Books, Books, Books

I'm still waaay behind on gay soap stories, though I'm hoping to write about the last few weeks of Nuke tomorrow night, provided that my fast forward button doesn't self destruct with that much As the World Turns in one evening!

Tonight, I just thought I'd write a bit about what I've been reading. You may recall that earlier this year, I devoured the collections of short stories known as the 'Buddies' cycle by Ethan Mordden. I really fell in love with the characters in those stories and I was so sad when I'd finished the final collection, but now there is a silver lining to that particular cloud.

Awhile back, I bought two anthology collections, Between Men and Between Men 2. I hadn't actually started the Mordden books yet when I bought them, so even though I looked to see which authors were included at the time, his name hadn't particularly stood out for me then.

Recently, I glanced at the collections again and noticed that he had a story in each one. The story in the first collection, called 'The Ballad of Jimmy Pie', is a tale that has nothing to do with the characters in the 'Buddies' stories, but the story in the second collection, 'Fancy Our Meeting' is a new one in the cycle!

It probably sounds silly, but finding that out was like hearing news about old friends that you really loved but thought you'd lost touch with forever. I was so excited to see that he's still writing about Bud, Cosgrove, Dennis Savage, Carlo, and the rest of the gang. Maybe there will be another collection someday?

In the meantime, I haven't actually read 'Fancy Our Meeting' yet. If it really is the final story, I want to savor the prospect of still having it to look forward to for just a little longer! We'll see how long I can hold out.

I've gone a bit Mordden crazy, though, I have to say. After I saw Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal in Rent a few months ago, I found myself wanting to really embrace musicals. I've slowly become interested in them over the last few years, but I still know so very little about the genre in general!

So, to start with, I scoured the Internet for copies of Mordden's books on the history of the Broadway musical, which goes decade by decade from the 1920's through the 1970's and then has a final book covering 1980 to the middle of this decade.

Last month I read Make Believe, the book covering the 1920's and I'm now reading Sing for Your Supper, covering the 1930's (I have to read them in order by decade, of course, since I'm a little anal when it comes to chronology!).

I've discovered that even though I thought for the majority of my life that I didn't like musicals, it turns out that I've long since loved many songs from them. I blush to admit this, but I had no idea that most of the old standards that I've always loved actually came from musicals!

Maybe I should also mention my new addiction to the original cast album of A Chorus Line. Mordden mentions this musical more than once in the 'Buddies' stories (it's Little Kiwi's favorite, he sees it many, many times), so it was the first one I thought of to check out post-Rent.

Here we are, not quite two months later, and I could sing it to you line for line, if my voice wouldn't make your ears bleed! Sadly, I haven't been able to see an actual performance, unless you count the 1985 film version which I rented. I didn't really find that it lived up to the anticipation that had built up in me from loving the cast album, though, and from what I've read since it's not a very good adaptation of the show.

I also just finished reading Mordden's sweeping novel on post World War II gay life in America, How Long Has This Been Going On? The action starts in Los Angeles in 1949 and later moves to the Midwest, to New York, to San Francisco, and to New England before ending back in New York in 1991.

Various interconnected characters experience gay life in America in very different ways throughout the book, depending on the decade and setting they find themselves in and on their own personality and outlook. I think Mordden did a very good job of writing characters who all had their own views on gay life within each era, rather than presenting characters who all thought the same way just because they were gay in the 1950's or in the 1980's.

It's not all Mordden all the time for me, of course. I've read some great books by other authors lately, including Virginia Woolf's Orlando and Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, as well as some light, funny reads like Marc Acito's hilarious How I Paid for College and the equally funny follow up, Attack of the Theater People.

If you're wondering about my plan to read as many of the Booker prize longlist nominees as I can, here's an update on that: I've managed to get my hands on one title thus far (Samantha Harvey's The Wilderness), but I haven't started reading it yet. I have a feeling that I won't be progressing very far with that particular ambition, since I've got so many great books already lying in wait, tempting me every minute of the day to read just a bit faster so I can get to them.

