Guest Lesbrarian: allis

Same Sex In The City (So Your Prince Charming Is Really A Cinderella) by Lauren Levin and Lauren Blizter

The book is divided in theme chapters and inside those chapters it is divided in two parts. First there is a few comments on the title name. For example in “Coming out” the authors give general ideas and advice about what it’s all about. Then there are the personal stories of the authors and what seems to be friends of the authors.

The first parts of the chapters are in my opinion useless. It felt like they were stating the obvious or telling stereotypes at best and at times trying too hard to be funny. Luckily those parts are really short and can be overlooked. It won’t change anything about the reading of the second parts and you won’t miss anything interesting.

The second parts of the chapters are much more interesting because they are personal stories. They are not especially well written or anything but it is nice to read about the experiences of other people and to be able to relate to them. Plus all the authors have a happy positive attitude about their lives. Even when you read about the sad, difficult times it doesn’t seem that bad because the authors have overcome those times and give you a happy view of their lives now. I really enjoyed that point about the book, because in a way it encourages the readers to look at their lives with a positive attitude too and it shows them that problems can be overcome and that in spite of difficulties it is possible to live happily.

My only negative comments on those parts is the lack of diversity. All the girls that wrote the texts seemed to be really wealthy, Jewish (if not all, a lot of them) and from New York. They all seemed to be coming from a similar background which made for some repetitiveness at times. I think it would have been better for the book to gather experiences from a more diverse group of people, showing that there is not just one way of living and experiencing things and that anyone can be happy. It would have balanced the book better and open it to a wider audience.

In short it is a well-intentioned book but lacking in diversity to feel more complete. It is a quick, enjoyable read. I wouldn’t recommend buying it, but if your local library have it I would recommend to check it for the personal happy stories. It’s always nice to read about happy stories when you’re feeling down.

I have this book! It’ll be interesting to compare notes once I read it. Thanks so much for this guest review, allis! Check out allis’s livejournal here.

Lesbrary Sneak Peek

Lesbrary Sneak Peeks are when I show you some of the books I’ve gotten lately that I haven’t read yet. I tell you a little bit about why I want to read them and hopefully expose you to some new les/etc books. Here are a few:

May I Kiss You On the Lips, Miss Sandra? looks hilarious. This is one of those sneaky gay books that end up on my les/etc book stacks and then attracts a skeptical look from me. The cover, the back blurb, and the Amazon reviews don’t mention any queerness… but that’s exactly why I made a lesbian book blog. Because some fly under the radar. This is the memoir of a queer celebrity comedian, Sandra Bernhard. The internet can’t decide if she’s lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, or something else, but that’s good enough for me.

I’m looking forward to Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold because it’s lesbian history. I was never too interested in history in school, but queer history is different. It’s particularly relevant to me. The fights they started, we’re still fighting. This one seems particularly fascinating because it’s so tightly focused (Buffalo, NY, 1930s-1960s) and because it’s gathered from oral histories of 45 women.

I’ve heard great things about Nicole Conn’s Claire of the Moon, though I haven’t read it yet, so it’s not surprising that I picked up Passion’s Shadow. It sounds like it will be a mystery and (steamy?) romance story and seems to have gotten good reviews, so I hope I like it.

Flying Under Bridges by Sandi Toksvig is another sneaky gay book, but my google-fu has determined it belongs here. The reviews intrigue me. Murder! Hilarity! Lesbians! Okay, you’re right, “Lesbians!” usually intrigues me in itself, but the other two are interesting, too.

Some Girls by Kristin McCloy, from what I gather from the blurb, is about a 23-year-old woman, Claire, who runs away from her old life to try to make it in New York. She meets up with a glamorous woman who is everything she wants to be (aah, that age old les/etc question: “Do I want to date her or be her?”), and “becomes first Claire’s guide, then something far more intimate.” After that, Claire is forced to make choices that will change her life forever! Excitement or safety! Love or familiarity! Scandalous.

Weekly Link Round Up

AfterEllen posted their opinions on Lambda Literary’s Fall Picks.

Autostraddle posted an article that talks about lesbian books beginning to make an appearance in the mainstream, which is also covered in the Independent article “Niche Off the Leash: Val McDermid On Progress In Lesbian Fiction”.

Care2 posted an article called “LGBT Teens Devour Queer Books“.

The Femme’s Guide posted some quick impressions of a few lesbian erotica books.

GLBT Promo posted a teaser blurb for Private Eyes by Michelle Houston.

I’m Here. I’m Queer. What the Hell Do I Read? posted some blurbs from the anthologies Growing Up Gay: A Literary Anthology and Not the Only One: Lesbian and Gay Fiction for Teens.

