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Written by Gregg Shapiro, Staff writer
Feb 10, 2012
Author Eleanor Brown appears at Barnes & Noble in Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa on Feb. 29. – Photo: Joe Henson
Curling up with a good book is a delight anytime — even more so on a cozy February night.
Literary delights
• Eleanor Brown's marvelous novel, "The Weird Sisters" (Berkley, 2011/2012), about the three Andreas sisters, their ill mother and Shakespeare-quoting professor father, was one of 2011's more auspicious debuts. It's now available in a paperback edition.
• "Coral Glynn" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012, $25) is Peter Cameron's first novel since his acclaimed Y/A novel "Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You."
Set in 1950s England, it examines how victims of circumstance learn to love one another.
• In the Y/A novel "The Miseducation of Cameron Post" (Harper Collins, 2012, $17.99), Emily M. Danforth recounts the experience of a young lesbian dealing with being queer while staying with her ultra-religious aunt following the death of her parents in a car accident.
• Novelist Alvin Orloff explores the mid-1970s with teenager Leonard shedding his "good kid" image and joining the Burnouts, a gang of misfits, as he embarks on his personal journey of self-discovery in "Why Aren't You Smiling?" (Manic D Press, 2011,$14.95).
• A software engineer-turned-writer, lesbian novelist Ellen Ullman sets "By Blood" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012, $27) in the gritty, early '70s of San Francisco. The plot involves thin walls, eavesdropping, a patient, her therapist and a quest for identity.
• Teenage criminals Sarah, Jenna, Lauren and Cassie are sent to an experimental juvenile detention center on a farm to create something tangible. As three of the girls try to heal their wounds, one sets out to destroy everything they work for in "Getting Somewhere" (Penguin Young Readers, 2012, $ 17.99) by Beth Neff.
• "Monstress" (Ecco, 2012, $13.99) is award-winning, queer Filipino writer Lysley Tenorio's debut story collection. Included among the eight pieces is the National Magazine Award-nominated titular story.
• Controversial and prolific queer writer Dennis Cooper returns with "The Marbled Swarm" (Harper Collins, 2011, $14.99), in which a young cannibal (yes, you read that right), tells the story of him and his late father.
• High school sweethearts Nate and Adam survived the strains of homophobic brutality. But as college life begins in different cities, their love is put to the test when new people enter their lives, forcing them to recognize what they really want in J.H. Trumble's novel, "Don't Let Me Go" (Kensington Books, 2012, $15).
• The adult-oriented parody "If You Give a Kid a Cookie, Will He Shut the Fuck Up?" (St. Martin's Griffin, 2011, $14.99) is Marcy Roznick's honest tale of a parent seeking to find peace with his noisy kids.
• The 11 entwined short stories in "Wounds" (Manic D Press, 2011, $14.95) by Justin Chin explore intense emotions, as well as the characters that inhibit them.
• "Sweep-you-off-your-feet" stories by Steve Berman, Simon Sheppard, Rob Rosen and 10 other gay writers are included in "Best Gay Romance 2012" (Cleis Press, 2012, $14.95), edited by Richard LaBonte.
• Out writer R. Zamora Linmark is having quite a year in terms of publishing. He follows up his Coffee House Press novel "Leche" with his third poetry collection "Drive-By Vigils" (Hanging Loose Press, 2011, $18).
• The murder of music critic Dwayne Robinson is dismissed by the NYPD as a gang initiation. But his old friend D Hunter suspects there's more to it in "The Plot Against Hip Hop" by Nelson George (Akashic Books, 2011, $15.95). The novel's story parallels the history of hip hop and its culture.
• Edited by Joyce Carol Oates, "New Jersey Noir" (Akashic Books, 2011, $15.95) is dedicated to the Garden State and features a collaboration by out writers Edmund White and Michael Carroll, as well as contributions by Alicia Ostriker, Jonathan Safran Foer, C.K. Williams, Gerald Stern, Robert Pinsky and Oates herself, to name a few.
• In the novel "Janet Planet" (Mayapple Press, 2011, $16.95), poet Eleanor Lerman rewrites the life of writer Carlos Castaneda, "godfather of the new age," for the Woodstock generation.
• "Boundaries" (Akashic Books, 2011, $22.95), by award-winning writer Elizabeth Nunez, tells the story of a Caribbean husband and wife clinging to their Victorian notions of privacy while their daughter Anna yearns to assimilate into her new country. The resulting tension reveals the gap between her and American-born citizens.
Non-fiction
• Published posthumously, "The Weather in Proust" (Duke University Press, 2012, $23.95) by gay studies pioneer and literary theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, is a collection of pieces from her final years, before she died of breast cancer in 2009. It's edited by her friend and literary executor Jonathan Goldberg.
• As a devoted father, husband and professor at the Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva University, Joy Ladin shares her transitions from a man to a woman in "Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey between Genders" (The University of Wisconsin Press,2012,$26.95).
• Particularly timely in light of the recent changes regarding gays in the military, "Out Of Step" by retired journalist J. Lee Watton (A&M Books, 2011, $17) takes readers back 45 years to the Office of Naval Intelligence's gay witch hunt to tell the true story of what happened during the summer of 1965.
• The updated and expanded edition of John-Manuel Andriote's acclaimed, Lambda Literary Award-winning 1999 book "Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America" (jmandriote.com, 2011), includes a revised preface. It also includes an entirely new chapter, "The Plague Continues," inspired by the author's own HIV diagnosis in 2005.
• Described as "the definitive collection of writing" by a "pioneering theorist and activist in feminist, lesbian and gay, queer, and sexuality studies," the substantial "Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader" (Duke University Press, 2012, $23.95) compiles some of Gayle S. Rubins' "most influential essays."
• Including more than a dozen pages of color photos, "It's Not Really About the Hair" (!t Books, 2011/2012, $14.99) by Tabatha Coffey with Richard Buskin is the memoir by the out lesbian host of "Tabatha's Salon Takeover." It's now in a paperback edition.
• "The Good, the Bad and the God-Awful: 21st Century Movie Reviews" (Thomas Dunne Books/ St. Martin's Griffin, 2011, $21.99) by Kurt Loder, of Rolling Stone and MTV fame, contains more than 200 movie reviews.
• "Sacred Monsters" (Magnus Books, 2011) is a collection of Edmund White's most recent writings on artists and authors, including Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote and Vladimir Nabokov to name a few.
• In case you missed it the first time around, "Prides Crossing: The Unbridled Life and Impatient Times of Eleonora Sears" (Commonwealth Editions, 2009, $27.95), about sportswoman and lesbian Eleo Sears (1881-1968) is a must-read in advance of this June's 40th anniversary of Title IX.
