What Books Are You Reading In 2025? Part 2

Stories to be Whispered: The Collected Short Fiction of Cornell Woolrich

Halfway through PLAYGROUND, Richard Powers. He's very progressive in his political/environmental values (Overstory, Bewilderment et. al.)... but something about the way he writes feels like "old style heroic"... novels. More Leon Uris than Thomas Pynchon.

Reading "Angel Down" by Daniel Kraus, a kind-of stream of consciousness novel about soldiers during WWI who discover a fallen agent on the battlefield. Beautifully written and intense.

Bringing over from the last thread:

We Were the Mulvaneys is really good JCO. Such a slow burn of one family’s complete downfall. And I loved how it’s narrated by the youngest son of the family (“We were the Mulvaneys. Remember us?” I always remember that opening line of the novel).

Why did you abandon it, [R593]?

Also from old thread:

Yesterday, I finished the YA classic Bridge to Terabithia, which honestly I found a bit dated and underwhelming. My question: was the boy implied to be gay (possibly girl as well)? His rednecky parents were openly concerned about his artistic interests indicating so. The main message about fitting in when you're "different" came through loud and clear.

Anyone looking for something to read, consider *The Chaperone* by Laura Moriarty, engaging main character with a gay sub-plot.

Apocalypsh Ashashin by JJ Thorn.

r4, I read We Were the Mulvaneys coming off the high of Oates' latest novel Fox, which I absolutely loved, one of my faves of the past several years.

Long ago I'd read a few of her other books, The Gravedigger's Daughter, The Falls, Because It Is Bitter, Because It Is My Heart, and liked them all but there was a melancholy sameness to them. Fox, OTOH, was sharp, satiric, lethally witty and utterly contemporary....qualities I hadn't ever seen in her writing and so I was intrigued to search for something else of hers.

I realized I owned Mulvaneys but never read it and heard many considered it among her best. Unfortunately, I just found it so sad and depressing and halfway through I could see the characters were only in for more and worse of the same. And there was no sense of humor whatsoever....not that I expected it to be funny per se but it was all just too gloomy. Do the family fortunes ever change? Ever improve? All that inevitable tragedy...

I also bought Blonde and now I'm looking forward to eventually reading it. Hoping that a book based on Marilyn Monroe's life will be provocative, funny, poignant if also sad.

"Night and the City," Gerald Kersh's atmospheric novel of London's Underworld just before WW2. Brilliantly captures the stink and sleaze of Soho.

La Chartreuse de Parme / Stendhal

Tramps Like Us - recommended here - great flashback to 1970s-80s gay life of freedom

Marriage at Sea - interesting description of a straight British couple stranded on a raft in the 1970s and how opposite personality traits can create a stronger whole

Bee Sting - the lauded Irish book by Paul Murray. Throughly enjoying it. Told form the perspective of each member of a family - including a surly teenager, nerdy boy, kind father and striving mother. Much better than Skippy Dies

The Doorman - fiction that gives a snapshot of the extreme affluent in 2024 NYC and the current social/economic culture of NYC.

If you're prone to audiobooks, r10, The Bee Sting is one of the best. It's a great companion to the written book.

Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It's the first book in the series Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

So far, I'm intrigued. I lived in Barcelona for three months and I like that I'm familiar with a lot of the places.

I have two more Tana French books to read, so I will read those after I finish Shadow of the Wind, and then return to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series.

Good luck with Martin Chuzzlewit, r12. I love Dickens but that one eluded me. Same with Barnaby Rudge.

I just downloaded the Baldwin biography. Also reading 'The Leopard' by Lampedusa but find myself wishing I hadn't seen the movie first. It makes the book feel a little dry, but it's still good.

[quote] I have two more Tana French books to read

I was disappointed by In The Woods and The Likeness and gave up on her.

Tramps Like Us - taking it with me on a trip overseas this Thursday.

late to the party but Garrett Graff's history of Watergate is unbelievably good.

The History of Sound (and other short stories), in anticipation of the upcoming film. Really enjoying it.