Lambda Literary posted an interview with Tanith Lee and Cliterotica: A Lesbian Erotic Quarterly.

Readings in Lesbian & Bisexual Women’s Fiction has Readings with Erica Lawson and Redux Gillian (with Gillian Kendall, author of Something to Declare: Good Lesbian Travel Writing).

An article titled “‘Lost’ Lesbian Author Found” about the book Diana: A Strange Autobiography is at Windy City Times. (Seriously, lesbian fiction articles in the Financial Times and Windy City Times? Did I just wake up in another, more awesome dimension?)

Emma Donoghue was interviewed at the Financial Times and Barnes & Noble. (Her new [non-lesbian] novel Room is getting her a lot of attention.)

Silver Kiss by Naomi Clark (lesbian werewolf book!) was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue was reviewed at Reviews By Lola.

The Scorpion by Gerri Hill was reviewed at Buy Book Gay Lesbian.

Strangers In Paradise, Vol. 1 by Terry Moore was reviewed at Stella Matutina.

Lois Lenz, Lesbian Secretary by Monica Nolan was reviewed at Loving Venus – Loving Mars.

The Three by Meghan O’Brien was reviewed at Loving Venus – Loving Mars.

Far From Xanadu by Julie Anne Peters was reviewed at Sixty Books in 2010.

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters was reviewed at Polish Outlander.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters was reviewed at Piling on the Books and Wicked Wonderful Words.

Lesbrary Sneak Peek

I’ve been collecting lots of new les/etc books I haven’t been updating you on, so here’s the beginning of me catching up! So, here are some of the books I haven’t read yet and why I’m looking forward to reading them.

Sarah Schulman is one of the names that’s been filed away in my brain as an Important Lesbian Author. I don’t know how people end up on that list, but it always makes me more eager to read their works. The version I have of Empathy is part of the Little Sister’s Classics collection, Little Sister’s being the lesbian bookstore in Vancouver famous for fighting censorship.

I have an interest in les/etc teen books because I think that’s when a lot of queer people start looking for queer lit. Pretty much everyone is insecure as a teenager, but being queer can make it even worse. Being able to read about other people, especially other teens, going through the same things can be really reassuring. Good Girls Don’t is a bisexual teen book, so it’s obviously on my very long list of books to read.

Dancing In the Dark edited by Barbara Grier and Christine Cassidy is a book from one of the old lesbian publishers, Naiad Press. It’s a collection of short stories, so it will probably be hit and miss, but it includes some authors I’ve heard very good things about, like Karin Kallmaker and Penny Hayes.

A Stone Gone Mad by Jacquelyn Park looks delightfully dramatic! It’s another les/etc teen book, and check out this back blurb:


Drama! Boarding school! Lesbians! That’s enough to entice me, at least.

Travels With Diana Hunter looks like it will be a nice, short, sexy romp. All three of the Amazon reviews mention it’s “not PC”, though… What does that mean? I guess I’ll find out.

Did I mention that I liked Patience & Sarah by Isabel Miller? Well, I did. It was sweet, and surprisingly not depressing. Actually, it’s one of the very books I recommended on this blog. So of course as soon as I saw that she had another lesbian novel, The Love of Good Women, I was more than happy to snap it up.

I don’t think I need to explain why I want to read In A Queer Country. Queer Canada! I’m Canadian! It looks fantastic, plus the back cover mention the Lesbian Rangers. I think my view of the world improved after learning the Lesbian Rangers once existed.

I thought Making Out seemed like it would be an awesome, sexy book, but now I have to say I’ll probably be reading it more for the hilarity factor. This is a book that did not age well. Check out a NSFW sample after the cut.

Continue Reading →

Weekly Link Round Up

Lambda Literary has posted The Most Anticipated LGBT Books of Fall 2010, Book Buzz: September 2010, and videos of Nicola Griffith & Perez.

QueerType has posted its September Publishing Notes, all the queer publishing news (this seems like so much work, and I don’t think it gets half the credit it deserve, so check it out and comment).

Readings in Lesbian &  Bisexual Women’s Fiction posted Readings with Gillian Kendall.

Ivan E. Coyote has updated her events page to show her appearances up until November.

Karin Kallmaker posted an interview of her done at My Qmunity.

Rachel Spangler posted another excerpt from her book The Long Way Home, meaning you can now read the whole first chapter at her blog.

An article about Rita Mae Brown was posted at QVegas.

Above Temptation by Karin Kallmaker was reviewed at Read Any Good Gay and Lesbian Books Lately?

