Reading Tab

One of the many benefits of reading is that it does increase your vocabulary.

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Bleacheddecay

Yeah, if you bother to use a dictionary...

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http://www.last.fm/user/diezelpower/

Just finished:

2.5/5

Just started:

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

The Map of Moments by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon 2/5 It's only got that high a score because of it's location, which is, New Orleans.

"World War Z" by Max Brooks.

The Promise by Donna Boyd was about werewolves. I've never been that fond of werewolf lit but Id heard good things about this one. It was just m'kay for me though.

I did find the way the narrators described themselves very reminiscent of one of my least fav things about White Wolf's werewolf game whilst played online. I wanted to scream at times, "Yes, yes, we know, you are irresistibly gorgeous, let's just stipulate to that and move on with something actually interesting shall we?" LOL.



Pale Immortal by Anne Frasier was not what I expected. I kept looking at the spine to see if it had YA stickered on it. It had some interesting elements to it. I might read the sequel just to see what happens in anything to the lead characters.



Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler was good as all Butler writing tends to be. I wanted a bit more resolve than I got from it but I'm glad I read it.

Philip K. Dick - Ubik - Excellent pychological sci-fi. Also the first book by him I've read. If anyone has any suggestions what to read next, please suggest away. 4.5/5

Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night - 5/5 I can't thank Holden enough for introducing me to him. Fantastic writer. I'm trying not to go through it all at once though.

And now I'm reading Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed. Love Le Guin.

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin

I honestly don't think I've ever read a book where I more wanted to punch the lead character in the face. What a prick. Seriously. Not a badly written book at all, and some passages were quite affecting, but...early 20th C American, short, unpleasant, sexual angst...it really ticked a lot of wrong boxes for me :l

Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle

Another one I'd been meaning to read for a while. Pretty good. Short, again, but the Holmes stories kind of have to be. I quite liked it. Holmes can be very funny in a dry sort of way. But my enjoyment was marred by an edition that thought every third word needed a footnote attached to it. Some of them explaining the meanings of fairly common words. As if it assumes the reader is a moron who does not possess a dictionary, and that wound me up.

I was sure I posted something about Giovanni's Room just now. Anyhoo, I meant to say that I've come across it in my search for some good lgbtq literature but now you've made me second guess it. :\

dick:
next read flow my tears, the policeman said

le guin:
have you already read the left hand of darkness?

Indeed I have. Thanks for the recommendation...

It wasn't bad. I think I was a bit harsh on it, I did think it was fairly well written. I just found it hard to sympthise with the main character when he messed up so many people's lives.

As for lgbtq literature...I can't think of a great deal. Maybe there isn't much out there, or maybe I just haven't heard of it. I'd recommend Maurice by EM Forster (good film too). Sarah Waters is brilliant, I loved Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet. Affinity made me a bit upset, but that doesn't mean it wasn't good. It certianly left a strong impression. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall. The Colour Purple by Alice Walker. All obvious ones, you've probably read them. Mostly lesbian ones too. Hmm. Something for me to get on to my reading forum about, see if they've got any recommendations.

Oh, there's And Tango Makes Three. It's a kids picture book about gay penguins. True story. Got it out the library for my son, he likes penguins (bit young to really understand it, but the penguins are cute).

I just started Desperation by Stephen King, i have read the Regulators already and i am told that this same people different story but i really enjoyed the Regulators so if you haven't read it and like King i would suggest it!

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Is there someone inside you?
Sometimes.
Who is it?
I don't know.
Is it Captain Howdy?

I haven't read any of those actually... The only two lgbtq novels I've read are The line of beauty and Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart...so thanks for the recommendations, and any future ones are very welcome too...

And I love love love that people like you are raising new people...they're sure to become awesome men...

Me too on the raising new people thing!

And Tango Makes Three is a very cute children's picture book!

Tipping the Velvet was okay although I'm not very into Victorian style lit myself.

I'll have to look into some of those mentioned here though.

Luna and other books by Julie Anne Peters are supposed to be good. They are Y.A books. I've read Luna and liked it quite well.

Read Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima.

I've been meaning to actually, ever since you mentioned it yonks ago... Not sure how available it is over the interwebz though...*unsure*

The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment That Transformed Their Lives
by Cheryl Jarvis, was a really interesting read. I think it would be great for a book club. It was non fiction. I think it has some good food for thought in it.

Spelling Mississippi by Marnie Woodrow was okay. It was supposed to be a lesbian love story but the two main characters didn't even meet until more than halfway through the book. If found that to be pretty frustrating, particularly since they were both acting in pretty nutty ways, IMO.

The direction of their relationship was left pretty ambiguous in the end, which I didn't care for either.

I did like the way their pasts made the fit together so well and interestingly. I did like the setting, which was mostly New Orleans, although part of it was also in Toronto, St. Louis and Venice, Italy.

I did like that the end wasn't tragic, which happens in a lot of gay and lesbian stories.

I did like some of the stories they told each other and games they sort of made up as they went along.

It was an interesting book but I didn't feel like the story actually went anywhere. That made it frustrating for me, at times.