[quote] reading 'The Leopard' by Lampedusa but find myself wishing I hadn't seen the movie first. It makes the book feel a little dry, but it's still good.

My experience exactly, R15. Twice I made at shot at the book, being assured by what I'd read and heard it was great, great novel. But I'd seen the movie long ago (a couple times) and the movie just filtered anything I was trying to read.

It's an interesting topic for this group of readers: has seeing movies before you read a novel affected your ability to read it? How? Give examples. Due Friday.

Well, I had seen the movie of “The Leopard” a few times before tackling the book but I was still completely blown away by the it. Though I remember it took a few minutes of adjustment for me to get into that fly-on-the-wall, moment to moment sense of tactile detail that starts the book off. but once I got the rhythm of it, I loved it. Started reading it again as soon as I finished it, it’s entirely unique.

r13, I loved "The Shadow of the Wind" but I didn't like any of the other books in the series.

The Emperor of Gladness: stunning second novel from Ocean Vuong.

[quote]has seeing movies before you read a novel affected your ability to read it?

Seeing the movie and then reading the book just makes it easier for me to visualize what I'm reading.

On the other hand, reading a book before seeing the movie usually leaves me disappointed in the movie. The movie in my head is rarely the movie on the screen.

[Italic]The Elegance of the Hedgehog[/italic] worked better for me as a movie than the dense book.

With Trollope's [italic]The Way We Live Now[/italic], I liked the book after seeing the video, later appreciating the material left out of the film rather than a thousand page slog first.

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW is one of my favorite novels and I found the BBC version, which I watched a few years later, excellent. Ben Kingsley, Shirley Henderson, Cheryl Campbell, Matthew McFadyen, Douglas Hodge, Cillian Murphy.....OMG.

The BBC version of LITTLE DORRIT is also spectacular, making a rather dense and inscrutable novel far more exciting. Claire Foy, Tom Courtenay, Judy Parfitt, Russell Tovey, among so many others - you just can't beat these British casts.

"ASK NOT: The Kennedys and the Women they Destroyed."

Based on Benjamin Woods' recent Booker longlist inclusion for SEASCRAPER, I bought his first novel THE BELLWETHER REVIVALS. Just started it, but it so far seems an absorbing read. (Lots of hints of THE SECRET HISTORY from its reviewers.)

I was referring to the one with David Suchet (Poirot) as Melmotte, R24.

R16 - I enjoy her books. I used to be a big reader. About 20 years ago, after coming out, I fell out of the habit. I moved to a different city, started a job and a new life basically, and didn't have much time. When I tried reading books again a few years later, I couldn't seem to concentrate and finish them. I hadn't read a book in forever. Earlier this year, my daughter-in-law sent me one of her books, and I just devoured it. I've now read seven of her nine books. They are easy reads for me, and that's what I needed to start reading again.

I'm so happy - I thought that age had fried my brain and I couldn't really read anymore. That is true to some degree. I did try to start a very dense novel, and had to put it aside. For now, I'll content myself with easy reads.

The first time I read EM Forster's "Howard's End" I didn't quite get it. I understood it, but so many of the characters seemed rather amorphous. Then the Redgrave-Thompson-Hopkins movie came out, and it all seemed much clearer. I went back and reread the book (and have several times since) and loved it. With some authors a visual crutch may help, at least initially.

I'm with you R29, I enjoy a movie-book relationship either way, and sometimes it's very helpful.

Mark Merlis -read 3 of his books so far this year. All gay themed - 1960-1990s - with great details of gay life in those eras. But most importantly, I absolutely loved his writing and storytelling. I’ve been recommending him to all my gay friends - he seems to be an underappreciated gay writer about whom I knew nothing until I read his first book, American Studies. Love them all - especially An Arrows Flight which I resisted because of the pseudo-Greek mythology element but was a brilliant gay AIDS-era update of Philoctetes that requires no knowledge of Greek mythology or appreciation of fantasy/mythology novels.

