Empire of Self

Jay Parini has written a wonderful biography of one of my favorite writers, Gore Vidal. Empire of Self covers a lot of the same ground as Gore's memoirs and the earlier (and much detested by Gore, though I enjoyed it) biography by Fred Kaplan, but Parini was friends with Gore for thirty years and brings a lot of personal insight to the story of Gore's life.

I read Gore's first memoir, Palimpsest, when I was just out of high school and what impacted me the most at that time, and for years afterward, was Gore's great love for Jimmy Trimble, the boy with whom he'd fooled around while in school and who was then killed in World War II. Back then,  it seemed to me like a tragic tale of lost love. I could easily imagine what might have been if Jimmy had returned from war, how they would have ended up together.

I've certainly grown up a lot in the (we won't say how many!) years since then. Jimmy Trimble was a beautiful young man who died far too soon, and whatever they shared together certainly impacted Gore to some degree for the rest of his life. But the great love of Gore's life was Howard Auster, no matter how much Gore himself may have protested  that his companion of 50 years was a friend with whom he shared his life or that the great secret to their lasting friendship was that they didn't sleep together.

Parini's insider view of their relationship, and especially of Gore's life after Howard's death, is eye opening, though it  wasn't my first indication of Gore's true feelings. Vidal's description of Howard's passing, in his second memoir Point to Point Navigation, spoke volumes. Reading Parini's description of how Gore, at the very end of his life when he could barely speak, asked Jay to tell him stories about Howard and their times together, had tears streaming down my face.

Once young love and tragic loss seemed far more real and valid to me than a day to day life with someone with whom you didn't even share a bed. I've grown up, and I see now the difference between true love and youthful infatuation. Gore, always going against the grain, may have immortalized what he had with Jimmy both in fiction and memoir, but it was Howard who mattered to him.

Bowie's Books

 A fascinating list from David Bowie of his 100 must read books. Check it out.

50 Essentials of LGBT Fiction

An interesting list of 50 Essential Works of LGBT Fiction from Flavorwire. Some of the choices are undeniable, others are unexpected. Most surprising of all, as Band of Thebes points out, are the omissions.

Still, if you're looking for something to read, you'll find plenty of suggestions.

Gore Vidal

  The writer I've admired most in my life, one of the first who made me want to become a writer myself, is gone. Gore Vidal died yesterday evening at his home in California, aged 86.

  I know that Gore himself didn't believe there was any kind of afterlife, but in my mind's eye today I'm seeing him as he was back in the prime of his life, bounding up the steps at his beloved La Rondinaia in Ravello to find Howard Austen, Tennessee Williams (the Glorious Bird), Paul Newman, and, yes, Jimmy Trimble, all lounging on the terrace, drinks in hand, awaiting his arrival.

  Thank you, Gore Vidal, for the impact you had on my life. Rest in peace.

Changing Times

  This wonderful book trailer pays homage to many bookstores and publishers we've lost over the last decade. It certainly brought a tear to my eye and I'll definitely be checking out Dale Peck's novel this August. 

Looking Back at 2011

 I'll be honest: 2011 is not a year that I will be looking back on fondly overall, at least not on a personal level. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't glad to see it coming to an end. Still, like any year there was plenty of good mixed in with the not-so-good.

 For instance, 2011 could be said to be the year of the people, or perhaps of the bottom 99% of them. This was the year of the Arab Spring, with popular uprisings trying- and in many cases succeeding- in sweeping away repressive regimes in the Mid East. In fact, 2011 was the year in which the likes of Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, and Kim Jong-il ceased to exist, leaving the world that much better off.

  Here in the United States, we saw the beginnings of the Occupy movement as well as popular uprisings against unpopular measures such as the stripping away of union rights in Ohio and Wisconsin.

  For many, though, 2011 was a year of continued economic hardship. This was driven home for me in a very real way with the bankruptcy of Borders, a company for which I spent the better part of a decade working. The ultimate closure of all Borders and Waldenbooks stores by mid September left most of my former co-workers out of work and they were far from being alone. It also left a gaping hole in the middle of the book world, whatever your opinions on big box stores vs independents.

  The most high profile coming out of the year was Zachary Quinto, star of Heroes and the new Star Trek films. Quinto wasn't alone in coming out, though. This year's list also included actor Sean Maher, CNN anchor Don Lemon and sports figures Jed Hooper, Graeme Obree, Scott Norton, Steven Davies, and David Testo, covering a wide range of sports from professional bowling, rugby, cricket, cycling and American Soccer.

 Actress Evan Rachel Wood came out as bisexual and Geri Jewell, an actress and comedienne with cerebral palsy who back in the early 1980's became the first person with a disability to play a recurring character on a television show (The Facts of Life)  came out in a new memoir.

 This year saw the passing of some true legends from the entertainment world like Elizabeth Taylor, Arthur Laurents, and Sidney Lumet, and those whose lives had a far reaching impact on the world in general, like Vaclav Havel and Steve Jobs.

 In the world of daytime TV, the losses just kept coming. ABC cancelled both All My Children and One Life to Live simultaneously, though the latter won't go off the air until the new year.  For a few months, it looked like the shows had been saved and would make the jump to airing online, but in the end that deal fell through and both shows were left with cliffhanger endings that would never be resolved.

 As far as gay characters on daytime, things are looking up from last year at this time, when the total number of LGBT characters had plummeted to zero. This year we've got an out and proud Sonny Kiriakis and an about to come out Will Horton on Days of Our Lives, so 2012 looks pretty promising in that respect.

 Now, on to my picks for some of my favorite things in 2011.

*Favorite Short Story Collection I read this year:  Ladies and Gentlemen by Adam Ross

*Favorite Novel I read this year:  Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

*Favorite Classic Gay Fiction Book I read this year:  Two People by Donald Windham

*Favorite Modern Gay Fiction Book I read this year:  Two Gentlemen Sharing by William Corlett

*Favorite Non-Fiction (Literary) Book I read this year:  The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee

*Favorite Non-Fiction (Autobiography) Book I read this year:  Bossypants by Tina Fey

*Favorite Film I saw this year:  X-Men: First Class. I should note that I saw very few films this year overall; in fact, I won't be doing my usual category of Favorite Gay Themed Film because I can't think of a single one that I saw!

*Favorite TV Drama: Once Upon a Time

*Favorite Sitcom:  New Girl, with The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family tied for a very close second place.

*Favorite Supernatural Themed Drama:  Teen Wolf

*Favorite News Program: The Rachel Maddow Show. After moving in March, I discovered that my new cable package offered MSNBC. Rachel's show quickly became my new addiction.

*Favorite Show that Needs Help: Glee. A lot of fans had issues with the show's second season, and I was right there with them. It wasn't until the third season began, though, that I felt Glee was truly in danger of losing what had made it so special to begin with. When Glee is good, it's fantastic, like with the recent episode 'The First Time' and with the scenes of Santana coming out to her grandmother. Things like that keep me watching, but the uneven writing is becoming more and more of a problem. One example is the character of Mercedes who has been completely destroyed by bad writing. How many times is Mercedes going to freak out about Rachel getting all the attention, have her issues seemingly resolved, and then go through it all again five or ten episodes later as if the earlier experience never happened? It makes the character completely unlikeable. With the prospect of losing key cast members after this year when their characters graduate, I'm not sure if Glee will ever get its magic back.

*Favorite Daytime Soap:  One Life to Live remained the best written all year long. With that said, in the final months of 2011, my heart belonged to Days of Our Lives once again.

*Favorite Gay Themed Website of the year: AfterElton.com.

*Favorite Gay Character of the year (Daytime): Since Will Horton has yet to actually come out, there is only one option for this category and that's Days of Our Lives' Sonny Kiriakis.  His introductory storyline was a bit preachy and he hasn't had all that much to do since, but he's attractive, likable, and I'm sure he'll be fantastic when/if he's paired with Will.

*Favorite Gay Character of the year (Primetime): It's a tie! Kurt Hummel and Blaine Anderson, Glee. For all the show's problems, it can't be denied that Kurt and Blaine had a really great year. They shared their first kiss during the season finale last Spring and this fall they lost their virginity together in an episode that juxtaposed their experience with Rachel losing her virginity to Finn. They've even got a potential love triangle brewing with new gay character Sebastian.

 *Hottest Actor (Daytime):  It's a Tie! This year, I've been all about the Chill factor. Chandler Massey and Casey Deidrick (aka Will Horton and Chad DiMera) may never actually be able to play out a Chill love story on the show, but their chemistry is as electric as they are hot.

*Hottest Actor (Primetime): It's so hard to pick just one, as my post about the Men Who Made 2011 should demonstrate. With that said, I'm going to go with Once Upon a Time's Jamie Dornan.

  *Hottest Actor (Film): If I'm going just by films I actually saw this year, one actor who did stand out for me was Lucas Till of X-Men: First Class.

 


If, however, I'm going by film actors in general, I'd have to say that while Chris Evans may be my second favorite Evans brother, he's still one of the hottest men working in film today:

  *Hottest Out Gay Celebrity: I'm going to have to go with the newest member of the club, Zachary Quinto.

Not only is Zachary sexy as hell, but he gets to hang out with some of my other favorite hotties, like Jonathan Groff and Colton Haynes:

 Well, there we have it, 2011 in a nutshell. I hope everyone reading this has a wonderful 2012!

2011: Best & Worst Lists

  One of my favorite things about the end of any year are all of the Best of (and Worst of) lists that come out on just about any conceivable topic. I'm working on my own, which should be up tomorrow. Following my own year end tradition at Seth in the City I thought I'd share some of the ones I've been enjoying from the professionals.

  Let's start with Film. I myself managed to get to the movie theater exactly three times this year and one of those times was to see a filmed Broadway musical and not an actual feature film, so I'm far from being a good judge of what was great and what wasn't. 

 The experts, though, have spoken. First up is Roger Ebert's look at the Best Films of 2011, his top twenty picks for the year, none of which I've seen. I have very much enjoyed watching Ebert Presents At The Movies this year, though, with Christy Lemire of The Associated Press and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of Mubi.com. Sadly, at this point the show has no funding to continue on past this week's episode unless they can find sponsors or willing foundations to help out. Roger and his wife Chaz were mainly funding it themselves.

  Next up, the trio of film critics for The New Yorker. David Denby's top 10 list does contain one film I've actually seen this year, albeit on DVD: Source Code. I can't say the same for any of the films on Anthony Lane's list, but you'd think I'd have a better chance at having seen some of the 26 films that Richard Brody writes about in his list. You'd be mistaken, though. I guess I should start going to the movies more often!

  Moving on to the small screen, Ken Tucker at Entertainment Weekly has his annual look at the Best and Worst in Television this year. Darren Franich also has a list of the Best TV Character Deaths of the year, including my Sheriff Graham from Once Upon a Time.

 Turning to the world of the stage, the staff of Playbill.com offer their favorite moments from 2011, and a photo gallery of all the Playbill covers from this past year, while the New Yorker's John Lahr offers his take on the best theater of the year and Hilton Als offers a look at his year in culture. EW's Tom Geier also offers his picks for the best of the stage this year.

 Let's move on to my own personal favorite topic: Books. The New Yorker once again offers up several lists on the subject of the Best Books of 2011, from the likes of James Woods, Sam Lipsyte, Yiyun Li, Tessa Hadley, Tad Friend, Ben Marcus, Malcolm Gladwell, Lorrie Moore, and Anne Beattie. Meanwhile, Entertainment Weekly takes a look at the Best and Worst in Fiction and in Nonfiction this year.

 Lambda Literary offers up the best in LGBT books of 2011 and I think my favorite list of the year is from one of my favorite blogs, Band of Thebes. In this particular list, 92 authors offer their selections for the best in LGBT books for 2011. This list alone could provide me with ample reading for 2012.

  The New Yorker has a complete listing that includes many more lists than I've mentioned, as does Entertainment Weekly, including a Top 20 of everything list by Stephen King.

 Another favorite site of mine, AfterElton.com, offers up 2011's Most Memorable LGBT Quotes.

 I'll be back tomorrow with my own look back at 2011.

The Start of Something Special

I just wanted to share an interesting article from earlier this month about novelist Ann Patchett opening an independent bookstore in Nashville. What first caught my attention, I have to admit, was the picture included in the article, which shows off the very familiar looking bookcases salvaged from a Nashville Borders.

The article mentions a few against the odds success stories for new independent bookstores around the country, but also discusses some of the stores facing real difficulties at the moment:

"In Fort Greene, Brooklyn, Greenlight Bookstore opened in 2009 and reported sales of more than $1 million in its first year. The Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee was founded two years ago and has been profitable both years, its owner said.

But there are plenty of headlines chronicling the woes of struggling independents. In Manhattan, St. Mark’s Bookshop in the East Village has been teetering for months, saved by a last-minute rent discount from the landlord. The owner of RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, N.H., said this month that he needed to raise more than $100,000 to save it. More than 150 concerned people packed the store last week to discuss its fate. Ithaca, N.Y., residents helped keep the treasured Buffalo Street Books in business by raising more than $250,000 and reopening the store as a co-op"

The odds may be long, but it gives me hope every time someone takes a risk and starts up a new bookstore! I cherish a secret dream of one day opening a bookshop of my own, where I'd sell new & used books.

One of the few things that gave me great pleasure in the aftermath of the end of Borders was reading about a group of employees who banded together and turned their Borders Express mall location into their own bookstore. Another was the news that one Borders location had been turned into a used bookstore and seventeen Borders staff members had stayed on.

It's a cliche to say that every time one door closes, another opens, but that doesn't make it any less true. I hope Ms. Patchett's venture is a huge success!

The End of Something Special

If you've followed my blog for awhile you may be aware that until last March I had worked for a bookstore chain for a number of years. I've never specifically named the chain before- we all had to sign a form saying we'd never blog about the company- but I suppose I can now safely reveal that the company I spent the better part of a decade working for was Borders, which no longer exists.

In case you have no clue what I'm talking about, the company filed for bankruptcy at the beginning of this year and closed about a third of their stores at that point (mine wasn't among those closed at then, which at the time seemed like such a relief!) and then announced in July that their efforts to keep the company alive had failed. By mid September all of the remaining stores were closed.

There has been a lot written about what this means for the future of books in the wake of e-readers and digital technology, and I can't comment much about that. All I can really say is that I am a lover of books, the physical, printed objects, and nothing will ever change that.

A lot has also been written about Amazon and the online sales of books sounding the death knell for brick and mortar bookstores, be they chains or independents. While I have been known to buy books from used bookstores online, I can't imagine a world in which I couldn't spend an hour or two browsing in an actual bookstore every week or so.

For all the doom and gloom pronouncements, though, the fact is that no one knows what the future holds. All we can do is hold on to what we love while it's still here. Maybe in that way, we can help it to exist a bit longer.

But this post isn't about the future of books or bookstores. This is about Borders and my own personal experience as a bookseller there, and about what was lost this year when the company closed. Keep in mind that I'm speaking only of my own personal experience, which is limited to one particular Borders store. I can't speak for all employees or any other store.

As I said, I spent the better part of a decade working at Borders. Overall, it was a truly wonderful experience. Yes, there were bad days, some awful customers (it was retail, after all), and a lot of stupid corporate nonsense to deal with. Of the latter, the one that sticks out in my memory the most was a truly wretched period when a new CEO instituted something called Make Titles, which meant that every one of us had to push a specific book on each and every customer that walked through the door, regardless of how ill fitting it was for them. That 'one book fits all' era was the worst time in all my years with the company, the closest I ever came to truly hating working at Borders.

In spite of any bad times, though, I loved my job. I saw a lot of employees come and go over the years and of course there were some terrible ones, but for the most part we had an incredible staff of people. Even though we were mostly part timers who were paid by the hour we truly cared about and enjoyed our jobs (which was especially amazing in the final few years, when raises were frozen and hours cut so badly that few could hope to live on a Borders salary alone). These were people who loved books and could happily spend hours talking about them.

It wasn't all that hard, in fact, to see myself as part of a long tradition going back to the booksellers in ancient Alexandria. That sounds grandiose, I know, but working with people who loved books as much as me, and helping customers who could get just as excited about a new (or old) title as I do, made me feel at home there every single day, made me feel as if I was part of a long history of something very special.

Our customers were great. We had loyal regulars that we saw day in and day out, and then there were the people who may have only come in once but who might strike up a conversation with you about a particular author or book that you'd still be thinking about months later. I never felt like I was there just to push a product (except for the aforementioned Make Title period). There are so many customers I'll never forget, many of whom I never even knew by name, but I certainly knew their face and what they liked to read.

Not long before I left, I had an elderly woman come up to me and tell me that her husband, who'd just passed away, had loved our store. Whenever they'd have an argument, he'd tell her that he was going to go somewhere where he was appreciated, and he'd come to our store and spend a few hours reading. I'm sure there were countless customers like that in every Borders store (and Waldenbooks, which was a subsidiary) that was lost this year.

Many dislike the big chain bookstores, and with good reason. I personally hated the corporate sameness of mandatory displays and certain policies that could be less than customer friendly at times. The loss of Borders, though, should be just as mourned as the loss of any independent bookstore. Most of the many employees who lost their jobs loved books just as much as someone trying to make a go of an independent store does. For many of the customers, it was their home away from home, and in many cases the only bookstore in their area.

My store was a special place, one that I find myself missing every day. Whatever the future of books and bookstores turns out to be, I can only hope that people who care as much for the written word as we did will continue to play a role in it.

Say What?!

We've all seen some ridiculous film and TV casting decisions over the years, but I don't think my jaw has ever dropped quite so much as it did a little while ago when I read that Jennifer Garner will be playing Agatha Christie's beloved detective Miss Marple in a new movie update.

Yes, Jennifer Garner, the actress from Alias will be playing the elderly spinster from the village of St. Mary Mead. I saw her in 13 Going on 30 but I never dreamed they'd make her 39 Going on 80!

Of course, this is a cool new youthful update of Miss Marple, meant to appeal to the Disney tween crowd. Um, if you're going to completely alter the character, why not just create a new detective altogether? Why tie it in to a very well established character fifty years older than the actress?

Back in middle school and high school, I devoured all of Agatha Christie's mysteries and collected copies of every single one. The books starring Miss Marple were particular favorites of mine. Don't get me wrong, I loved Hercule Poirot too, but Miss Marple was more fun, somehow.

What made Miss Marple a great character and as good of a detective as she was? Experience and age. She'd spent a lifetime as a single woman in a small village, observing life around her with a keen eye. Years of this had taught her a lot about human nature. That's how she always solved crimes, through the wisdom brought by her decades of living.

A young Miss Marple just makes no sense at all. I'm sure Jennifer Garner will be her usual winsome self and it's certainly not going to hurt the books any, but the stupidity of the idea just astounds me and I had to vent a bit!

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to re-read The Body in the Library.

Back in the Game

I'm sorry for the two and a half months of silence. Life has been even more hectic than usual since I last wrote. Among other things, I've left my job and moved to a new city. It has certainly been stressful, but I do love the idea of a fresh start!

Now that things are somewhat settled, my hope is that I can once again resume blogging on a regular basis.

I'll just dip my toe in the water tonight by noting that it's that time of year again: Literary Award Season! Lambda Literary has announced the finalists for their 23rd annual prize and the same can be said for the Publishing Triangle Awards. Both of these awards honor LGBT writing and never fail to alert me to a title or an author I might otherwise never have found.

The Orange Prize, meanwhile, honors excellence in women's writing and they've announced a longlist that sounds pretty fascinating.

2010 in Retrospect

It's hard to believe that 2010 is already at a close. I feel as if it was 2002 about ten seconds ago, so how can we possibly be about to enter 2011?!

As with any year, a lot can be said to sum up 2010 from just about any perspective imaginable. In the United States, those on the right of the political spectrum certainly had a lot to cheer in the mid term elections, yet it was also the year in which Congress finally passed some Health Care legislation and repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which will allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.

On the Same Sex Marriage front, no new states joined the five states (and Washington, D.C.) that had already allowed (or were about to allow) LGBT citizens their right to marry at this time last year, but Maryland did begin to recognize same sex marriages performed in other states and, best of all, California's Prop 8 was overturned in federal court, though of course the case is far from over.

President Obama appointed Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court this year, bringing the number of women on the court to an historic high of three.

In the entertainment world, the two biggest men to come out of the closet this year weren't really any great surprise: pop singer Ricky Martin and Will & Grace star Sean Hayes had both been rumored/assumed to be gay for many years, but that doesn't make the fact that they finally took the steps to come out publicly in 2010 any less noteworthy.

A true milestone this year in terms of coming out: the first openly gay country music artist, in the form of newly out lesbian Chely Wright.

Ricky Martin, by the way, was part of another trend this year: out gay celebrities becoming parents. Ricky Martin has been a dad since 2008, while Neil Patrick Harris and his partner David Burtka, and Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, all welcomed new children into their lives in 2010.

We lost some greats this year in every field imaginable, from daytime TV's Frances Reid, James Mitchell, and Helen Wagner, to primetime TV greats Rue McCLanahan, Dixie Carter, Barbara Billingsly, and John Forsythe, to all around legends like Lena Horne, Dennis Hopper, and Tony Curtis.

The literary world lost an iconic figure in J.D. Salinger and we lost a great historian, writer, and activist when Howard Zinn left us at age 87.

Last year in my retrospective, I mentioned that the year had been bookended by two very different gay love scenes in daytime soaps: Luke & Noah's long awaited first time on As the World Turns at the beginning of the year and Oliver and Kyle's amazing New Year's Eve love scene on One Life to Live.

It's sad to read the hope and excitement I was feeling over Kish a year ago at this time, completely unaware that in less than three months Kish would be gone, that in less than nine months there would no longer be an As The World Turns or any LGBT characters on daytime TV at all. This year, when I say "What a difference a year can make" I say it with sadness.

Well, on to some of my picks for this year's favorite things!

*Favorite Classic Fiction Book I read this year: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

*Favorite Gay Fiction Book I read this year: Mary Ann In Autumn, by Armistead Maupin, with Stephen McCauley's Insignificant Others a near second.

*Favorite Modern Fiction Book I read this year: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I snobbishly put off reading this for ages because it was published in the U.S. as a Young Adult novel (in the author's native Australia, it was published as adult fiction), but it was so good!

*Favorite Non-Fiction (Literary) Book I read this year: The Book of William by Paul Collins.

*Favorite Non-Fiction (Autobiography) Book I read this year: City Boy by Edmund White.

*Favorite Film I saw this year: (500) Days of Summer.

*Favorite Gay Themed Film I saw this year: A Single Man. I only saw four gay themed films this year, and this was by far the best, but it couldn't begin to touch the beauty of the book.

*Film I Most Wanted to see this year but haven't yet: The Kids Are All Right. What's wrong with me?! I've been dying to see this. First film of 2011, for sure.

*Favorite Hour long TV Show: It's still Glee.

*Favorite Half Hour long TV Show: A tie between Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory, both of which I've belatedly caught up with and love.

*Best Daytime Soap: One Life to Live until March. After that, NONE.

*Favorite CD: Hard to say. I've been discovering Sondheim all year, so probably A Little Night Music or Company.

*Favorite Actress: Kristin Chenoweth

*Favorite Gay Themed Website of the year: AfterElton.com.

*Favorite Gay Character of the year (Daytime): A tie between Oliver Fish, One Life to Live (until March), and Reid Oliver, As The World Turns.

*Favorite Gay Character of the year (Primetime): Kurt Hummel, Glee.

*Favorite Gay Character of the year (International): Aaron Livesy, Emmerdale

*Hottest Actor (Daytime): A tie. Scott Evans (until March)

and then the Brothers Ford (aka Nicolas Robuck, David A. Gregory and Lenny Platt), One Life to Live.
*Hottest Actor (Primetime): Jared Padalecki. I still love me some Jared, and this year he even deigned to show some skin!
*Hottest Actor (Film): I barely saw any films this year, so I'll go with my choice from last year, the still very sexy Ryan Reynolds.

Well, I think that about sums it up. I hope 2011 proves to be a wonderful year for everyone reading this!

Year End Lists

It's that time of year again! Last night I made my list of the Guys Who Made 2010 and now I'm working on my retrospective look at the year.

While I work on that, I thought I'd share some lists put together by others. I always love these annual Best Of lists!

First up, The New Yorker's look at the best in film. Actually, I should say 'looks' since they have three critics weighing in: David Denby, Anthony Lane, and Richard Brody.

On the subject of film, Roger Ebert also offers his list of the top ten feature films and looking at all these combined lists makes me realize how few films I saw this year!

The New Yorker also has several writers commenting on the books they read in 2010.

Speaking of books, one of my favorite blogs, Band of Thebes, has a fantastic round up of 80 writers who choose their favorite LGBT books of the year. The list numbers 100 books and it's certainly enough to give anyone hope about the future of LGBT writing!

Oh, and be sure to check of Lambda Literary for several great articles on 2010.

Playbill.com has an excellent look at the year in theater , including a tribute to those who left us this year.

Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker has picked his top ten TV shows of the year, and then added another ten on top of that.

Even though I've more or less sworn off daytime soaps made in the United States, I can't help but check in on Michael Fairman's list of the Best and Worst in the year of daytime drama.

Fairman shows some love to One Life to Live, naming it best soap, but also calls out the shameful dumping of the Kish storyline as the most shocking moment of the year. He also names As the World Turns' Luke and Reid as the best new couple of the year and Reid's portrayer, Eric Sheffer Stevens, as giving the best overall performance by a supporting actor.

Not surprisingly, he 'honors' the ATWT writers with a well deserved nod for the worst writing of the year and mentions Reid's death as the most upsetting soap moment of 2010.

Fairman also offers photographic evidence of the 25 best and 25 worst soap moments of the year.

Well, I'll have my own retrospective on the year up later this evening.

Books, Hold the E

Last month I read with dismay that Alyson Books, the oldest LGBT Publishing firm in the United States, was converting itself into an E-Book only publishing house. I know that many newspapers and periodicals are making the switch to digital only, but the idea that publishers may stop printing actual books and move exclusively to E-Books really worries me.

As someone who loves books (and by that I mean actual printed books!) this new trend towards E-Readers is not something I'm thrilled with. Part of that comes from working in a bookstore that is trying very hard to get ahead of this particular trend. We're made to push E-Readers like crazy, even though roughly two thirds of the staff dislike them.

I remember fondly the days when we just sold books (okay, and movies and CDs), but now we're constantly having to take training courses on the latest E-Reader and being asked all sorts of technical questions by customers.

Frankly, I hate E-Readers. I suppose if you travel a lot they're handy to have around, but they're certainly not for me. The idea that a cold piece of machinery could ever replace the experience of holding a book in your hands, turning the pages, and smelling the scent of the paper is just insane to me.

Not only are the things apt to break down eventually (or perhaps quickly, as evidenced by the many we've had returned to us as defective) and wipe out your whole library (!), but with the way that technology is constantly changing, who is to say that the E-Book you buy today will even be accessible to you a few years down the road? I guess that wouldn't matter to people who never want to re-read something, but I think most true book lovers should find that idea disconcerting, to say the least.

I know I'm not alone in this. Many of my co-workers feel the same way and so do a lot of our regular customers. I always want to cheer when I overhear a customer at work say "No, thanks, I'm a book lover," when asked if they have any questions about our E-Readers.

The thing the really gets me is the sheer number of questions we get about whether or not the E-Readers will actually read the book to their owners. Is that what we're coming to? Are that many people so lazy that they can't be bothered to even read for themselves? They want to be read to like they're still in Kindergarten?!

I know that I could never be happy if I wasn't surrounded by my books. They're a part of my life in a very physical sense.

At any rate, I cheered up a bit today when I read the news that the former head of Alyson Books, Don Weise, is launching a new indie press that will be dedicated to LGBT books. Magnus Books will publish 15-20 titles a year.

I really like the idea of publishing books from a small independent press. If I had the money, I would love to do that myself. There's an interesting memoir by Felice Picano called Art and Sex in Greenwich Village which is about the founding and running of SeaHorse Press, his independent LGBT press, in the late 1970's. It's definitely worth a read if you're at all interested in the inner workings of publishing books or in that particular time period in LGBT writing.

Mary Ann in Autumn

I have a lot to catch up on here, there's so much I want to write about. I suppose I'll have to just take it one post at a time.

Let's start with Mary Ann in Autumn, the new Tales of the City novel by Armistead Maupin. If you've followed my blog at all, you know that I'd been looking forward to this book for quite awhile now.

I picked up my copy the day it came out, of course, and I pretty much devoured it all in one sitting. Maupin definitely still has the touch when it comes to weaving an engaging tale.

Reading this novel (and the earlier update, Michael Tolliver Lives) was very much like running into people you dearly loved in the past but haven't had the chance to see in ages. You may worry at first that too much will have changed in the ensuing years, but you quickly discover how easy it is to fall right back into your old rapport.

Don't think for a second, though, that Maupin is only interested in the characters that he first created over thirty years ago. In his two latest updates to the series he's introduced a new generation of characters to catch our interest and he's been able to seamlessly intertwine their lives with those of the classic characters.

Mary Ann in Autumn focuses, as you'd imagine, on the character of Mary Ann Singleton. In the original series of books, she was the character who arrived in San Francisco from Cleveland, wide eyed and naive. Mary Ann ended up being the character who most personified the times she lived in, going from the open hearted and free spirited 1970's to the ambitious and self obsessed 1980's.

Maupin managed to actually make this change in Mary Ann feel quite natural. Looking back, you saw that the seeds of it were always there. It still hurt, though, to get to the end of the series (as Sure of You was for so many years) and to feel just as abandoned by Mary Ann as her friends and family in the books did when she left them behind to pursue success in New York.

When the series was updated in 2005 with Michael Tolliver Lives Mary Ann was largely absent, with the exception of a telling cameo appearance toward the end. We learned at that point that she'd continued to mirror the changing times by becoming an upper class suburban wife in Connecticut who hadn't seen her San Francisco friends in years.

Mary Ann in Autumn, then, is the first real chance to catch up with this particular character as she returns to San Francisco in the face of both health and marital crises.

The book takes place in December of 2008, when the country is still hopeful over the recent election of Senator Obama to the White House but California itself is reeling from the passage of Proposition 8. One of the younger characters, in fact, is a sexually confused Mormon who'd been in town on a mission to help pass the law.

As with any Tales novel, there is no shortage of intrigue or heartfelt moments, mixed in with a lot of laughs and plenty of wisdom dispensed from Mrs. Madrigal.

I loved the book. I loved getting to know Mary Ann all over again and discovering that the ambitious woman who'd left everything behind for the sake of her career was still very much present, but that the open hearted young girl who'd first arrived in San Francisco was there, too. They were, in fact, very much the same person.

In the first books, I tended to identify with her as the outsider coming into this new world. Maybe that's why it was so hard when she later turned her back on the world I'd come to love, why it seemed so unforgivable to me.

I picked up the new book hoping that Mary Ann would be redeemed in my eyes as a character, but I quickly realized that she didn't need redemption. In the end, Mary Ann is simply a woman who has made her decisions in life, for better or worse, just as we all do. Maybe being a bit older myself than I was when I read the original six books is part of why I can see that so clearly now.

I hope that this won't be the last of the Tales novels. There is still a lot of story to be told, both with the original characters and the newer ones. If it is the final book, though, I will at least be glad that I finally came to a new understanding of Mary Ann.

Books and Glee

Hello again! I really miss blogging on a regular basis, but every time that I think things are about to slow down a bit for me, it turns out that I'm mistaken. "Maybe this time..." (insert mental/aural flashback to Chenoweth singing that on Glee last season!)

First up, since I just mentioned Glee, I wanted to say that I was thrilled with Jane Lynch's win for Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series at this year's Emmy Awards. It was a much deserved honor for her, and I hope it's the first of many. I was sad that the show didn't win for Best Comedy, but at least it lost to another gay friendly show (I really do need to check out Modern Family).

More than anything, though, I was disappointed that Chris Colfer didn't win for Supporting Actor or Mike O'Malley for Guest Actor. Their scenes together as Kurt and his father, Burt, were the highlight of the television season for me. Maybe the problem is that they were nominated in the comedy category for scenes that were pretty intense and emotional? Still, there's always next year!

The upside to O'Malley's loss, of course, was that Neil Patrick Harris won for his own guest starring role on Glee. It was the first Emmy win ever for one of my very favorite actors (who, if you hadn't heard, is going to become a parent to twins with his longtime partner David Burtka! Luckiest kids ever!!).

There are only two weeks to go until the second season of Glee starts, and I can't wait. One nice thing about having had such a busy summer is that it really still seems like the season finale just aired a few weeks ago. It doesn't feel like I had to wait at all.

Something else that I wanted to discuss tonight was books. About a week ago, Lambda Literary wrote about some of the most anticipated LGBT books coming out this fall.

Leading the pack is the book I've been excited about for quite some time now, Armistead Maupin's Mary Ann In Autumn. It's coming out in November and I've been counting the days. My plan was to re-read the entire Tales of the City series in anticipation of the release, but a few months back I found out that a friend of mine had never read any of the books, so I lent them all to her at once and now I'm not sure when I'll get them back. I doubt I'll be able to restrain myself from devouring Mary Ann in Autumn the minute it's in my hands, so that plan is probably out the window.

What a year it has been, though. A new Tales of the City book and a new Stephen McCauley. I don't think I ever followed up on Insignificant Others here after I'd read it, but I really enjoyed it a lot.

The only thing that's really missing to complete this year for me is a new novel by Alan Hollinghurst! Or, if the fates wanted to really be generous, a new collection of stories in the Buddies cycle from Ethan Mordden.

I have to say, I love working in a bookstore. I geek out over books all the time and it's nice to be surrounded by co-workers and customers who act the same way. I love the way someone's whole face just lights up when they spot a new novel by a favorite writer.

Anyway, another book on Lambda Literary list is Michael Cunningham's new title, By Nightfall. I'm a bit ambivalent about that one. I loved The Hours and A Home at the End of the World, and I've got a copy of Flesh and Blood that I've been meaning to get to since forever, so you'd think I'd be more excited.

The thing is, I was filled with anticipation back in 2005 when his last novel, Specimen Days, came out. I really couldn't wait to get my hands on it, but then once I did I didn't like it at all. To be fair, I didn't get that far before I abandoned the effort, so I may give it a try again someday.

Oh, and there's a brand new literary prize out there for gay men's books. The Green Carnation Prize came into existence in reaction to some of the more mainstream lit prizes, as the Chair, Paul Magrs, explains:

“This all came about because, suddenly it was literary award season again and longlists were getting bandied about like crazy. And it’s annoying because those lists seem a bit ready-made, middlebrow, monotonous and obvious. Anyway, late July 2010 and there’s the usual palaver about the Booker Longlist. It was obviously going to be the same old gubbins and some of the same old names. And the same nonsense about ‘literary’ fiction being a separate, rarefied preserve, quite apart from other genres.

Anyway, we thought – wouldn’t it be fun and great to do something a bit different?

And then we thought – there’s no prize yet for gay men’s books in the UK. That’s a scandalous thought. There ought to be something that celebrates and publicizes the breadth and variety of their work.

Writing by gay men can be funny, exciting, harrowing, uplifting and challenging – and it can range right across the genres. It can also be created by men from all classes and races."

I'm all for another prize that brings attention to LGBT fiction (or non-fiction, as the case may be) and gives me more books to read! They've already announced this year's Longlist:

• Generation A by Douglas Coupland
• Bryant and May Off the Rails by Christopher Fowler
• Paperboy by Christopher Fowler
  
• In A Strange Room by Damon Galgut
  
• God Says No by James Hannaham
• London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp
  
• Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin
• Children of the Sun by Max Schaefer
  
• Man’s World by Rupert Smith
  
• The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
  
• City Boy by Edmund White
  

I loved City Boy but I haven't read any of the others yet. I did just pick up a copy of The Slap (which was also on the Booker longlist along with In A Strange Room) from the library, though.

One last thing tonight. I had an e-mail asking if I was ever going to write about the Noah/Luke/Reid story on As the World Turns again. Yes, I will. The truth is, though, that I haven't watched a single episode of the show since May. I have saved all the Luke episodes on my Tivo and I'll probably marathon them at some point in the (near?) future and write about the end of the story at that point. It's just a matter of finding the time.

Man Booker Longlist

July has been an exhausting month for me and I'm glad that it's coming to an end. I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll have more time to blog from this point on.

Even though this past month felt like it was endless at times, it still doesn't feel like a whole year could possibly have gone by since the longlist for the Man Booker Prize was announced. That must be the case, though, since this year's 13 picks have been announced:

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America

Emma Donoghue Room

Helen Dunmore The Betrayal

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room

Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question

Andrea Levy The Long Song

Tom McCarthy C

David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Lisa Moore February

Paul Murray Skippy Dies

Rose Tremain Trespass

Christos Tsiolkas The Slap

Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky

The Man Booker prize was really the first annual literary prize that I ever became aware of and every year the longlist still makes me want to read each title before the shortlist and eventual winner are announced. I'd love to form my own opinion in advance on which book was the most deserving.

Of course, experience has taught me that some of the books that are on the longlist for this UK based prize won't have been published in the United States yet, so I no longer attempt this feat. The annual prize does add several titles to my own To Read list, though.

One of my favorite blogs, Band of Thebes, has pointed out that there are three openly LGBT authors among those on the longlist this year: Emma Donoghue, Damon Galgut, and Christos Tsiolkas.

It speaks to the international flavor of the award (which is for authors from the U.K., Ireland, or the Commonwealth of Nations made up of many of Britain's former colonies) that the three LGBT authors also represent different countries: Donoghue is from Canada by way of Ireland, Galgut is from South Africa, and Tsiolkas is Australian.

Both Tsiolkas and Galgut's books have been published in the United States, so I may well be reading those soon. The Slap, in particular, sounds like something I'd like to read (the description is taken from Joanne Wilkinson's Booklist review):

At a barbecue in a Melbourne suburb, a man loses his temper and slaps the child of the host’s friends. This incident unleashes a slew of divisive opinions, pitting friends and families against each other as the child’s parents take the man to court. Told from eight different viewpoints, the novel also deftly fills in disparate backstories encompassing young and old, single and married, gay and straight, as well as depicting how multiculturalism is increasingly impacting the traditional Aussie ethos. For good measure, the author also throws in male vanity, infidelity, and homophobia.

As always, though, almost every book on the list calls out to me in its own way. The shortlist will be announced on September 7th and the prize will be awarded on October 12th.

Anticipation

I'm still waiting for my copy of Stephen McCauley's new novel, Insignificant Others, to arrive. Actually, our store's copies were finally delivered yesterday, but just haven't been unpacked yet! I was barely able to restrain myself from tearing through nearly eighty boxes (none of which, sadly, give us any clue as to what titles they contain) before I left work for my weekend.

Also helping to build my anticipation is a review of the book from Queer Reader, a fantastic blog I somehow only recently discovered!

I'm trying to convince myself that waiting these couple days more will just further heighten the experience once I do have the book in my hands. Besides, it's not as if I have nothing else to read in the meantime!

While I'm waiting, I'm living vicariously through the author of one of my favorite blogs, Band of Thebes. He was able to attend a reading by the author in New York the other night. I can only hope McCauley will be in my area at some point in the near future since I'd love to meet the man who has written some of my favorite books.

Lambda Literary Award Winners

The winners of this year's Lambda Literary Awards have been announced. They make for a great place to start if you're looking for something new in LGBT writing.

Lesbian Fiction: A Field Guide to Deception by Jill Malone

Lesbian Debut Fiction: The Creamsickle by Rhiannon Argo

Gay Fiction: Lake Overturn by Vestal McIntyre

Gay Debut Fiction: Blue Boy by Rakesh Satyal

LGBT Nonfiction: The Greeks and Greek Love by James Davidson

Lesbian Biography: The Talented Miss Highsmith by Joan Schenkar

Gay Memoir: Ardent Spirits by Reynolds Price

Transgender: Lynnee Breedlove's One Freak Show by Lynn Breedlove

Bisexual Fiction: (tie)

Holy Communion by Mykola Dementiuk

Love You Two by Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli

Bisexual Nonfiction: Leaving India by Minal Hajratwala

LGBT Anthology: Portland Queer edited by Ariel Gore

LGBT Drama: The Collected Plays of Mart Crowley by Mart Crowley

LGBT SF/Fantasy/Horror: Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente

LGBT Studies: The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America by Margot Canaday

LGBT YA: Sprout by Dale Peck

Lesbian Mystery: Death of a Dying Man by J.M. Redmann

Gay Mystery: What We Remember by Michael Thomas Ford

Lesbian Romance: The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin by Colette Moody

Gay Romance: Drama Queers! by Frank Anthony Polito

Lesbian Poetry: Zero at the Bone by Stacie Cassarino

Gay Poetry: Sweet Core Orchard by Benjamin S Grossberg

Lesbian Erotica: Lesbian Cowboys edited by Sacchi Green & Rakelle Valencia

Gay Erotica: Impossible Princess by Kevin Killian

There are several books on the list that I want to read, though as usual I'm immersed in slightly older works of gay fiction, most recently the wonderful short story collections of Richard Hall and, at the moment, The Young and Evil, a novel about gay/bohemian life in Greenwich Village in the late 1920's by Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler.

The truly astounding thing is that the novel was originally published in 1933 but is incredibly upfront about gay life in that time and place without any attempt at moralizing.

I also recently read two very different books published at the same time and dealing with the same themes and settings: Larry Kramer's Faggots and Andrew Holleran's Dancer From the Dance. I read them back to back and I have to say that I found Holleran's novel to be beautifully written but I really didn't care for Kramer's.

That's not to say that it wasn't well written, but there was such an aura of bitterness surrounding it all, not to mention his sheer delight in reveling in the most seamy aspects of gay life, which left me feeling like I needed to take a shower each time I finished a chapter. Reading such a book would leave anyone feeling like being a gay man was a bleak experience at best.

Lest you think that I'm only reading fiction that's at least twenty five years old, I'm counting down the days until the release of Stephen McCauley's latest novel, Insignificant Others, in June and I was also very excited to notice the other day at work that there is now an October release date for Armistead Maupin's new Tales of the City novel, Mary Ann in Autumn!