The schedule is out for this year's round of my local library LGBTQ+ book club, and I'm mostly not super-hype about it? :/ (This is maybe in part because it's more dude-heavy than I feel like I'm used to -- okay, 4/9 as opposed to last year's 3/9, so not necessarily a significant difference.)
Oct 12: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: a Savannah Story by John Berendt (1994) true crime
I read this in college (because a gay male friend loved it), and I have basically no memory of it. I think I enjoyed it at the time, but I'm not sure I really wanna reread it? One GR review
says, in part:
there is the slow but increasingly annoying realization that Berendt sees our anti-hero as a kind of social peer, which for some reason really bothered me. who knows, maybe i just automatically hate the rich & parasitic. Berendt writes about a whole gallery of characters, all characterized briefly but adroitly, and eventually i realized i was reading a classier version of a tourist-eye's view of Southern grotesques, a drive-by tour of weirdos. how aggravating! who knows, maybe i just automatically empathize with the weirdos and am annoyed by the normals. and then there is the sad fact of THE LACK OF BLACK PEOPLE WHO COME ACROSS AS REAL PEOPLE. yes, they are there (several) but for the most part they are part of the gallery of grotesquerie. this novel takes place in a part of the country that has a huge black community and i found the lack of this demographic - even ones who, i suppose, Berendt would consider non-grotesque - to be perplexing and troubling.
But I was chatting with Maddi today and she's gotten really into the book and talked about how Chablis is referred to as a drag queen but really seems trans. And it would probably be interesting to revisit in 2023 a book I read probably around 2001 that was written in 1994 about events in 1981. I think partly I just don't trust the facilitator? :/
Nov 9: Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (2020) YA SFF, first in a trilogy
I had initially been excited about Roanhorse's first series (back when the first book was coming out), but then I read various stuff on Debbie Reese's
American Indians in Children's Literature blog (frustratingly, many of the links she posts don't work anymore, and I can't find them on the Wayback Machine) criticizing Roanhorse (who is not Diné/Navajo, though her husband is) for having used in her books stuff from Diné/Navajo culture that is not supposed to be shared with outsiders and secondarily for "mischaracteriz[ing] and misrepresent[ing] Diné spiritual beliefs"). There's also counter-criticism that folks are just criticizing Roanhorse because she's part-Black -- and of course no community speaks with a single voice (
the Vulture profile is a pretty good summary, and includes input from Diné folk supporting Roanhorse's work -- including one who worked as a sensitivity reader on
Race to the Sun, her stand-alone middle-grade book which received criticism similar to that of her first series). But I've definitely opted to err on the side of not consuming her books.
Wiki says of this newest series, "Roanhorse researched Southeast Asian, Native American, and Mesoamerican civilizations while writing
Black Sun." But I haven't seen much about Native reception of this book. (Or the reception of anyone whose cultures are drawn on in this book, tbf.)
Dec 14: Fine: A Comic About Gender by Rhea Ewing (2022) our graphic novel selection, and our trans selection
I thought it was gonna be Yet Another Memoir, but, "The graphic novel is comprised of 56 interviews Rhea Ewing conducted with a wide variety of people asking them what does gender mean to them." So that's potentially interesting?
Jan 11: The Guncle by Stephen Rowley (2021)
I know this book got a lot of buzz when it came out, but it just doesn't interest me.
I know the facilitator wants to pick lighter books for January (because it's a dark time of year...).
Feb 8: The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris (2021) our Black History Month choice, I suspect
Reading about this on GR, it sounds a lot like
The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr. (2021) -- which was a book club meeting I skipped because I was not interested in reading hundreds of pages about enslaved Black men who fall in love and then get in trouble for same-sex sexual intimacy. And in this book, the secret m/m lovers are two former Confederate soldiers, and I definitely have a bit of cringe about that -- though yes, it's not the same as like Nazi romances.
I am kind of here for "In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox." (from the blurb)
Mar 14: Confidence: a novel by Rafael Frumkin (2023)
I ... This is a book I hadn't previously heard of, and I don't even know what to think about this book whose blurb begins, "Two lifelong friends, occasional lovers, and constant conmen find themselves on top of the world after founding a company that promises instant enlightenment to its users in this thrilling, brainy caper about scams, schemes, and the absurdity of the American Dream." I don't think I particularly wanna read it, but that sure is a book.
Apr 11: The Selected Works of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde (2020)
Sure, I'm up for an "essential reader" of Lorde's work. (The blurb says, "This essential reader showcases her indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical race studies in twelve landmark essays and more than sixty poems" -- so I guess it sort of counts for April as National Poetry Month?)
May 10: The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo (2021)
Okay, this queer Asian-American riff on
The Great Gatsby has been on my TBR for a while. I don't really care about
The Great Gatsby, but I've heard good things about this book; and I've liked Vo's Singing Hills novellas (I've only read the first 2 -- no spoilers).
June 13: Untamed by Glennon Doyle (2020) memoir
Blah, Glennon Doyle. I'm not sure I'm up for a whole-ass book of her talking.