In a reverse order, I finally got myself reading much of the classic Victorian canon in my elder years, beginning with The Way We Live Now, by telling myself: just imagine Maggie Smith and Judi Dench and John Gielgud and how they'd play the characters and it really helped me get into the world of Trollope, Dickens, George Eliot, et. al. It made it less intimidating, and of course, so much of the plotting is no more than soap opera, albeit brilliantly written.

‘Suddenly Something Clicked,’ by Walter Murch

r27, my poor memory...thanks! I was confusing Ben Kingsley with David Suchet, who was indeed the brilliant Melmotte in that BBC The Way We Live Now.

100 Years of Solitude

Murderland

Everybody's Fool, by Richard Russo.

Merlis is underappreciated. Didn't realized he died some years ago. I hope there's a period of rediscovery in his excellent books. Especially Arrow's Floght and American Studies. Are they still in print?

The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters by Laura Thompson.

I liked Outrageous, but I didn’t love it. I’ve been hearing or reading about the sisters for years now and I wanted something more thorough.

Diana especially has always fascinated me and I don’t mean in a good way.

Also want to second a recommendation for THE CHAPERONE by Laura Moriarty, mentioned upthread, a surprisingly good read.

And the newly published THE CORRESPONDENT by first time author Virginia Evans is excellent.

Both novels start in seemingly simple, unassuming ways but ultimately go very deep,

What do you think of it, R36? I'm finding it at times gripping, but at other times in need of editing with a machete. And I'm not sold on the author's thesis.

I’m reading Helen Garner for the first time since reading Monkey Grip and The First Stone in my teens.

Yes, it’s because of Dua Lipa!

I'm reading my first Mitford now, R39: [italic]Christmas Pudding[/italic].

The Merlis book that interests me most seems to be [italic]Man About Town[/italic].

Man About Town is good - and the most mild and relatable Merlis. Elements that are dated/problematic to non-elder gays - but describes issues of growing old as a gay man and relationships after breakup of a LT partnership/“marriage”. As with all his stuff, it hits home based on my experiences as a gay man in late 20th century/early 21st urban gay metropolis. (DC in most of his books)

AS a 76 year old eldergay and avid fiction reader I'm shocked that I've never heard of Mark Merlis.

How can that be? Which novel should I read first? Just went on Amazon to read readers' reviews on his various novels and several intrigue me.

I vote for American Studies. I think you haven't heard of him because his books weren't well-publicized and widely reviewed or awarded. His publishers didn't do their job.

R46: he was writing decades ago. The market for gay fiction increased since then, post-internet era (2000+). Prior to that, gay fiction was very niche.

Perhaps his books were all published by small companies?

Merlis’ American Studies was a little too far back (1950s-60s) for me as Gen X. I enjoyed the 80s-90s novels like A Man About Town. An Arrows Flight is perhaps his masterpiece - and worked for me as an analogy for the 1980s (like Demon Copperhead was to David Copperfield except Greek myths and hustlers, AIDS).

JD was a little….disturbing. But writing was very real. Relatable, fully fleshed out characters - who were living through the sexual revolution after the repression of the 1950s. Again great writing - like all of his books, i didn’t want it to end and it stayed with me long after.

The Fountainhead. About time I did.

Another fine writer of the time was Paul Russell: The Coming Storm, Sea of Tranquility., etc. As I recall, his work was very sexy and readable—but also smart. Seems that he's still in print, acc to Amazon.

Also liked Christopher Bram. He was prolific for a time. Novels like HOLD TIGHT and FATHER OF FRANKENSTEIN (filmed as Gods and Monsters). Also very readable.

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Also a fan of Christopher Bram. Even his more minor work like Lives of the Circus Animals and Exiles in America are fun light reads.

Thanks to Datalounge, I read Fox by Joyce Carol Oates last week and quite enjoyed it. Now I’m reading Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine. It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist a few months ago. This is my first time reading her but it won’t be my last. I’m finding her voice fresh and unique.

