney's memoir of making his way in NY literary bohemia in the 70s.

'Rainbow Milk.' Paul Mendez's novel about escaping JW repression to find his way in gay 90s London.

'The New Life' by Tom Crewe, as cited often above. No apologies for another mention, as it's as good a read as my other choices.

[quote] I was reading Never, a novel by Ken Follett.

I'm about 90% finished. Wasn't impressed, too formulaic. But at 815 pages, it does provide a rather lengthy read for the something-to-read deprived.

I liked Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley better than Villette. I think Jane Eyre is by far her best book but it is hardly romantic.

I just watched a recent documentary on Emily Bronte in which the presenter suggested she could be autistic going by her strong aversion to being around anyone but family. I have read a lot about her too and I always thought she was just extremely introverted. I really hated Wuthering Heights, full of awful people.

[quote] Emily Bronte in which the presenter suggested she could be autistic going by her strong aversion to being around anyone but family

Projecting 21st century notions on the 19th century. Up until the 20th century, most people were unfriendly toward people outside of their immediate family, who were their sole source of entertainment, as well as emotional and financial support.

^That's likely true, though I read a biography of Charlotte Bronte & it talked about how isolated & insular the world of the Brontes was, with these elaborate stories that fueled their creativity, but very much made them people who lived in their own heads. None of sibling really did well outside of the family, despite their internal struggles and their father considered it the obligation of his spinster daughters to care for him and run the household.

I’m going to try to re-read all of the “Parker” novels by Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake). And probably most of the Aubrey-Maturin books by Patrick O’Brian. And a bunch of miscellaneous other things—the annotated Yale editions of Proust being at the top of that list.

Just finishing Josephine Tey's THE MAN IN THE QUEUE. Needed a solid Golden Age mystery to clear my head. My, her paragraphs are long! Practically Proustian.

Re: Elinor Oliphant

I got the Big Reveal early on in the story. Normally, I'm not keen on romantic subplots, but here I was actively rooting for the couple to make it.

I try and try with the Patrick O'Brian books, but always get overwhelmed by the minutiae of the shipboard intricacies. I will try again, because so many people I admire adore them.

Any Ian McEwan fans here?

I recently read his latest novel called LESSONS and really loved it. I'd previously been disappointed with ATONEMENT, which so many loved, but I did enjoy ON CHESIL BEACH, another more recent book. So I've been tracking down some his other stuff in my library and came up with ENDURING LOVE and THE INNOCENT. Didn't like the former and couldn't finish it, but loved the later, a quirky post-WWII spy/espionage story.

I'm curious for those who've read him? Is he as uneven as he seems? And what are your McEwan recommendations?

Just started Eleanor Catton's "Birnham Wood".

I read aforementioned Come Back In September last month. Pinckney has become a favorite of mine. He’s a shameless name dropper but you don’t mind because he was mixing with the writers, artists and musicians who were driving NYC culture at its peak in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. And I love his chatty, laid back prose style.

Now reading Toni M’s “Paradise.” It’s terrific and scary, more expansive than most of what she’d written up to that point. It’s like a really well written Stephen King novel.

r482 r485 I'm now reading Tell the Wolves I'm Home, and I'm loving it. An AIDS-related story from the perspective of the deceased's niece. This means every single book on your list in r482 is one of my favorite reads from this century.

I think I must have read it when I bought it in 2013. It grabbed me right away in 2023. Yet I don't remember it very well. I read so much, I must forget a lot of what I've read.

Finished Joan Silber's "Improvement" (linked stories as a novel) yesterday, which I really enjoyed. Lovely, clean sentences. About to read David Mitchell's "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" for the... third time? I love his three middle-period books -- "Black Swan Green," "Cloud Atlas" and "Jacob;" his more recent books have all flown off the rail, at least for me.

R527: I've read all of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels twice. Yes, the nautical terminology is dense and initially off-putting, but after awhile you get the general gist of it and can largely ignore it. (It's similar to when you watch a hospital drama on TV, and they're yelling about intubation and sepsis and the vagus nerve -- you basically know what they're talking about if not the actual specifics.) And some of those nautical terms you learn show up as crossword puzzles answers, so: bonus!