I think I'd need a century or two just to read all that I want to read in my lifetime, and that's not even counting the many books that either haven't been written yet or those that I just haven't heard about yet!

I can only hope that Jorge Luis Borges was right, that the afterlife will be a library!

Book Chat

I keep meaning to write about what I've been reading and somehow I never get around to doing it! I can't even keep track of how many books I've wanted to talk about in the past few months which I haven't ended up writing a single word about.

I'm just going to do sort of a general book post today on some of the more recent things I've read.

Over the last month or so, I've devoured all five books in Ethan Mordden's 'Buddies' series, collections of short stories centered around the same group of gay friends in Manhattan published from the early 1980's through 2005, when the final one came out.

I completely fell in love with the characters in these books. In the first two books, I've A Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore and Buddies, the stories really aren't in any sort of chronological order, so things jumped back and forth quite a bit between time periods. Usually I wouldn't be too thrilled with that, just because I'm close to being obsessive compulsive about chronological order! I won't watch shows or movies (if they have sequels) out of order, and if one book is connected to another in any way, I've got to read them in the right order. I thought reading stories about the same characters that didn't really go in order would drive me mad.

It ceased to matter, though, as soon as I started reading the books. I was just enjoying them too much to be bothered by unimportant details like that. It was really nice to read books about gay men that weren't focused on hooking up or even romance (though both occur, of course), but rather on gay friendships. They're also incredibly funny books that had me laughing out loud constantly.

Starting somewhat with the third book and moving through to the last one, the stories began to flow in chronological order, but even if they hadn't it wouldn't have mattered. I was hooked. The books (the last three are: Everybody Loves You; Some Men Are Lookers; and How's Your Romance?) move the characters from the beginning of the Stonewall era through to the present day. The main characters (the narrator Bud; his best friend Dennis Savage; Dennis Savage's partner Little Kiwi; their friend Carlo, who is the epitome of Stonewall sexiness; and young Cosgrove, a street kid looking for a place to belong, along with several secondary characters who pop up throughout the series) age and change with the times, but most importantly they remain a family.

It was especially interesting to read this series, given that a lot of what I've read about this particular time period,as far as gay fiction goes, has been set in San Francisco. It was really nice to get the New York point of view.

I was so sad to come to the end of the books and to have to say goodbye to these characters! Of course, the third book was originally supposed to be the final one, but after a gap of several years, two more were written. So I can only hope that Mr. Mordden will change his mind again and add another book (or several!) to the series.

I also read Kristin Chenoweth's memoir, A Little Bit Wicked, a few weeks ago. I'm not that big on celebrity memoirs these days (back during junior high and the early years of high school, I read quite a few, mostly about golden age Hollywood stars), but I really enjoyed Kristin's book. It was a quick, funny read. Her sense of humor really appeals to me and her whole outlook on life is just one that I really respect. If you want a fun non fiction read this summer or if you're a fan of Kristin's (and if you aren't, why not?!) and haven't picked it up yet, you should look for it.

Last month (or was it in March?) I read Stephen Fry's novel Making History and wanted to write a whole post on that, but now too much time has passed. I really enjoyed it, though. Fry has to be one of the funniest men alive, I just love his wit. Needless to say, I laughed a lot while reading the novel.

I also liked the premise of the book, which is that a physicist and a graduate student in history, who is writing his thesis on Hitler's early years, team up to change history by making sure that Hitler is never born.

It turns out, though, that we should be careful what we wish for, even where the existence of Adolph Hitler is concerned! It's a really enjoyable book (with some gay characters, by the way) and if you've never read any of Fry's books, I think this would be a good one to start with.

Currently, I'm reading a collection of gay themed short stories from the Men on Men anthology series. I'm enjoying it, though walking around with the book on campus the other day did earn me a few interesting looks. I'm sure the title of the series had people picturing something quite different than literary fiction!