The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Book Thread
Chanterais:
--- Quote from: delalluvia on May 01, 2006, 11:47:22 pm ---Chantie
--- Quote ---I ain't religious, but I am evangelical about the Number One Ladies Detective Agency books. You can't tell me that Mma. Ramotswe doesn't exist. Of course she does! To anyone who hasn't read them, run, don't walk to the nearest shop and get the first in the series, the above mentioned Number One Ladies Detective Agency. Your world will immediately become a cheerier, better place. You will also develop an unhealthy addiction to redbush tea, but I can't be held responsible for that.
--- End quote ---
I read the first one on my way home from London. Sad to say, I was very disappointed. I had saved it specifically to read on the plane so the atmosphere of the book could take me away. While it was very people-oriented and a lovely set of new morality tales, the atmosphere I was looking for to immerse myself in was lacking. :(
--- End quote ---
Well that's it. We can't be friends. No, look, I'm sorry, but it's just not on. There are some lines I cannot cross. Delalluvia! You're a woman of such taste! How can you say such things? Where is your heart? I'm going off to pout in the corner now, and when I get back, you'd better have changed your mind, or our love affair is over. And that would be sad, indeed.
:D
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: Chanterais on May 02, 2006, 12:06:29 am ---
--- Quote from: delalluvia on May 01, 2006, 11:47:22 pm ---Chantie
--- Quote ---I ain't religious, but I am evangelical about the Number One Ladies Detective Agency books. You can't tell me that Mma. Ramotswe doesn't exist. Of course she does! To anyone who hasn't read them, run, don't walk to the nearest shop and get the first in the series, the above mentioned Number One Ladies Detective Agency. Your world will immediately become a cheerier, better place. You will also develop an unhealthy addiction to redbush tea, but I can't be held responsible for that.
--- End quote ---
I read the first one on my way home from London. Sad to say, I was very disappointed. I had saved it specifically to read on the plane so the atmosphere of the book could take me away. While it was very people-oriented and a lovely set of new morality tales, the atmosphere I was looking for to immerse myself in was lacking. :(
--- End quote ---
Well that's it. We can't be friends. No, look, I'm sorry, but it's just not on. There are some lines I cannot cross. Delalluvia! You're a woman of such taste! How can you say such things? Where is your heart? I'm going off to pout in the corner now, and when I get back, you'd better have changed your mind, or our love affair is over. And that would be sad, indeed.
:D
--- End quote ---
:'( :'( :'( ;D
TJ:
I posted this elsewhere on BetterMost, but I think the subjet of the Adovocate column fits here in this discussion.
From the Advocate:
COASTAL DISTURBANCES
The next Brokeback
Christopher Rice suggests hitting the bookstore to get a glimpse of the next big thing.
http://www.advocate.com/currentstory1_w.asp?id=30096
April 24, 2006
Coastal disturbances
By Christopher Rice
Here’s my advice to all of you who are still broken up about Brokeback Mountain’s loss at the Oscars. Head to your local gay bookstore and shell out a few bucks for something besides porn. As it turns out, Jack and Ennis weren’t hatched during a pitch meeting at the Ivy. They first came to life in the pages of The New Yorker, a magazine driven almost entirely by words alone.
In some sense, the literary origin of Brokeback—and the highly visible marketing of Annie Proulx’s short story, on which it is based—has masked a spreading indifference to the written word among gay men. Gay op-ed pages abound with condemnations of the formulaic treatment we receive on television sitcoms, but any defense of the gay bookstore and the much wider array of representations it offers is weak at best. At worst, we get dismissive essays from successful gay authors who seem determined to disregard the bookstores that helped give them their start.
Rather than spending all of our energy trying to guilt-trip the media into representing us more diversely, it’s time we put our passion and our dollars behind the nuanced representations of gay men that have already been written.