The New Life should be on the shortlist for the Pulitzer this year. What a stunning debut novel. I loved it.

[bold]What Books Are You Burning in 2023?[/bold]

There! Fixed it for you!

R533 The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is awarded to an American author for the best novel, preferably on American life, Crewe is British and the novel takes place in the UK. The popular front runners are currently Demon Copperhead (now also expected by many to sweep The Women’s Prize) and Trust by Hernan Diaz. But lately the Pulitzer has one to dark horses many didn’t predict.

^^^ gone, not one.

I don’t want to see the Pulitzer go to either Trust or Demon Copperhead. I’ve preferred other books by these authors. I’m hoping either Cormac McCarthy or Tess Gunty wins.

'The New Life' is sure to win a big UK prize. Crewe's excellent debut is justifiably winning much acclaim. There was for example a fascinating long notice in 'The New Yorker.'

Immersing in the novel's aura and characters, I couldn't help but imagine it also as a film. Such a work could be compelling.

I could see The New Life making the Booker long list, but no further. There seems to be a cooling off of Gay Booker titles since the high point of Shuggie Bain winning. Young Mungo, which was a better book didn’t even make the long list last year, and when they gave the Booker to another Gay man, Galgut, it was for a novel with only some shadows lesbian scenes. They’ve become much more conservative.

I finished Lessons In Chemistry and gave it five stars, a book I initially thought I wouldn’t even pick up. The American cover definitely undermines what it’s about, the British cover evokes a much better sense of playfulness and even camp that pervades the novel. I finally figured out that it reminds me of early John Irving, which I loved- like Garp and Hotel New Hampshire, and I did learn he’s beloved by the author. It’s hyperrealist, but yet has silly over the top situations and crazy interconnections of characters over decades of time, even the super intelligent dog named 6:30 is all knowing and interconnected and is commenting on the whole situation. Just a breath of fresh air from the much other heavier works I’ve been reading. Sometimes I forget reading can just be for fun.

And r535, let's. not forget that last year's Booker winner had a gay man as the. narrator (SEVEN MOONS), even though written by an ostensibly straight man.

I think TOMORROW AND TOMORROW, etc. has a good shot at the Pulitzer.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow not making the Women Prize long list as many predicted it would does not bode well for literary prize awards.

Last year the NETANYAHUS came out of nowhere to win the PP, when many insisted it would be LOVE SONGS OF E.B. DUBOIS. Pulitzer choices are often very unpredictable.

[QUOTE] [R533] The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is awarded to an American author for the best novel, preferably on American life, Crewe is British and the novel takes place in the UK.

My bad. I knew this but got overly excited having just finished it. It’s just such a gorgeous book.

Then, "Mercury Pictures Presents" should qualify.

Are the Pulitzers and Booker Awards calculated by the calendar year, books published between Jan 1-Dec 31 of each year?

These two seem better matched.

Wrong thread ooops

R539 Shuggie Bain was nominated to an incredibly amount of awards and has something awards love, it's gay (the auther, the main characters) without being too gay (alcoholism and relationships between mother and son are the main themes). Shuggie is a kid almost the whole novel, so no sex at all (which is fine by me).

Young Mungo deals with a love theme and a teenager character, and of course after a supernominated novel the second one tends to be ignored at the big awards (specially when the first one won one of the big ones).

The Booker didn't really reduced the amount of gayness, Damon Galgut is gay (even the novel is not) and The seven moone of Maali Almeida has a gay main character.

I remember when The line of beauty won it was a big deal to have a gay winner and in the last decade three gay authors won the prize.

The Pulitzer on the other hand has avoided gay themes and frankly when they chose a gay author it was not with a great novel (but i'm not too fond of the Pulitzer winners lately, with a few exceptions) and my big problem is that when they go for the surprise winner they rarely chose something that really deserves the award

R546 No, at least not the Booker (I think they go from October to september of the following year, and that's the reason sometimes some novels are not published by the time of the release of the longlist)

R542 Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow is already a bestseller so it didn't need the awards at all. I think the theme around video games is a big no for a lot of juries.

