Plans for (the brief) Winter Break

Some books I hope to read before the Spring semester starts…in no particular order...

1. The Grounding of Group Six by Julian F. Thompson, c.1983 (finishing this up…)

2. To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies, and the Art of Extreme Tourism by Chuck Thompson, c.2009 (from my LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers, review to follow…)

3. Daughters of Eve by Lois Duncan, c. 1979

4. American Gods by Neil Gaiman, c. 2001 (seems to be many people’s favorite..)

5. Happy Endings are All Alike by Sandra Scoppettone, c. 1978 (one of the first/the few novels about teen lesbians…in the 70s)

6. My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel, c.1969

7. Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp by C.D. Payne, c1993 (had meant to read this so long ago, now the movie is about to come out…yikes! Have to read before that…)

I may be a little ambitious……

My Booky Wook

A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up by Russell Brand. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. UK edition: Hodder & Stoughton, 2007. 353 pages.

My Booky Wook is a confessional full of embarrassing and oftentimes disturbing events and choices in Brand's life eventually leading him to rehab for drugs (and later sex addiction). While Brand constantly desires to become famous, he continually commits one self-destructive act after another. Everything is presented for you, the reader, in Brand's clever and (somewhat) literary voice. Brand is perceptive, irreverent and too funny.

City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s-'70s

by Edmund White. New York: Bloomsbury, USA, c. 2009, 297 pages.

(from my LibraryThing's Early Reviewers)

White's memoir begins when he he arrives in New York City from the Midwest where he followed his lover instead of going on to Harvard. He is is not a writer yet and these two decades are a formative time in his literary career.

As a gay man, White was still hoping to be "cured" as he regularly (like many other gay men at the time) saw a therapist. In 1969, as the gay movement began with Stonewall, White began to embrace his own identity--and he had little choice when, in 1977, he famously co-authored "The Joy of Gay Sex."

The reader is invited to hear White's tales of the famous artists and literary figures he surrounded himself with and his many lovers and experiences before and in the early days of AIDS. This book is gossip and at the same time revelation. This is a social history of New York at that time told by an insider.