http://queerreader.com Dedicated to the Pursuit of Quality Queer Literature Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:18:37 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Three years ago, I reported the sad, sad news that my neighborhood's Barnes and Noble was closing. The reason for this was not declining sales of books. Indeed, this particular store--in Chelsea--was making a healthy profit. No, this time the villain was a familiar one in New York City: its ... http://queerreader.com/?p=99 QueerReader.com is two years old today.  Twenty-two books have been reviewed by QueerReader.com.  This has been a particularly eventful year. It began by QueerReader.com scooping USA Today with the news that Michael Cunningham is working on a new novel.  Later this year, QueerReader.com published its first author interview --with Selfish ... http://queerreader.com/?p=95 I love Stephen McCauley's new novel, Insignificant Others. It is frequently humorous and for this reason, some are referring to it as a "comic novel."  But this term does not do justice to this book. Because it implies a surface cleverness. And there is nothing superficial about this novel.  The ... http://queerreader.com/?p=92 As you probably have read by now, Sebastian Stuart's The Hour Between won the Publishing Triangle Award for Fiction.  The best thing about this news for me was that I discovered a book that I had somehow missed when it was published in September.  Anyway, here is my long-overdue review: The nineteen-eighties ... http://queerreader.com/?p=90 I'm not sure which books I would have recommended for musical adaptation, but I'm pretty sure Dan Savage's The Kid wouldn't have been near the top of my list. While I enjoyed Mr. Savage's book, I just couldn't see how it could possibly make a musical. Boy was I wrong.  The Kid ... http://queerreader.com/?p=89 This queer reader doesn't usually find himself reviewing books with titles like Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll Starring Allan Carr.  Let alone those with covers like the one shown on the left. No, what attracted me to this book was the simple fact ... http://queerreader.com/?p=85 When Gay Plays:  The First Collection was published in 1979, the editor, William Hoffman made the conscious decision to omit Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band. There were a lot of reasons why 1970's gays didn't like The Boys in the Band. And these objections were sometimes coached in quasi-political ... http://queerreader.com/?p=84 I'm delighted to report that David McConnell's new novel The Silver Hearted is excellent. The Silver Hearted is a suspenseful adventure story that is clearly influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad and Edgar Alan Poe.  This unfortunately implies a pastiche.  But Mr. McConnell has a style that is ... http://queerreader.com/?p=83 Today is the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.  It's a good time to read (or re-read) C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. In it, Mr. Tripp intelligently makes the argument that President Lincoln was gay. Abraham Lincoln is depicted as a tall, handsome--even sexy--young man who displayed virtually no interest ... http://queerreader.com/?p=81 Today it was announced that Nathaniel Frank won the Stonewall Book Award-Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award for his book, Unfriendly Fire How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America.  This was one of my favorite books of 2009 and I am delighted to see it getting the recognition it so ... http://queerreader.com/?p=79