Anyway, the women's prize is an awkward award, i watched several predictions from booktubers and they failed big time (Erik even joked at how little they get right every year).

I find very surprising they didn't nominated Nightcrawling. It was a booker nominee from a very young author it seemed perfect for the women's prize

R540 Someone posted on twitter that the main character of Lessons in chemistry would hate the american cover and the author agreed with her. She doesn't seemed happy with the cover at all.

It's a very odd cover (very chic lit) specially given how great is the british cover

Haven't read Nightcrawling, but isn't it sexually graphic? Might be this turned off some voters.

I'd honestly love to see "Trust" win the Pulitzer, it was easily the best new book I read last year.

Once again I have to say that fiction writing is the most subjective art there is. I strongly disliked Lessons in Chemistry, Trust and Demon Copperhead. And while I enjoyed Tomorrow x 3 to a degree, I'd hardly call it prize-worthy.

Spending time reading a book can be a big commitment, much more than watching a play or film or viewing art in a museum so I think pure enjoyment really is a big factor. That's why I find it very subjective and don't blame anyone for liking what they like.

Any thoughts on Ruth Ware's books like The It Girl, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Death of Mrs. Westaway, etc?

Fun reads or just cheesey?

Nightcrawling was mentioned by Ruth Ozeki in her acceptance speech for winning the Women’s Prize last year and the author is a student of hers at Smith College. It would have been to loaded for it to have showed up on the long list this year.

I find Ruth Ware variably entertaining but always thin.

I never find R558 thin.

[quote] It would have been to loaded for it to have showed up on the long list this year.

I don't understand your hipster slang. What does "to loaded" mean?

I couldn’t get through Nightcrawling. Too depressing.

Hated "In a Dark, Dark Wood" but Ware's Cabin 10 and Mrs Westaway were okay, if not great.

R560 Politically charged.

Having finished "The New Life," I do have one criticism, in spite of the hot sex scenes: the dialogue is very unconvincing, and the characters don't feel like living people when they are talking. And there are a lot of scenes of them talking.

R555 Of course it's subjective. I extremely disliked Elif Batuman's The idiot and Joshua Cohen's The Netanyahus but i found people who found them hilarious (i didn't find them funny at all).

I always get suspicious of novels with a big theme, i found The sweetness of water characters extremely flat and unbelievable but the reviews were amazing, and there are a lot of novels (Such a fun age, Exit West) that have a great idea but a very poor execution.

Anyway, not everything is subjective. Novel can't be your type of novel (or don't find the theme particularly interesting) and you can appreciate that it's a good novel. For me a good example is Marylynne Robinson's Gilead. It's a slow pace novel and the spirituality and religion are not something that i particularly crave on a novel but it's a good novel anyway

I loved The Netanyahus. Glad it won the Pulitzer.

I also loved The Netanyahus, it reminded me of Saul Bellow.

Re. 'The New Life' dialogue at R564. I know what you mean, but for me the slightly formal speech patterns actually took me deeper into the story.

In the 1890s such interactions would have been more formal anyway - there was much more social reserve and punctilio. Also, most of the main characters are thinkers, writers, academics - expected to be articulate and measured.

Finally, the careful speech patterns convey the high caution necessary for the main characters' endeavour. Terror of being gay, being thought to be gay, of then bravely writing about being gay, could not allow over-easy familiarity. As the deep shock of the Wilde case in the novel underlines.

I find The Netanyahus utterly boring.

I heard about Joshua Cohen when he published Book of numbers so i had high expectations but in my oppinion it's like the smart kid of the class writing something for his teacher. I understand why the critics liked it but that doesn't change that it's pages and pages of boredom.

I compared it with recent Booker winners and frankly it's ages of the quality and the story of Milkman, Shuggie Bain or The promise

R558, i found Cabin 10 not only derivative but completely ludicrous. I had already bought One by One which I attempted to read twice and failed. It starts with a list of character and their main and their roles, she doesn’t even bother to take the trouble to introduce them organically. But it may get better, of course.

