Lez Keep It Real

Since it’s the thick of April … and April always seems to bring rain showers or in some cases (if you happen to live in the North East as I do), snow, I thought that I’d give you all some suggestions of quality reading material to snuggle up with on the couch until the warmer weather ushers in.
Get ready to sprawl out, wrap yourself under your favorite warm blanket and start reading!

According to Publishing Triangle – these are the top ten best gay and lesbian novels (out of a list of a hundred) recommended:

1. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
2. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
3. Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
4. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
5. The Immoralist by Andre Gide
6. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
7. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
8. Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
9. The Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
10. Zami by Audré Lorde

For the rest of the list, click here.

Publishing Triangle was founded in 1988 and works to create support and a sense of community for lesbian and gay people in the publishing industry.

As for me, there’s one book that I think all lesbians should read at some point in their lives. It’s called Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown (Ranked 18th on PT’s top 100 list). It made the top 100 list but it’s number one on my personal list. It captures, quite perfectly I might add, the natural evolution of a young girl into a woman all while exploring the many facets of her sexuality. It’s brilliantly written, a true “page-turner.”

Off of the gay and lesbian topic, I also recommend The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I hear that they are planning on turning it into a movie. For those people who sometimes see the movie instead of taking the time to read the book, this is one of those cases where you MUST read the book. It’s a well-written, beautifully crafted story that unfolds in such an intricately woven way that it almost makes the reader feel like he or she is part of the story. It also provides an inside view of the turmoil that is the Middle East and paints a vivid picture of the destruction and chaos that any war, civil or otherwise, can cause.

As for my favorite author, I love Judy Blume. Her books helped me come of age. From the highly controversial Forever, (voted most banned book from high schools in 2005) where I first learned about sex, to the simplistic humor of Freckle Juice and Sheila the Great, Judy Blume exhibits an uncanny ability to bring humor and light to topics often considered too unmentionable to mention in young adult fiction like masturbation, menstruation and sex. She took risks with her stories and dared to be so candid when writing about things that others were too afraid to touch upon. She brought real life “growing pains” out from under the rug and into the open. And many kids, like me, loved it because she gave us something real to relate to. We could read, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret and say, “That’s exactly how I feel.” Or “That happened to me too!”

I hope I’ve provided you with some good reading suggestions to keep you busy during those cozy rainy days as well as those lazy summer afternoons spent lying on the grass.

For more fun tips on the latest books and other reading material, visit 451’s blog for everything literary – The Book Stacks.

book, gay, lesbian, novel, reading, publishiing triangle, judy blume, rita mae brown, rubyfruit jungle, forever, the kite runner