Started FLESH by David Szalay (a finalist for the Booker Prize) a few hours ago and can't put it down. I've already read more than a hundred pages. Spare yet totally compelling writing about a teenager in Hungary in the 1980s and how life propels him along through the decades. Sex, money, power and existentialism.

R56, that’s one of my favorite novels of the year.

I’m reading Watership Down because it was recommended to me as something that might cheer me up, or take my mind of everyday pressures.

Anyone reading romantasy books?

I just finished FOX was a thrilling and chilling read (and often quite darkly funny). I was hooked from the first page until the last. Oates’s ability to freshly describe the most commonplace objects and emotions is so legion. I was consistently in awe by her prose and just how quickly it goes once you’re fully mesmerized by it. There are also some genuinely mind-blowing metaphors. Francis Fox was a very compelling character to follow throughout the novel that was giving me some interesting Tom Riley vibes. And I was genuinely startled by the final conclusion/twist which I thought was expertly executed (as well as telegraphed).

One of her best novels, by far. I would say this will get Pulitzer Prize consideration. It’s shocking that at age 87, Joyce Carol Oates is at the top of her game.

Journal du voleur, Jean Genet, which gave me interesting comparisons to the inversions of Trump and his cronies.

Culpability is impossible to put down.

I, too, believe FOX and Oates are worthy of this year's Pulitzer but I worry that the book isn't being talked about as much as it should be.

Does anyone have recommendations for contemporary French fiction?

[QUOTE] Oates’s ability to freshly describe the most commonplace objects and emotions is so legion.

Even those little marble notebooks we all had to get at back-to-school Oates manages to make sinister in FOX.

I've recently been reading psychological crime thrillers by A J Cross. Very good, in my opinion and wasn't expecting one of the villians to be a necrophilic which was a bit squeamish but there you go.

Most recently, Moonstone: The Boy Who Never was by Icelandic writer Sjon; John Rechy's After the Blue Hour; John Lahr's Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh; and then several Michael Ondaatje novels.

This thread inspired me to read Man About Town by Mark Merlis. I just started it this afternoon but I’m finding it captivating. I loved American Studies.

Started Katie Kitamura's AUDITION last night. First 50 pages are very interesting.

I'm working on Paraic O'Donnell's [italic]The Naming of the Birds[/italic], sequel to the Victorian mystery [italic]The House on Vesper Sands[/italic]. I recommend reading them in order for background.

However, this one features a murder in a Molly House, gay brothel. Inspector Cutter makes a (libertarian) point of not giving a feck about "sodomy criminals" but solving a murder. At one point, there's a throw-away line that to me hinted the older married-to-my-job single detective refused to succumb to pressure to marry.

Outstanding audio narration!

Someone recommended Goldfinch. Anyone ever read it?

R71. Not worth the effort. And I count The Secret History as a guilty pleasure.

R71, I loved it.

[quote]Anyone ever read it?

Well, it won the Pulitzer. So I would assume that at least the jury read it.

I loved The Goldfinch except for the excruciating Las Vegas chapters which could be its own (bad) book. The rest reads like a modern Dickens story.

Bad book, worse movie.

Started BUCKEYE on audio. Reviews have been very positive. Enjoying it so far.

The Las Vegas section of The Goldfinch was actually my favorite part of the novel.

Isn’t Donna Tartt due for another novel? She usually drops one every ten years?

Better Davis and Other Stories by Philip Dean Walker. Very funny, very sad, and everything in between.

One story in the collection (“Brainstorm”) seems to heavily imply that Robert Wagner murdered Natalie Wood. There is also a suggestion that Christopher Walken might have had an affair with the actor who played the Cowboy in “The Boys in the Band.”

I thought Donna Tartt was overrated. Good storytelling - but not a memorable, meaningful book - for me.

Many years ago I heard that Frank Gifford had a long-time fling with the actor who played Cowboy in BITB.

Baldwin was liberal white America’s token black guy. He was truly overrated. He’s like Jean-Michel Basquiat. I just roll my eyes when I hear some white savior mention their names. They’re full of it.

