Bitchery member Abby, a noble and kickass librarian, sent me the following link. Seems the latest issue of Library Journal features a story on gay/lesbian books as part of it’s “Collection Development” section. It’s not just romances that help develop the collection, but there are great online resources in the article, according to Abby.
The romance recommendations themselves could stand to reference our own lesbian romance recommendations, for example, but even then they do mention some good names, such as Kallmaker and Forrest. But Abby is right – the online resources section is rather fab, should you or someone you know be on the lookout for good gay/lesbian literature.
Thanks Abby!
Armistead Maupin… jokey hokey but OK
Gore Vidal… well yes
John Rechy… OK but getting trashy
Hermann Melville… HUH? What? Why?
Holleran, Andrew: Dancer from the Dance
Oh god I can not stand this, they promote this nauseatingly classist “New Yawk Party Boy” book every frigging time because it shows “realistic” sex on Fire Island (SNORT!)with a bunch of rich boring prissy boys and yet leave much better trash in the can…
For those looking for some of the really trashy novels Gay Men were actually reading back then and not what the highly misguided and slightly senile Gay Literati want you to think we were reading…
Charles Nelson: The Boy Who Picked The Bullets Up
Patricia Nell Warren: Front Runner
Mary Renault: The Charioteer
and last but not least the way over the top trashy…
Gordon Merrick: The Lord Won’t Mind
Oh and yes, these books have not aged well.
Notice that most were written by straight women which I theorize are simply better writers of Gay Romance (Anne Proulx please stand up) for absolutely no reason I can honestly come up with but just because… well, they are.
lebian? Misprint there Bitches.
Alas Carroll & Graff is no more with the restructure of Avalon. Since they do all the Mammoth anthologies including erotica, hopefully they’ll still be around in some other imprints.
For genre (fantasy) Mercedes Lackey wrote a trilogy called The Last Herald Mage where the romantic relationships of the gay protagonist play a huge part in the plot; so much so, I would put it in the romantic /fantasy sub-genre. Ms. Lackey also peppers her other books with lesbian and gay relationships, sometimes as main characters and sometimes as strong secondary characters with their own subplots…I know there are more but my brain is farting so the authors are just out of reach (just finished pondering and discussing Henry IV part 1 for a class; brain cells are in Shakespeare shock).
One last thought before the head explodes. Is it me or does science fiction and fantasy allow for more open writing in regard to having strong gay and lesbian characters and relationships? Damn the ponder fodder that is the bitchery.
Thanks for posting that! I’d never read Library Journal, and it’s really cool! They have some great-looking reviews of books I’d never heard of before.
I also enjoyed seeing the kind of guidance they give to librarians. Yeah, I’m a library fangirl!
I’m a lesbian that reads straight romance because lesbo romance is so… I don’t know… snooty? I was into Kallmaker for a while, but then realized that all of her characters were the same women placed in a different scenario. Gimme a temptation blaze anyday over that!