You know how it is when the neighborhood busybody stops you on the street to fill you in on what is going on with so-and-so down the block? Each of the stories in this book is kind of like that, told in a very frank monologue. Sometimes the whole story is told from the sidelines, sometimes by someone mixed up in the drama. So come and sit a spell and listen to these tales of love and hardship.

this really is a beautiful read.

at first it was a little slow. the first 80 pages are mostly name dropping and an homage to the sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll of gay liberation. but then the narrative switches to a history of political engagement in California. Cleve travels all over and works with so many important figures in California and national politics on the fight for marriage equality & workers rights. I cried a lot.

inspiration comes from weird places sometimes

i haven't been able to read for a couple of days but this is definitely on my to read list. i need help understanding what went wrong

#currentlyreading this book for next spring! I think it's going to be the talk of the town. it's a mix of investigative journalism, urban studies, and personal history/memoir, making it very accessible.
#nonfiction #gentrification #neworleans #newyork #detroit #sanfrancisco

#currentlyreading

I finally finished reading it. In a weird way, it reminded me of "How to Get Away with Murder" as the drama is teased and hinted across the whole arc. I spent the whole book trying to figure out the first couple chapters and it wasn't revealed until the last bit.

It's mostly a sad book, but not gut wrenching sad. It's sad in the mundane sense. Regretful. Lost opportunity. Mediocre humanity with just a dash of hope.

so close to being done! #currentlyreading

my subway reading for the day
this slightly gruesome collection of medical #poetry also pulls from astrological and musical sources
#currentlyreading
#newdirections

who is she?
#bobdylan
#nobel #nobelprizeinliterature
#nobellaureate #nobelprize

#currentlyreading
I'm finding this cookbook delightfully well-written. though as a vegetarian there hasn't been a lot for me yet
#cookbook #purée #JuliaChild

my staff pick is up at @bookculture 112th for this speculative ecological thriller!

I'm finally going to pick up a copy of this heartbreaking and beautiful work at @bookculture.

just a humble brag that I saw Hamilton a couple weeks ago and it was good

this book is a weird mix of drama, horror, and eroticism. it's more in your face than the innuendo and implication of many of his plays. also there is cannibalism and pedophilia so be ready for that.

Under the Udala Tress tells the story of a young girl who tries to navigate lesbian identity in Biafra-era Nigeria. She faces wretched treatment, little support from family, and at times the threat of death. But she also falls in love and builds a life for herself, and reclaims her faith. I enjoyed Okparanta's collection of short stories, "Happiness, Like Water", too.

This dark and heartbreaking work is the result of a master biographer chronicling his own life, and the life of his older brother Scott. As they grow older, both brothers deal with drug and substance abuse issues while their family unravels. His well-meaning father, insatiable mother, and erratic brother all fit into his definition of family, which may look uncomfortably familiar to the reader

I'm really sad summer is over. I just want to lay in the sun and read always

This is a must for anyone who has ever spent time in California's Central Valley. In the rich tradition that includes #WilliamSaroyan & #JohnSteinbeck, Taylor uses incredibly familiar characters in the saga of one family-owned vineyard. While much writing of #California focuses on glamour of Los Angeles or the tech world of Silicon Valley, she beautifully illustrates how the family farming is inexorably linked to California's economy and history.

Master writer Alexander Chee has created a fantastic story around Lilliet Berne, a 19th century soprano with a hidden past. Taking place in the years around the Second French Empire, The Queen of the Night offers romance, suspense, and political intrigue as Lilliet maneuvers around French Society. Chee employs an immense technical knowledge of voice and opera, bringing a wonderfully realistic dimension to the characters and to the stage.

I first heard about this book in a Guardian Books podcast and found it fascinating that Physical is the first book of poetry ever to win the Guardian First Book Prize. I didn't know much about it when I ordered it, but I immediately fell in love. McMillan captures so much of what is uniquely human in his poems, centering on the body and how it reacts when outside forces press down on it.

he Naked Eye is a captivating read from start to finish. It's told from the perspective of a young Vietnamese woman who is kidnapped while visiting East Germany for a communist party conference. In trying to escape she ends up on a train headed to Paris instead of Moscow. Lost, adrift, she begins obsessively watching movies starring Catherine Deneuve and spends the next ten years doing everything she can to be able to go to the movies every night.

This trim novel covers serious ground. It tells the story of a young, queer man working as a hustler in 1918 Reykjavik. He walks the line of insider/outsider in this closed community as Iceland deals with the end of the Great War, a volcanic eruption, political separation from Denmark, and Spanish influenza. Máni spends most of his free time at the cinema, escaping the confines of both his body and time while the world crashes around him.

...So I turn my phone
back on, text Michael
He's at work I say 'come'
'after', he says 'going out'
'in Chinatown' and who fucking
goes out in Chinatown
after midnight on a Thursday?
All I know are boys, boys, boys,
and I hate all of them Stop

Isherwood makes something breathtakingly beautiful in this account of a man's everyday life after loss. Reading George's sorrow is ultimately comforting, and utterly human.

this might be my #FavoriteBookEver

this books is terrifyingly uncanny. though the setting is not familiar, who hasn't gone a little off the deep end after a break up? this book is raw and gritty, and definitely makes for a scandalous subway read.

It's really just so good. An exemplary literary memoir, chronicling the body of Garrard as he survives sexual assault and religious gay-conversion therapy.

As though my dear friend John Hirschman and the world that he'd shaped in Fresno in advance of me, and even 'for' me, had amounted to nothing.

the book digs deeply into the body of the narrator as he grapples with intimacy, illness, shame, language, scorn, divorce, and sex. It may seem like a lot for this slim novel, but Greenwell has carefully chosen each word with a poet‘s eye

He came upon me at the right moment. Happenstance. He needed to escape. I was his great escape. Indeed, I am convinced that love has no axiomatic reality.

This NYC based poet will leave you floored. He offers beauty as reading of the black body, instead of pain and violence. Or rather, beauty despite pain and violence.