I am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of  Audre Lorde was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Rage: A Love Story by Julie Anne Peters was reviewed at The Zen Leaf.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters was reviewed at She Reads Novels.

Lesbrary Guest Review: Rie

Guest Lesbrarian Rie is reviewing a book I hadn’t heard of before: A Charm of Powerful Trouble by Joanne Horniman. I love hearing about new les/etc books! Here’s her review:

I’m a chick with simple tastes–at least when it comes to my books. I love beautiful imagery, strong characters, family secrets, small adventures, literary references, and a satisfying conclusion that leaves you sorry to leave the story behind, but blissed out at having known them for even several hundred pages. Joanne Horniman’s A Charm of Powerful Trouble is a book that has slipped quietly from the notice of bibliophiles, and I am sorry for it, as it is an exquisite novel in short stories about the relationships between family and lovers. Laura Zambelli could be describing the book itself when she talks of her home in the rainforest:

A forest is so intricate it takes intimacy to know how to look at the maze of plants entwined like serpents: twisted, coiled, sinuous, insinuating. A rainforest is artful and curled and wild. It is the wildness I love most of all. It takes time to know it and love it, to see properly what it is.

Loosely based on the poem Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti, A Charm of Powerful Trouble echoes the poem’s sensuality, feminist leanings, and expression of the power of love between sisters. Sister Lizzie is bright and beautiful, with a long golden braid and curvy body, flaunting a gold ring in her navel and insouciant way of playing the guitar. Sister Laura is small and dark, but quietly celebrates the beauty of her growing womanhood and her ramshackle home outside Mullumbimby, Australia. Throughout the novel, relationships unfold and echo each other in a circular, dreamy narrative of love and loss. Their artist mother and filmmaker father find their relationship crumbling when Stella, the mother’s beautiful best friend, most in with her mysterious daughter Paris. But once upon a time in the mother Emma’s history, Stella was the quiet, witchy little girl of the bohemian yet glamorous neighbor who wore miniskirts and tended chickens. Lizzie and Laura are each other’s safe haven in their tumultuous if loving family, like Emma’s wilder older sister Beth was once her inspiration. Storylines twist through each piece like the snakes that inhabit their rainforest home as the women love tempestuously, lose everything, but come around to themselves when they realize that it is their own inner strength and self-love and passion for living that completes them. Joanne Horniman’s writing is evocative and breathless, with images of women eating flowers, sisters who find a universe in a drop of water, bowerbirds with nests made from tarot cards and a goblinish market where mice sell fairy wings and foxes listen to poetry.

Here is an excerpt from “Kiss the Sky,” narrated by Laura:

The summer when I was seventeen I was so full of undifferentiated sensuality that the world was a great glowing golden fruit around me. I didn’t long for love and nor did I need it, yet I saw love everywhere without even looking for it…Everywhere I looked, I saw people delighting in each other. But I needed no one. I was myself, complete. At night the summer air breathed onto my face with such promises of bliss that I slept in a deep swoon. I was caressed by the morning sunlight and seduced by the long afternoon shadows, and I lapped it all up in such a daze of sensation that I couldn’t tell where the world ended and I began. I was so much in love with simply being alive that I could have kissed the sky.

One last note: this book wins my Happy Sapphist award. Without denying the pain that can accompany coming into a queer identity, it is a relief to read a book that explores the beauty of a lesbian relationship without strife or negativity. Laura does struggle with feelings she doesn’t have the words to put a name to, but after years of searching finds love with a woman as deep and loving as herself. ( And she’s a librarian to boot ♥!) I cannot express how important it was to read a novel like this, one that assured me that there would be happiness, too.

In the bookshop at Mullumbimby I crouched on the floor, dipping into book. I had a belief that one day I come across something–in a book, anywhere–that would finally allow the world to make sense, and I was forever alive and alert for it.

I found mine–in A Charm of Powerful Trouble. Happy reading!

Read more of Rie’s writing at her blog Friend of Dorothy Wilde or her tumblr The Awkward Turtle Breeding Ground. Thanks Rie!

Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden

I’ll try not to repeat myself too much, but look at the diligent notes I took! I had to do them justice! But I don’t think I have enough to do  coherent review that wasn’t already covered in the discussion Anna and I had. So instead, I’ll just post the thoughts I didn’t already express. These random snippets will be full of spoilers, so I’m not going to bother making you highlight for them. Consider yourself warned.

  • Annie is a reader! Pg 75 of my copy, she says “I read a lot.”
  • It was odd, after we got introduced to Annie’s grandmother, I was steeling myself for the inevitable awfulness of when she found out that Annie is gay. That… never happened.
  • AOMM was good for seeing into Liza’s strange, sheltered little world. I come from a very different environment, and not just because it’s several decades later. For example, Liza makes her whole high school time revolve around her getting into her university of choice. I don’t think that’s quite as prevalent in Canada, or at least not in the schools I went to. Getting into a “good” university was sort of a bonus, but most of the kids from my “gifted”/whatever program ended up at one of the universities we have here, which is good, but not huge on the international  map. I never gave a second thought to what university I wanted to be in when I was in high school, but maybe that was just me.
  • Also, Liza had a very privileged life. I couldn’t believe that she got suspended and then didn’t get grounded. Especially since her dad was so mad at first. What’s the downside to being able to not have to go to school and not be grounded? That’s not a punishment! But that was about as far as punishments went in her case, and she was devestated. I’d be celebrating, and I wasn’t even a bad student.
  • I liked the idea of how her school was supposed to run, though, obviously, it would have to be without the corruption. The sort of democratic system of running it seemed like a fair way to do it.
  • I loved when Liza literally played knight in shining armor. That’s such classic lesbian-in-love.
  • Liza and Annie, but especially Liza, are very odd. The make believe, the singing at the museum, and then at some point Liza growls at a homeless person. This is not normal high school senior behavior.
  • Baxter and Poindexter are so very pathetic.
  • There are actually a lot of points in the novel that I thought were foreshadowing, but didn’t really lead to anything. “Oh no, her brother is getting suspicious! … No, no, he’s over it.”
  • Sally takes a nose dive as a character. By the end I had a seething hatred for her.
  • AOMM has a great passage that describes exactly why I’m so into lesbian lit. “I felt as if I were meeting parts of myself in the gay people I read about. Gradually, I began to feel calmer inside, more complete and sure of myself […]” My favourite part of AOMM is the literature references.
  • I got absolutely furious in my notes when Annie and Liza get caught and lectured. Some excerpts: [to Baxter] “You absolute scum”, “**** you, Sally/Walt!” “How dare you!” and later: “Suck it, Poindexter!” … I swear I’m not usually like this. It was a very emotional part of the story.
  • Another example of Liza’s strange little life: she had never lied to her parents before the whole gay thing. Never. About anything.
  • Near the end of the book, Liza writes down “Running through my head – running through my head”. Am I the only one who couldn’t help thinking of the tatu song?

Have you read Annie On My Mind? What did you think of it?

Weekly Link Round Up

AfterEllen posted Across the Page, which “features a variety of good reads: the coming of age story, Another Life Altogether, by Elaine Beale; STREB: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero by MacArthur Fellow Elizabeth Streb; and the thrilling murder mystery, Veritas, by Anne Laughlin”.

GLBT Promo has a teaser blurb for Private Eyes by Michelle Houston.

I’m Here. I’m Queer. What the Hell Do I Read? posted synopses of the essays in Hear Us Out! Lesbian and Gay Stories of Struggle, Progress, and Hope, 1950 To the Present and a write-up of the banning of Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology in a school in New Jersey.

Lambda Literary posted Top 10 Most Memorable LGBT Teen Fiction Characters According to Brent and an interview with Monique Truong.

PrideSource has a post with several different lesbian books reviews.

A biography of Alma Routsong/”Isabel Miller” was posted in the Arts & Culture section of greasy.

Readings in Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Fiction has posted Readings With Colette Moody.

Cheri Chrystal posted an excerpt from her book New Neighbors.

Ivan E. Coyote has posted some of her headshots.

Rachel Spangler posted an excerpt from her upcoming book The Long Way Home.

Thy Neighbor’s Wife by Georgia Beers was reviewed at Lesbian Fiction Reviews.

1st Impressions by Kate Calloway was reviewed at Lesbian Fiction Reviews.

Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read edited by Riachard Canning was reviewed at Public Displays of Gay.

Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue was reviewed at its publisher: Virago Press.

The Woman Who Gave Birth To Rabbits by Emma Donoghue was reviewed by annecater at the Read It Swap It forums.

Mean Little deaf Queer by Terry Galloway was reviewed at Gay RVA.

The Burning of Her Sin by Patty G. Henderson was reviewed at Lesbian Fiction Reviews.

All the Wrong Places by Karen Kallmaker was reviewed at Loving Venus – Loving Mars.

Sex Talks To Girls by Maureen Seaton was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

The More I Owe You by Michael Sledge was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Affinity by Sarah Waters was reviewed at A Book Blog. Period.

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters was reviewed at Literary Sluts.

Ledge Walkers: Lesbian Adventure Club Book 2 by Rosalyn Wraight was reviewed at Buy Book Gay Lesbian.

Psst, also, look what I got!