I like crime fiction, but there are some current ones who are puzzling. Even Ware is not as horrible than the garbage that Lucy Foley writes (again, stealing from the best without realizing what makes a good crime fiction book great).

After vowing never to read a Sophie Hannah book again yesterday i bought The Couple at the Table, am already irritated by page 8 but can’t really complain as i knew what i was doing.

Conversely, am reading Elizabeth Finch at the same time and loving it.

Thanks for the comments on Ruth Ware. I told some friends how much I loved the new Rebecca Makkai I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU, and one of them said it sounded just like Ware's THE IT GIRL. I'd never heard of Ware or that book but I trust the opinions here more than my frau friend, lol. Hence my inquiries upthread. . Anyway, I started reading Ware's THE DEATH OF MRS. WESTAWAY (found it in my public library), hoping she'll be more than a mere modern mystery writer, maybe more like Ruth Rendell. Only about 70 pages, enjoying it ok. We'll see.....

You must realize in THE NEW LIFE that those "inverts" had no language, no words, to speak about their desires. Not that the activities didn't exist for centuries, but it simply wasn't discussed in polite society and there was no vocabulary to casually chat about it with any sincerity. It was why Oscar Wilde's trial was so notorious and horrifying to the general public, who were hearing details they'd always suppressed or ignored.

Ware is terrible. Shitty frau lit. Much more elevated forms of that available.

Has anyone read this one? It's about King Ludwig of Bavaria (who was gay)

^ Shit, that link didn't work. But the book is called Empty Theatre

The 12 Amazon reader reviews for it are not making me want to read it, r575.

Lover as I am of Douglas Henshall in Shetland, I borrowed the first book in the series by Ann Cleeves.

Of course there should be a formality to the language that the characters use in "The New Life"...but the dialogue felt lifeless to me...people making their "points" without any specificity or character to the way they spoke. Lambert Strether and Maria Gostrey have a lot to hide in James's "The Ambassadors," too, but their dialogue has such tension and verve, and I believe in them as real people speaking. I realize that's a lofty comparison. But the writing of the sex scenes in "The New Life" is so vivid that maybe it made the lack of vividness in the scenes with dialogue stand out more.

I just read Ballad of the Sad Cafe, was the hunchback gay backstabbing dwarf troll, Cousin Lymon, MccCullers getting revenge on Truman Capote? I could see them hating each other.

Has anyone read Jonathan Tropper's novels? I'm enjoying EVERYTHING CHANGES.

I liked This Is Where I Leave You, r580, but it was so long ago, I don't remember much about it. A dysfunctional Jewish family gets together to sit shiva when their father dies.

I've read that and one other of his books, but I don't remember which one.

Les Mauvais Anges, by Eric Jourdan. A French novel about two teenage boys in love. I'm reading the English translation.

This Is Where I Leave You was adapted into an obnoxious, Star-studded indie movie.

Finally got around to Mark Harris's biography of Mike Nichols.

It's quite as riveting as I thought it would be. Exhaustive detail about an often exhausting, but singular and fascinating life.

Demons which drove Nichols are ever-present. However, the fine work which made the book so necessary is enriched for me in the telling. Recommended!

Agree totally, except for his wimping out on Nichols' homosexual side.

Mark Harris can be a tad much on Twitter. Very much a gay scold at times.

r586 "a tad much" is putting it kindly...

R586 Not unlike his husband.

Les Mauvais Anges by Eric Jourdan is one of the filthiest books I've ever read....I wish that some of Jourdan's other books could be translated into English....some of the French covers for his books are extremely hot.

^ I'm loving Les Mauvais Anges so far

Lamda Literary Awards finalists announced! Glad to see Our Wives Under the Sea and My Government Means to Kill Me on the list.

No love for Young Mungo at the Lammies. To be fair it was not a big year for gay fiction at awards season.

At still don't get what was bisexual about How much of these hills are gold (one of the most overrated debut novels in recent years)

Was The New Life not eligible for a Lammy?

Think these are drawn from books published in 2022; NEW LIFE is 2023.

Getting near the end of this thread... which has been one of my favorites in DL. I think, given it's March, we could fill another one.

I'll start a part 2

Here's the next thread

Let's

finish

this