Don’t think you’re part of the problem? Here’s a test. Which of the following do you recognize? Mack Friedman, Richard McCann, Barry McCrea, Vestal McIntyre, Sulayman X, Aaron Hamburger, Dennis Cooper, Harlan Greene, Thorn Kief Hillsbery, Keith McDermott, Patrick Ryan, Blair Mastbaum, Bart Yates, K.M. Soehnlein, Michael Lowenthal, Eric Shaw Quinn, John Morgan Wilson. This is but a small sampling of current writers whose work collapses stereotypes of gay men. (Here’s hoping you’re already familiar with living gay literary lions such as Alan Hollinghurst, Felice Picano, Andrew Holleran, Edmund White and others.)
If big gestures are more your style, get out your checkbook and spend a paltry $25 to join the struggling Lambda Literary Foundation—sponsor of the Lammy awards—the only organization dedicated to increasing the visibility of LGBT writers.
All of that’s pretty easy. The hard part will be letting go of excuses like “I try to read before bed but I fall asleep”—to which I’m always tempted to reply that I hope you don’t read the CNN news ticker while on the treadmill. Patronizing your local gay bookstore and setting aside 20 minutes each night to read is not too much to ask when the next gay-themed film to take American culture by storm may be at stake.
Otherwise, we had better prepare ourselves for an endless slate of happy-go-lucky sex comedies firmly rooted in the “taming the go-go boy” school of storytelling.
Brokeback is just one of many recent successful films that are faithful adaptations of written source material. In Brokeback’s case, it was the short story’s impact on several well-placed straight filmmakers that ultimately carried it toward the big screen.
That’s because gay men have been remiss in forming a potent segment of the book-buying public with the power to nudge gay titles into the Hollywood pipeline. If we truly want Hollywood to present us with representations of gay men that challenge and even devastate us, this situation needs to change. And why shouldn’t it? After all, we each have the power to change it before bedtime tonight.
TJ:
Christopher Rice is son of Anne Rice; and they both are published writers.
I do have a number of gay-themed books which I bought at regular bookstores and through different online book dealers.
Since I am on fixed income, I have not bought any books in that category for a few years now except for the 2005 edition of the stand-alone paperback, "Brokeback Mountain."
henrypie:
Hey Chantiepie,
Regarding what you wrote:
"Interesting facts: Sherlock Holmes never wore a deer-stalker hat, never smoked a pipe, and certainly never, ever uttered the immortal phrase "Elementary, my dear Watson." Filthy lies. It's all ornamentation by the movies. Like cats, you just can't trust them."
Hee hee,
I just learned that from Curious Incident. I think he did all those things in the movies, but never in the books.
By the way I don't know how much you rode the Central line, but did you ever notice that when she says "Shepherd's Bush" she sounds like she knows she's saying something naughty? I rode the Central line back and forth from Ealing, where I stayed for a few nights with a friend of a friend when I was searching for an apartment. I was in London from September 2000 to July 2001. The Sainsbury's at Finchley Road was indeed a giant and an eyesore. How about that Rainforest Cafe thingy? What was that? And the ... Homebase, is it called, down across the carpark from Sainsbury's? I went to the latter a few times, looking for flea spray and mirrors and screws and whatnot. I also went to see "Quills" at that cinema. Ew. Another bad memory. Oh hey, on the bread aisle at Sainsbury's: of course, I went right for the day-old bread. I was just toasting it anyway. Also olive ciabattas. Mmm.
Dela,
I admit I tend to wax nostalgic for a lot of things about London. I would love to give it a go again sometime, with a little more money, and a job. If my husband got some swanky engineering job and I could be his kept woman, who sings and writes and takes her exercise in Regent's Park every day and, maybe, is a mom, well that could be splendid. But living in/travelling through slums to get to central London everyday is mighty wearing (particularly during tube strikes of which there were many), and you don't live in central London, or one of the nicer suburbs, unless you have money to burn, or you have an ancestral home of some sort. I also kinda think that if I were to jump off into a big new foreign city, it would most likely to be Stuttgart, where my husband is from. We consider it from time to time. There, my consuming hobby/task/interest/burden would be learning krazy-German (distinct, impossible dialect of the region). And trying not to be depressed and angry at my crushing, chronic lack of articulateness.
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