Still reading the box set of Detective/Murder mysteries. I didn't know the British said "half after 2:PM" for instance rather than 2:30 as Americans do. Ya learn something new all the time.

My experience, R83, is that they say "half two" instead of half past two.

I was gifted a Proust collection. Which one should I read first?

You have to read Proust in order/-start with Swann’s Way

You have a treat in store r85!

French lit has been a desert since Jean-Christophe Rufin stopped churning them out.

Started the first audiobook in K J Charles' historical mystery series featuring bookshop owner Will Darling. Like the title character already, can't wait to meet him new "partner" as well!

But Andrei Makine is still hard at work at least.

Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont by (not that) Elizabeth Taylor. So good. I wonder if boarding houses/hotels for mobile and non-infirm senior citizens still exist? Well, not in Kensington.

Starting Tower of Babylon by Alejandro Varela. Anyone read it?

Reading Deep House by Jeremy Lin. It’s a memoir and a review of US marriage and immigration laws and how standing laws were used to discriminate against gays and lesbians.

I've been reading all the Philip Marlowe novels of Raymond Chandler. They're strange, off kilter, complex, atmospheric and engrossing, and very much of their specific LA war and postwar era. I had been listening to the Eliot Gould narrations of several of them, (he's a great narrator for Marlowe, but went back to read them in print because the audiobooks had been abridged and much of the poetry and beautiful descriptions had been excised in the abridgment

"Crazy Pavements" (1927), by Beverly (a man) Nichols. A rawther delicious satire of the London high life, as camp as a row of tents. One character, a titled nymphomaniac, has had 7 face-lifts. It's all in that vein. Reprinted by the admirable Valanacourt Press.

Beverly Nichols was family (of course)

R94: He has his detractors, but I liked Scott Brick's unabridged narration. My parents had an acquaintance called Linda Loring, so that name was hard for me as a fictional character.

This lpoks like it will be very quick match

[quote]Baldwin was liberal white America’s token black guy. He was truly overrated. He’s like Jean-Michel Basquiat. I just roll my eyes when I hear some white savior mention their names. They’re full of it.

Is that why his essays are still read and admired 50-60 years later, and why he continues to be the subject of documentaries? He'd have been long forgotten if what you say were true. "Giovanni's Room" (1956) is considered a classic of gay literature.

Baldwin's "Go tell it on the Mountain" is also a classic, and is taught quite frequently in colleges, as are many of the short stories (like "Sonny's Blues").

"The Fire Next time" is considered one of the most important book-length social criticism essays of the 20th century.

I was amazed by how well Baldwin captured a white main character in Giovanni's Room.

Loved his "The Devil's Finds Work" as well. He's earned his acclaim, referring to him as an "over-rated token" just ain't so.

Baldwin wrote and said things about race relations that were ahead of their time and are still relevant today.

I also loved MRS. PALFREY but tried reding a few of Elizabeth Taylor's other novels yet none were nearly as engaging.

And if you haven't seen it there's lovely small 2005 film of the book starring Joan Plowright and Rupert Friend that's an excellent adaptation. I think it can be found on youtube.

Just finished Katie Kitamura's 2025 AUDITION which I said had an interesting beginning upthread when I started it.

Thank god it's a short book (197 pages) because I never would have gotten through it otherwise. So damned annoying. I have no idea what the author is trying to say and I'm shocked at the rave reviews it's gotten everywhere. If anyone can explain the plot to me, please have a go at it.

My favorite of Taylor's novels is IN A SUMMER SEASON.

Oh! Don't think I tried that one but I'll have a look. Thanks, r105.

1. Baldwin wrote stunningly about race and the experience of being Black, and gay. It was highly relevant art for its time. Some passages are still great American writing.

2. He was a superior essayist and pretty good novelist... whether Black or white or purple.

I just went on ThriftBooks and ordered The Mommie Dearest Diary: Carol Ann Tells All. I hope it's good.

Any other gossip/trash books I can order? Will be getting heart surgery soon (CABG) and need books that will keep me amused.

r108, try The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson