price：$29.99
Adamant Media Corporation
Usually ships in 24 hours Core2Duoノートレビュー 's review (Dickens At His Best) 『Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is said to be Dickens' favorite book that he ever wrote. Copperfield's and Dickens' childhoods were classically the same and many critics believe that David Copperfield was actually a Charles Dickens autobiography. He modeled many of the characters in this novel after people he knew; for instance, Micawber was modeled after Dickens' own father who was sent to debtors prison. However, Micawber becomes a humorous, amiable character who was quite different from Dickens' own father. This book is definitely of 5 star quality and I will teach it in my College English classes when I begin teaching.』
(Classic catharsis) 『What could be more prosaic? A physically abused child surmounts all obstacles through diligence, devotion, goodness, and terrific good luck at key moments. But within this simple frame Dickens paints a tapestry of pity and terror and epiphany. To encounter such a broad spectrum of good and evil - the pure femininity of a lover, the earthy sweetness of a nurse, the generosity of a mentor, the frivolity of a sweetheart, parental naivete and cruelty, the destructive arrogance of a best friend, the viciousness of a Uriah Heep - would be an object lesson in Humanity. But we encounter all this each day. This dawns on you with each passing chapter - and that you are confronting yourself as you confront them: Your own evil and your own goodness rising above the shadows. Copperfield is a quick course in religion and philosophy and psychology. By the end, you're transformed vicariously and like David Copperfield dismiss the shadows: "Thus I leave them; thus I always find them; thus they wear their time away, from year to year".
Please note: Dickens is not my favorite author. His style at times is too melodramatic. But David Copperfield is wonderful. If we had only this, it would be clear Dickens was a master who walked the talk. Highly commended even for those who are not Dickens fans.
』
(A wonderful (audio)book) 『I have read and listened to many of Dickens' novels, and this is, without a doubt, my favorite. In fact, this is my favorite audiobook bar none.
This BBC Radio adaptation is the perfect introduction to Dickens and to David Copperfield in particular for those who may be dissuaded from reading Copperfield because of its length. It is impossible to imagine that the BBC could have found better performers for the roles--I can easily hear their voices in my mind as I recall the story. Although the story is abridged, you don't get the sense that you are missing any of the important points of the story. In fact, it's a much more satisfying "read" than most books in their unabridged version.』
(Poor print quality for the price) 『 For the price of the Everyman edition, one would expect the pages to be cleanly printed. Instead, the letters are faded and weak on many pages. On many pages, parts of some letters are missing altogether.』
(Sublime) 『"But one face, shining on me like a heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains. I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity beside me. My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night, but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company." [David Copperfield] Timeless, full of plastic characters, entertaining, colourful, warm. Imagine Dostoevsky, but with more optimism and respect and deep love for humans. Kind regards, Mario.』 『Intimately rooted in the author's own biography and written as a first-person narrative, "David Copperfield" charts a young man's progress through a difficult childhood in Victorian England to ultimate success as a novelist, finding true love along the way. Jeremy Tambling's provocative Introduction reveals subtle themes relevant today in Dickens' favorite work. 39 illustrations.』 『Beginning in 1854 up through to his death in 1870, Charles Dickens abridged and adapted many of his more popular works and performed them as staged readings. This version, each page illustrated with lovely watercolor paintings, is a beautiful example of one of these adaptations.
Because it is quite seriously abridged, the story concentrates primarily on the extended family of Mr. Peggotty: his orphaned nephew, Ham; his adopted niece, Little Emily; and Mrs. Gummidge, self-described as "a lone lorn creetur and everythink went contrairy with her." When Little Emily runs away with Copperfield's former schoolmate, leaving Mr. Peggotty completely brokenhearted, the whole family is thrown into turmoil. But Dickens weaves some comic relief throughout the story with the introduction of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, and David's love for his pretty, silly "child-wife," Dora. Dark nights, mysterious locations, and the final destructive storm provide classic Dickensian drama. Although this is notDavid Copperfieldin its entirety, it is a great introduction to the world and the language of Charles Dickens.』
price：$4.78
Seal Press
Usually ships in 24 hours Core2Duoノートレビュー 's review (Wild times) 『I love this book. I know that some people find the narrator immature and annoying, but I thought Valencia was well worth the read. Her prose is electric. Poetic, funny, crazy, and smart. I found this book to be incredibly inspirational. Yes, she's crazy and does drugs and is somewhat irresponsible at times, but there is a surge of exhuberance running through this book that is fascinating. Check it out.Verge』
(Self-squeezing) 『Despite the torture, alcohol and drug abuse, self-loathing, and self-destructive behaviour, _Valencia_ is a fun read, at times. It's no more inclusive a picture of the lesbian world than Mati Unt's _Things in the Night_ is a picture of all estonians. It's Michelle Tea's version of what she experienced, and then fashioned into a memoir (as the publicity around this book calls it) or fiction (the word stamped on the back cover).
What readers are presented with, alongside fist-effing and latex gloves, is the sojourn of a young, immature woman who is completely besotted with herself. The narrator, named Michelle, moves from being distraught about the break-up of a relationship to trying to start another, but in this is really no different from her friends and the cliterati who join her at open mic events. Yet she believes she is different, and deserves to be regarded as special, in that self-centred way children under 11 do. What the voice does have, but not often enough, is a sense of humour, as when, while working for a courier company, she cancels deliveries to companies whose politics she dislikes. A little more anarchism would have done this book good.
If you're looking for some lesbian fluff to read, where the narrator forgives herself, this is a good choice. Just don't expect Kathy Acker.』
(Gossip girl) 『This book was first published in 2000, but the reason for this review is that it is soon to be released (in Australia), in paperback and with a new introduction by the author. In some ways, the intro is the best part, as Tea obviously has a longer perspective now. Maybe she has also grown a sense of humour about herself - the best part of the intro is when she takes a certain glee in the news of one of her hate objects in the book, after hearing a Tea poem about her, having 'kicked a bus shelter and broken her foot - because I was a small-hearted, bad person, I delighted in this'. Unfortunately, there is not much of this duality or humour in the book itself. Tea took herself very seriously, playing the grunged-out lesbian role to the hilt and beyond. She seems to be under the impression that taking a lot of drugs, drinking too much, and having a lot of violent sex with girls is somehow revolutionary. To which the only response (from the perspective of 2008, at least) is: yeah, that's nice, girl, now get in the queue. To tell the truth, the community she describes seems a rather unpleasant place: incredibly grotty, sexually aggressive to the point of being predatory, riddled with drugs (the bad kind, not the good kind), and built on self-righteous self-indulgence. And the gossip! These people gossip and bitch about each other, like, all the time! It is as if they combine the worst features of teenage girls and adolsecent boys. Tea: ever thought about not so much finding your inner child as finding your inner adult? So is the book worthless? Actually, not at all. If you can get past Tea's innate self-destructiveness and obsession - her love of love, her desire for desire - there is a good literary sense here. She occasionally writes a killer line, a spot-on description. Having spent some time walking around San Francisco, I accepted the strong sense of place here (even if Tea's world is restricted to a couple of blocks). But then, Valencia is not for me, middle-aged white guy that I am. So I will give this book to someone I know, someone young and on the verge of becoming exceptional. It might (or might not) mean the world to them.』
(I feel sick) 『This book made me feel sick, literally. For that, I credit the author who is truly far gifted than the three stars I award this book. I really wouldn't recommend this book unless one wants to spend the time it takes to read the book in a crystal/speed/meth induced mania. Thumbs up for any and all LGBTQ literature, but thumbs down for the self-aware self-indulgent self-destruction. I guess I've just had enough lately.』
(Like another great American writer, Michelle Tea reserves all judgments) 『A lot of folks feel that Michelle Tea's "Valencia" has great prose but lacks substance. The same has been said about another great American novel, "The Great Gatsby" but for all the wrong reasons. The book is focused on two revolutions (not the great and gory kind): a revolution of the heart, and the earth as it goes once around the sun.
There are so many times that the narrator could have judged, but she doesn't. Instead, she goes on about her business in different San Francisco neighborhoods. You won't find the prose to politically empower yourself into freedom. You won't find some Judith Butlerian bracketting and reconfiguring of what is illusorily static into something dynamic. But you will find someone looking at San Francisco sans ideology in a way that's fun and alive!』 『
Valenciais the fast-paced account of one girl's search for love and high times in the drama-filled dyke world of San Francisco's Mission District. Michelle Tea records a year lived in a world of girls: there's knife-wielding Marta, who introduces Michelle to a new world of radical sex; Willa, Michelle's tormented poet-girlfriend; Iris, the beautiful boy-dyke who ran away from the South in a dust cloud of drama; and Iris's ex, Magdalena Squalor, to whom Michelle turns when Iris breaks her heart.
』 『You don't have to be part of the emerging postpunk subculture of queer urban girls to relish this smooth ride of a novel, like Kathy Acker on Prozac on a sunny day, in which many exciting things happen without affecting much of anything, and one of the most profound moments is a mild, drug-induced insight into the meaninglessness of life. Michelle, the main character, is a person for whom blue hair is as big a style change as blue pants. She lurches between women, more in love with the idea of love than with Iris or Willa or Gwynne or Petra. Her work experiences are equally brief, although she can't bring herself to actually quit jobs. She just stops showing up. "Are you going to work?" her current lover asks one morning.
No, I was not going to work. I was an artist, a lover, a lover of women, of the oppressed and downtrodden, a warrior really. I should have been somewhere leading an armed revolution in the name of love and no, I was not going to work. Willa didn't work. I mean, she did, but it's a stretch to call it work. She bartended at a dyke bar a few nights a week, drank free beer, and bummed all her cigarettes.... All week she was free, writing angsty brilliant poems, drawing comic books, painting gigantic painful pictures, you know, living. I wanted to live.
Michelle Tea's characters are a peculiar fin-de-siècle blend of jaded idealists and thoughtful egotists: sex workers, poets, and mad hatters who end up making breakfast for roomfuls of stoned strangers. The occasional flash of clarity doesn't alter the basically anarchic nature of Tea's meandering narrative, so much like the tales of an incidentalfigure fromValencia, a loud redhead named Iggy who told stories "so incredible you wondered if they were true but ultimately didn't care because you were so enraptured by her grand gestures and re-enactments."--Regina Marler』
price：$8.50
Yale University Press
Usually ships in 24 hours Core2Duoノートレビュー 's review (Janet Malcolm, TWO LIVES: GERTRUDE AND ALICE) 『Dianne Hunter's Review This tabloid-fodder, skeptical reportage borders on despicable. Part I recycles a NEW YORKER essay on Stein&Toklas getting on with apparent imperturbability in Nazi France, and their friendship with B. Fay, whom Toklas later helped to escape from prison. Part II examines THE MAKING OF AMERICANS, retails gossipy findings by and about Stein scholars Katz, Dydo, Rice, Burns et al., and discusses treacherous researchers, narrative theft, and Malcolm's struggle with her ignorance of Stein. Malcolm zaps Stein for publicizing her cheerfulness, genius and confidence but not her Jewishness, depression or lesbianism. Part III starts by mollifying the book's previous malice, but then turns its baleful gaze on Toklas as a poor relation, and ends by mocking her Roman Catholicism. This (2007) quasi-biographical search for dirt and lies centers on questions about what it means to be Jewish and about what on earth could have made Stein, a fat Jewish lesbian, lovable. (Malcolm's answer: Stein was a youngest sibling).』
(I Actually Want to Read Gertrude Stein Now (Though I Probably Won't)) 『Why would I read a book on Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, two writers (well, probably one) I have sedulously avoided reading in the past? Well, first off, the book was on sale -it was half price, more or less- at the Strand Book Store ("Eight miles of Books") in New York City and I went down to the Strand to replenish my book larder. (That's not all I picked up. I left the Strand with a first rate experimental novel by a guy I'd never read before at all -David Markson's This Is a Novel; a novel I hadn't read by Joyce Carol Oates, The Tattooed Girl; David Cesarini's Becoming Eichmann; Paul Fussell's latest reflection on the experience of soldiering in World War II, The Boy's Crusade; a new history of the Trojan War by Barry Schwartz; Philip Roth's Everyman; and a novel written almost exclusively in the first person plural (that means "we") about office life, Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End.) Second, while I don't know much about Stein, I do know she's some kind of genius of the English language. ("Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," she wrote. It works for me. Reading that actually makes me see something about roses I hadn't seen before.) (And I like her characterization of Oakland, California, the town where she grew up: "There's no there there." That's really, really cool.) Third, the few times I tried to read Stein I came up with a big Goose Egg, but I know she's a major writer, though a particularly thorny one, of the modernist variety, a Picasso of prose, so to speak. Fourth, I read the first few sentences of Malcolm's lively study of Stein and I was ... hooked.: "When I read The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book for the first time, Eisenhower was in the white House and Liz Taylor had taken Eddie Fisher away from Debbie Reynolds. The book, published in 1954, was given to me by a fellow member of a group of pretentious young persons I ran around with, who had nothing but amused contempt for middlebrow American culture, and whose revolt against the conformity of the time largely took the form of patronizing a furniture store called Design Research and of writing mannered letters to each other modeled on the mannered letters of certain famous literary homosexuals, then not known as such. The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book fit right in with our program of callow preciousness; we loved its waspishly magisterial tone, its hauteur and malice....." What emerges from this engaging study is a picture of complicated but mutually beneficial relationship. Gertrude dearly decided that she was a genius, a nonpareil, and that, ergo, everyone around her should cater to her needs. "It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing," she reported in Everybody's Autobiography. Everyone loved Gertrude but very few people really cared for Alice but it was Alice's careful, jealous, fussy caring for Gertrude that made it possible for Gertrude to exercise her genius --which, in Malcolm's eyes, was considerable, though exceedingly difficult of access. Horribly difficult of access, one might say. Malcolm doesn't shortchange the barriers in the way of reading and appreciating Stein's long, indulgent but at the same time terribly revolutionary prose wanderings. There are many pleasures to this short but acute study: Malcolm traces the path of Steinian criticism and studies, she has good things to say about Gertrude and Alice's life in Vichy France during World War II, seemingly oblivious to the horrors going on around them. She has telling things to say about the blank spots in Gertrude's perception of the world (where did she stand on the Jewish question? Why was one of her closest confidants in the later years of the war a vicious anti-Semite?) She understands and accepts Stein's "heartlessness" to ordinary people's suffering. ("But she is not writing [about their lives]; she is writing a book about how amusing life around Gertrude Stein is. The heartlessness is essential to the amusement...") This is a fine book, discerning and amusing, and it ultimately makes you feel better about the grotesque near-monster that was Gertrude Stein and her equally grotesque lover and minder Alice B. Toklas.』
(the author inserts herself) 『This short book rounds out a few pieces of the Gertrude/Alice relationship. I liked the way she gives a flavor of Stein's first book, relieving me of any desire to read it myself. Malcolm is a good writer and she touches on subjects relating to her own drama being sued for fabricating quotations and she inserts her own biases as in, "Wills are uncanny and electric documents. They lie dormant for years, and then spring to life when their author dies, as if death were rain. Their effect on those they enrich or disappoint is never negligible, and sometimes unexpectedly charged. They thrust living and dead into a final fierce clasp of love or hatred. But they are not written in stone--for all their granite legal language--and they can be bent to subvert the wishes of the writer. Such was the case with Stein's will."』
(Smarty pants!) 『Interesting, but I fear the author seems to set out to defend an agenda rather than seeking to a rational conclusion from the evidence at hand. She also falls prey to a need to appear very clever which she may well be. Is she more clever than profound?』
(Why was this book written?) 『Malcolm writes very well but she fails to offer any reason why Stein/Toklas were (was?) worth the effort of researching and writing, or reading, this book. To a non-specialist reader, Stein's writings seem like either baby-talk (Toklas called her Baby) by the youngest of five children who was petted when she talked that way, or an outright scam, or perhaps both. It appears that these two Jewish ladies were near-collaborationists during the German occupation of France where they inexplicably lived openly while other Jews were being dragged out of hiding places to be murdered. But even if they were merely friends with highly-placed Vichy officials who protected them, no one suggests they played a particularly admirable role at that time. What, then, makes them worth close study now? This book did not answer this basic question for me and it certainly did not inspire me to go read something by Stein - the few examples in the book are nonsense and uninspired nonsense at that.』 『
"How had the pair of elderly Jewish lesbians survived the Nazis?” Janet Malcolm asks at the beginning of this extraordinary work of literary biography and investigative journalism. The pair, of course, is Gertrude Stein, the modernist master “whose charm was as conspicuous as her fatness” and “thin, plain, tense, sour” Alice B. Toklas, the “worker bee” who ministered to Stein’s needs throughout their forty-year expatriate “marriage.” As Malcolm pursues the truth of the couple’s charmed life in a village in Vichy France, her subject becomes the larger question of biographical truth. “The instability of human knowledge is one of our few certainties,” she writes.
The portrait of the legendary couple that emerges from this work is unexpectedly charged. The two world wars Stein and Toklas lived through together are paralleled by the private war that went on between them. This war, as Malcolm learned, sometimes flared into bitter combat.
Two Livesis also a work of literary criticism.“Even the most hermetic of [Stein’s] writings are works of submerged autobiography,” Malcolm writes. “The key of 'I' will not unlock the door to their meaning—you need a crowbar for that—but will sometimes admit you to a kind of anteroom of suggestion.” Whether unpacking the accessibleAutobiography of Alice B. Toklas, in which Stein“solves the koan of autobiography,” or wrestling withThe Making of Americans, a masterwork of“magisterial disorder,” Malcolm is stunningly perceptive.
Praise for the author:
“[Janet Malcolm] is among the most intellectually provocative of authors . . .able to turn epiphanies of perception into explosions of insight.”—David Lehman,BostonGlobe
“Not since Virginia Woolf has anyone thought so trenchantly about the strange art of biography.”—Christopher Benfey
price：$2.59
Cleis Press
Usually ships in 24 hours Core2Duoノートレビュー 's review (A worthy read) 『While this certainly isn't the best book I've read, it does leave you wanting to read more. I bought this because it was an assigned textbook for one of my classes, and I'm thinking about going to get my hands on the rest of the series.』
(Great Pulp Fiction) 『Our local book group chose Beebo Brinker to read and discuss. It has been compared to watching an old black and white classic movie. Brings up similar emotions. Though times have changed, if you put youself in the era that this book was published, an appreciation will develop. There are moments of very good writing. A fun book to read.』
(classic 1950s with a twist) 『First things first, I'm still in the process of coming out...
Secondly, I have been a bookworm ever since I can remember. I grew up reading the likes of Nancy Drew and Babysitter's Club (Ann M. Martin) and daydreaming about the heroines, wishing they weren't straight.
I am so happy I found this book. I absolutely loved it. It was very descriptive, from the pizza place to her night watching the girls dance.
I could not put it down until there were no more pages left to devour.
The characters were strong&deliciously human.
I wish I knew about this series when I was a teenager; I would have gladly snuck over to whatever side of town just to get to these books, hid them underneath my mattress with my diary...
[...].』
(Love Beebo !) 『I love how some people can make their life a living hell. Beebo is that person. I only wish that there's more information on how Beebo's relationship with Paula went and gone. I read all of Ann Bannon's books and its been a great read .』
(One of the best of the 1950s lesbian pulp fiction novels) 『Beebo Brinker is a one of the best of the lesbian pulp fiction novels from the 1950s, and is here reprinted in all its original steamy charm and vivacious energy. Sensual, with a timeless insight into love, lust, and relationship conflicts between women, Beebo Brinker is an enduring title as erotic and compelling today as it was when its was originally published some fifty years ago.』 『Ann Bannon was designated the“Queen of Lesbian Pulp” for authoring several landmark novels in the ’50s. Unlike many writers of the period, however, Bannon broke through the shame and isolation typically portrayed in lesbian pulps, offering instead characters who embraced their sexuality. With Beebo Brinker, Bannon introduces a butch 17-year-old farm girl newly arrived in Beat-era Greenwich Village.』 『When housewife Ann Bannon brought her first novel to a paperback publisher in the mid-1950s, the publisher skimmed the manuscript and told her to scrap everything but the college love affair between two women. "There's your real story," he said as she blushed, ashamed that her secret obsession had been so obvious to him. The resulting novel wasOdd Girl Out, one of the bestselling paperbacks of the period, and perhaps the best (and least depressing) example of lesbian pulp fiction, a genre that flourished from the end of the Second World War until the changing laws on censorship made much seamier material commonplace, and the growing gay rights movement brought the gay life out of the shadows. Although the last of a four-book series,Beebo Brinkerintroduces Bannon's central character, a young, handsome butch who arrives in New York scared and innocent (and wearing adress) but soon has the femmes of Greenwich Village in the palm of her hand. Essential reading for anyone interesting in lesbian herstory; a period piece (and a welcome reprint) that has worn remarkably well.--Regina Marler』
price：$2.30
Duke University Press
Usually ships in 24 hours 『Children are thoroughly, shockingly queer, as Kathryn Bond Stockton explains inThe Queer Child, where she examines children's strangeness, even some children's subliminal "gayness," in the twentieth century. Estranging, broadening, darkening forms of children emerge as this book illuminates the child queered by innocence, the child queered by color, the child queered by Freud, the child queered by money, and the grown homosexual metaphorically seen as a child (or as an animal), alongside the gay child. What might the notion of a "gay" child do to conceptions of the child? How might it outline the pain, closets, emotional labors, sexual motives, and sideways movements that attend all children, however we deny it?
Engaging and challenging the work of sociologists, legal theorists, and historians, Stockton coins the term "growing sideways" to describe ways of growing that defy the usual sense of growing "up" in a linear trajectory toward full stature, marriage, reproduction, and the relinquishing of childish ways. Growing sideways is a mode of irregular growth involving odd lingerings, wayward paths, and fertile delays. Contending that children's queerness is rendered and explored best in fictional forms, including literature, film, and television, Stockton offers dazzling readings of works ranging from novels by Henry James, Radclyffe Hall, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, and Vladimir Nabokov to the moviesGuess Who's Coming to Dinner,The Hanging Garden,Heavenly Creatures,Hoop Dreams, and the 2005 remake ofWillie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The result is a fascinating look at children's masochism, their interactions with pedophiles and animals, their unfathomable, hazy motives (leading them at times into sex, seduction, delinquency, and murder), their interracial appetites, and their love of consumption and destruction through the alluring economy of candy.』
price：$3.07
Co.
Usually ships in 24 hours Core2Duoノートレビュー 's review (Learning acceptance of oneself) 『E.M. Forster appears to have been ahead of his time with "Maurice". Indeed, having been written around 1914 but not published until 1971 - after his death - the world wasn't ready for it originally. Thankfully, much changed after that. Although the setting is clearly dated to the period it was written, the characters, ideas, and feelings represented are timeless. It very effectively conveys struggling with one's own identity, learning to love one's self and searching for another to love.
Maurice is a young man who grows up in England before World War I realizing he is different from other men. He discovers he is attracted to other men and - like many others in his circumstances - goes through a rough time reconciling himself with this fact. While in school at Cambridge, he meets Clive whom he quickly finds out is of a similar nature. The two men have a short-lived romance that's almost entirely platonic, as dictated by Clive. Left forlorn, Maurice continues to struggle with his own nature and even consults physicians about what can be done to make him attracted to women, a condition which Maurice still associates with normalcy. Eventually he meets Alec, a gay man who is in some ways more comfortable with himself but at the same time seems more willing to deny his nature. The two men challenge one another's thinking and ultimately have a huge effect on each other's futures.』
(Great Book) 『This book is even better than the movie, I wish I would have read it beforehand. Highly recommended, if you haven't already done so, it's a must read for all !』
(An Excellent Piece of Literature) 『"Maurice" by E.M. Forster is one of my favourite novels. It is so simply and beautifully written and tells a story that all readers will able to relate to in one way or another. A tragic reflection of Forster's own life of closeted homosexuality - the novel itself was written in 1914 when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain and remained unpublished until 1970 - the novel tells the story of Maurice Hall, a young man trying to come to terms with his homosexuality in traditional Edwardian England where his "sort" are arrested for such "crimes". However, when he meets Clive, a fellow student at Cambridge, he realises that he is not alone in his predicament after all. As the events of the story unfold, things become deely sad as Maurice suffers more and more because of a secret that he feels he cannot tell any of his family and friends. The heartwarming ending - which Forster must have hoped for himself as well - is ultimately uplifting and allows the reader to envisage what the future will be like for Maurice themselves.』
("England has always been disinclined to accept human nature") 『At first blush, "Maurice" seems unlike any of Forster's other novels. An unapologetic tale of love between Maurice Hall and Clive Durham, two Cambridge students during the years preceding World War I, the book is still a sensation; it's no wonder that Forster chose not to publish it--it would have ended his career. Yet this story, too, explores the preoccupations apparent in all of Forster's fiction: the hypocrisy of British traditions and, especially, the absurdity of British class structure.
"England has always been disinclined to accept human nature," says a mesmerist to Maurice when he is seeking a cure for his "condition." In this scene, the doctor is referring, of course, to sexuality, but considered in the light of all six of his novels, Forster judges English attitudes toward the human condition as a whole. Once Maurice and Clive fall in love, "no tradition overawed the boys. No convention settled what was poetic, what absurd." But it is, in part, this knowledge of being outside the law (or, as Maurice admits, "outlaws") that ultimately rends the couple in half.
The last section of the book brings together all these themes. Maurice's unanticipated and tense liaison with Scudder--a servant, no less--is seemingly impossible not only because they are both the same sex but also because they hail from different classes. To society, the sexual element is intolerable, but to Maurice the class difference makes such a relationship even more inconceivable--"if the will can overleap class, civilization as we have made it will go to pieces."
To Forster, however, both taboos stem from the same tyrannical tradition; he had similarly depicted the futility of mixed-class relationships in his previous novel, "Howards End," with the illicit relationship between the blueblood Henry Wilcox and the lowborn Jacky Best. But here he brings to the story the possibility of hope. Indeed, only when Maurice has thrown over both proscriptions--that of class and of sex--can he "fully bring out the hero": to "live outside class, without relations or money," and to understand that love must be its own reward for an "outlaw" in England.
In many ways, "Maurice" is the least polished of Forster's books--if one judges such things on the basis of prose style and narrative structure alone. Scenes often feel sketched; transitional elements are scant; characters enter and exit the stage willy-nilly. Perhaps because the manuscript was revised in 1960, it has an occasionally minimalist, even modernist tone. Yet the abandonment of traditional considerations suits the story--and Forster has instead created two fully realized characters in what is surely his most caustic, most emotionally raw satire of British manners.』
(The Beginning for Me) 『Maurice is one of the greatest books I have ever read. In terms of a gay novel, it is the only one that I can really stand. And it is the best one I have read thus far. This novel helped me to hope and dream at the start of a long sexual journey (I'm still young, so I have a long way to go). Now, you might wonder for all my high praises, why I didn't give Maurice five stars. Maurice is not a simple a novel as one might figure. It's extremely layered, and more than most novels esp. the 'classics' different people get widely different things from it. If you read it at the surface, you get the story of the sexually confused/frustrated Maurice Hall who falls in and out of love with Clive, and eventually forms a lifelong companionship with Alec Scudder, a man of the lower classes who works on Clive's estate. But if you look closer, then look away real quickly the picture becomes clearer. Archetypes form, and a beautiful story takes shape. It might not come to you like a bolt, but more like a rainy day that floods the passages of the mind until it spills all over.
I must say though that while I commend Mr. Forster for his presence in the literary landscape, but I feel like he didn't work to his potential. I think he was bound by the time he was born in. If he was born nearly 100 years later, Maurice would have been a bestseller and a classic.』 『Written during 1913 and 1914, Maurice deals with the then unmentionable subject of homosexuality. More unusual, it concerns a relationship that ends happily.』
price：$5.42
Bold Strokes Books
Usually ships in 24 hours Core2Duoノートレビュー 's review (Feel How Far We Have Come) 『Feel How Far We Have Come In September 1909, upon the death of Agnes Ellington-Pilch, Miss Tranby Quirke, at the old age or thirty-four, became president of The British Society For The Aid Of Distressed Spinsters And Gentlewomen-In-Need. Miss Quirke is near death herself, due to despondency, having recently provoked an irreconcilable rift with her lover, the beautiful nineteen-year-old Mrs. Lysette McDonald.
This vivid story takes the reader back to a time and place where man thought he controlled, and woman existed only to "indulge" her husband. In that setting, what is a nice lesbian supposed to do? Ms. Ridley imagined that conflict, and told us precisely what happened to a pleasant lady with secret, perplexing instincts. Throughout this tale, I smiled and felt good, because Ms. Ridley let me feel how far we have come. 』
(Excellent Lesbian Novel Set in 1909 London) 『I greatly enjoyed this book. It was a rare find.
The novel revolves around two women, Tranby Quirke, a 34 year old spinster who is teaching a course for 'Modern Young Women', and is a secret feminist, and her 19 year old student, Mrs. Lysette MacDonald, a very unhappily married lady.
Tranby is reluctant to become involved with Lysette, as the information on "inverts" as homosexuals were called in that time, was quite negative and she was risking her career and reputation.
Lysette, not only is in love with Tranby, but also desperate to escape a husband who beats her because she is not yet pregnant.
The ending is unexpected, and with a marvelous, quite believable twist to it.
An altogether delightful story. My only compliant was the portions of the book containing the "Dear Lysette" letters by Tranby, which at times I found a bit morbid, so I focused mainly on the real story. I confess I skipped the next to last chapter entirely because it was nothing but one of those rambling letters.
However, it is quite important the reader read the Dear Lysette letter in the last chapter, or they will miss the ending, where Tranby's imagination and what is really happening with the characters all comes together. Although I admit I was slightly confused as to whether that really happened, or was Tranby's imagination. I am assuming that is what really happened to the characters. The "letters" was the reason the novel got 4 stars rather than 5.
The "romantic feelings" of Tranby for Lysette are what I enjoyed most about the book.』
『Tranby Quirke is a spinster and, unbeknown to the outside world, a lesbian. She miserably suppresses her sexual urges and secretly supports the Suffragette movement. When she meets Lysette, love enters her life and she embarks on a remarkable journey.』
price：$5.74
Abstract Studio
Usually ships in 24 hours Core2Duoノートレビュー 's review (I like it, but I'm still not completely sold) 『I'd heard so many great things about STRANGERS IN PARADISE that I had pretty much assumed that it was going to blow me away. I like it. I enjoy it. But I'm also somewhat underwhelmed.
I fundamentally have two major problems with STRANGERS IN PARADISE after the first two volumes. The first is the "action" elements of the stories. The second are the rather terrible poems that are inserted at various spots. I won't say much about the latter except that the poems and songs are the series "weakest link" and add nothing to the stories. As far as the action elements go, I find them perplexing. I love Katchoo and Francine and the parts of the books devoted to their everyday lives. It was said of SEINFELD that it was a show "about nothing." When STRANGERS IN PARADISE is "about nothing," it excels. It is charming, delightful, and riveting. I almost wonder if Terry Moore knew that he had something special, but didn't quite trust it to stand on its own. The "action" or "adventure" aspects of the books feel like distractions. I don't want to read about Darcy and Katchoo's dark past and Tambi (especially Tambi!) or any women wearing those stupid tattoos! If Tambi is part of the story, you know it is sucking.
I'm going to stick with this, but I really hate Terry Moore for not trusting his characters to stand on their own. This is speculation on my part, but I think that many others who love these comics ignore the Darcy aspects of the stories. I think they ignore them. I can't. I hate the parts dealing with Katchoo's criminal past and feel that they pull the series as a whole down. I already have Volume 3 on my bookshelf and will start reading it almost immediately. I just hope that the series ceases being a somewhat unsuccessful blend of crime and everyday life stories. Katchoo and Francine are great; the thugs and criminals are not.』
(Another good book in this amazing series.) 『My girlfriend got me into Strangers in Paradise, after reading the first pocket book I was hooked. The characters are really deep and the artwork is equally as good. I recommend this series to anyone interested in relationships.』
(The greatest independent comic series ever.) 『Terry Moore's series Strangers in Paradise is a fantasic study of modern life and love. It's about breaking down social stereotypes and learning to love a person for who they are not what they are. It's about true friendship and how hard and how beautiful that is. It's about growing up and knowing yourself and being yourself and rising above your history. It's also an action/adventure thriller with twists and turns and plenty of surprises. There are stories within stories. It's a multilayered, many splendored thing. It's such a good read. Read it.』
(A wonderful addition to a fast-paced and enthralling series) 『Katchoo and Francine are roomates, and Katchoo has a crush on Francine. Francine loves Katchoo but prefers men. David is in love with Katchoo, but she hates men. This is the love triangle that anchors this multivolume series. In volume one we learned that prior to living with Francine, Katchoo worked for David's gang boss sister, Darcy Parker, as a call girl and also was her lover. She went into hiding when she ran away from Darcy with a whole lot of Darcy's money.
Now in Volume 2 Darcy has found Katchoo and forces her back into her mob with threats on Francine's life. Darcy needs Katchoo in her biggest blackmail project to date. The main theme of the volume is how Katchoo and David, with help from Francine, escape Darcy's nefarious plans.
Terry Moore takes us through three different time periods in this book. The main story takes place in the time when Darcy's plans are foiled by Katchoo. Then Mr. Moore takes us back to when Francine and Katchoo first met in high school. It is in there that we learn about the troubles that have shaped their current inability to develop loving relationships. Then we find that the high school flashback is just a reminiscence of Francine who hasn't seen Katchoo for ten years and is a wife and mother in a loveless marriage. If she ever needed Katchoo's love, it is at this moment.
The book ends with a short fantasy piece where Francine and Katchoo role play Zena, Warrior Princess. All in all, a delightful book with lots of twists and turns to keep you wanting more.』
(A must read for comic fans) 『I was late jumping on the SiP bandwagon, but in the end I'm sure glad I did. If it's one thing Terry Moore is good at, is writing stories that pull on the strings of your heart. It's certainly the most unconventional comic to say the least as all of the characters seem like real people, with no superpowers to be found. Yet all of them do have a real villain- reality. The pain of a love relationship gone wrong, gang crime, brutal murders and dissapointment of dying dreams. It is also a book filled with genuine warmth of friendship, romance and happiness that simply doesn't exist in other books.
All in all, I recomment this a must read for any comic fan. I do agree with what the reader below me said, that the faces of Casey and Katchoo are almost identical. But it's still a damn good book and I'm sorry to see that it will soon becoming to and end.』 『The second Strangers In Paradise pocket book finds Katchoo following David to California where she comes face to face with Darcy Parker. When Darcy makes Katchoo an offer she can't refuse, Katchoo transforms from prey to predator and begins to spin a web of her own. This book features 5-pages of Jim Lee art to open the story, hero-style! Also included is the most popular Strangers in Paradise short story ever -- the Xena parody, "Warrior Princess."』
price：$4.80
Kensington
Usually ships in 24 hours Core2Duoノートレビュー 's review (What If?) 『Saunders, Brad. "Men I Might Have Known", Kensington, 2009.
"What If?"
Amos Lassen
How many times have you looked across a room and seen your next ex-husband? Somehow you don't get very far because the opportunity to meet him just eludes you and you keep thinking, "what if?" Brad Saunders takes that "what if?" and describes what happened if it had. It's all about fantasies and Saunders has a knack for writing about them. In other words, he writes about what would have happened if we had just taken the next step. What a great idea for a collection of stories. Saunders fantasizes about men of all kinds as well as different sexual satiations and the stories he gives us are provocative and intimate and very well written. They rest somewhere between fiction and fact and Saunders tells us in the prologue that they are very personal and very real. He also says that the stories are based on real people, places and events in his life and I must say he has had quite a life. This is one of those books that are great to read while sitting at home on a cool fall night with a cup of coffee and a fire in the hutch. If the fire doesn't warm you then the stories will. 』 『Everyone experiences it--that moment when you lock eyes with a perfect stranger and feel a shiver of requited lust. Too often, those opportunities slip by unexplored. But in this steamy, imaginative collection, Brad Saunders turns "what if" into "what happened," recreating the sizzling chance connections he's experienced--and playing them out in uninhibited stories that tap into our deepest fantasies about what can happen when we take the next step.
From a glorious day on a sun-kissed Greek beach with a beautiful German man, to a college crush that turns out to be deliciously mutual, these stories are sometimes tender, sometimes torrid, and always deeply erotic. A gym buddy provides a workout to remember. . .. Venturing up to a Manhattan rooftop party yields a spectacular view--and not of the skyline. . .. And on a city crosswalk, saving a handsome artist from traffic earns the kind of gratitude that can't be conveyed in words.
Hedonistic threesomes, hot nightclub trysts, sweet and sensitive first times. . .whether set in exotic locales or on in your very own bed, these intimate, provocative stories inhabit the space between fact and fiction--where nothing is too wild or too wicked and the only limit to pleasure is your imagination. . .
Brad Saunderscurrently lives in Los Angeles and is hard at work on several books and screenplays. When he is not writing about the men in his life, he writes about food, travel, and the arts for several publications. This is his first book.』
price：$2.60
Harvest House Publishers
Usually ships in 24 hours Core2Duoノートレビュー 's review (Great Book) 『This is a great book. It gives a ton of great knowledge and insight. It has questions and answers that can apply to just about anybody.』
(No sweet coating) 『I found the book honest, direct and respectful of the reader who really just wants the facts from someone who knows what he's talking about, and actually walks the talk. I enjoyed the practical suggestions to family members, based on what he and his family went through.』
(Wonderful Insight!!) 『Mike has the ability to answer questions about this social topic with frankness and clear understanding not only from his point of view from being in that lifestyle, but also from the point of view biblically.』
(If you want to ignore all the sociological data...) 『While no one has yet proven where homosexuality comes from (just as no one has proven where heterosexuality comes from) the normal approach for a reference book such as this would be to study the facts and data and THEN form an opinion as did the American Psychological Association when they declassified homosexuality as a disorder back in the 1970's. This is one of those books that is based around a particular conservative religious view and then plays with all the facts in order to prove the authors thesis.
Homosexuality is and always will be a minority orientation but (like being left handed) that doesn't make it in and of itself wrong. This book is motivated by the so called ex-gay movement where men are supposedly "cured" of their nasty little habit by the grace of god. The fact that most relapse back into a gay lifestyle appears to be no matter to the ideologically minded authors of books like this. And neither does the fact that many of these men are nominally bisexuals and simply repress the gay side of their identity in order to be acceptable to themselves (something that most psychologists will accept as an option for some men). On the other hand NO psychologist out there worth his or her salt will sanction this sort of belief that the millions of gay/bisexual people in the world are some sort of cosmic mistake in need of change. Nope.
The book Is it a Choice? Answers to the Most Frequently Asked Questions About Gay Men and Lesbians by Eric Marcus was published back in the 1980's and has been available in updated editions ever since, including a Spanish language translation titled¿Se elige? 300 Preguntas y respuestas sobre la homosexualidad. That book is based on facts and does address religious aspects of this issue in an evenhanded way. The fact is that every major religious group with the exception of Islam has significant gay-positive material out there. Love is loveand a gift from god not to be tampered with by sanctimonious, small minded fundamentalists.』
(Objective, informative, and enlightening.) 『I am deeply concerned about this issue, but though I feel strongly about my beliefs, I myself have never struggled with these tendencies; and though I will always condemn the action, I cannot fairly judge those who struggle. I accept the Bible, but I have only recently begun studying it, and I haven't gotten to the "gay" part yet; my belief about homosexual behavior stems from natural law, and is supported and reaffirmed by my Catholic faith.
What Haley's book did for me (well, doing; I haven't finished it yet) is give me informed answers from someone who actually knows what he's talking about. He addresses so many of the questions I have had, and I feel more equiped to approach the issue with more compassion, and appreciation, for those who struggle with homosexual tendencies. Although the Catholic Church itself understands that homosexual tendencies are not always (if ever) the fault of the individual, many members of the Church have yet to be educated, and as a result they often approach the issue with cruelty. Even if you don't agree with Haley's book, he gives those on our side the tools to approach the issue with compassion and understanding, and teaches us that cruelty is never effective, much less Christian behavior.
Moreover, the book, like my views, is a combination of natural law and the Bible, so it is effective even to those who do not accept Christianity.
Another very interesting comment he makes is in regard to the defeminization of women in our society (I highly recommend Wendy Shalit's book "Return to Modesty;" it changed my life). There was a time when I was subconsciously conflicted about the naturalness of sex; the Church teaches us that sex is natural, but society takes that a step further, saying that because it is natural we should give into it more frequently. After reading Shalit's book, I realized that I felt conflicted, not because my faith was constricting my sexuality, but because I was, subconsciously, giving into the modern idea, and that was causing an internal conflict because of its unnaturalness. Haley's reaffirmation of this idea impressed me, and further clarified the reason why a child might develop homosexual tendencies. I truly believe that this defeminization of women has caused the gentleman to all but disapear, respect for the weaknesses and strengths of the opposite sex to diminish, and we are looked down upon for having womanly (and manly) strengths; in an effort to provide an identity for all, our society has taken our identity away from us.
My only critique of this book (and I may change my mind on this after further reading) was his comment regarding how boys are different because they like to play in the dirt, whereas girls don't. Actually, I was constantly dirty as a child.:) However, what he is ultimately getting at is correct, in that, boys and girls are different.
To the individual who addressed concern regarding his advice to "pray that he feels pain," or something to that effect. No one wants to inflict pain on their child, which is why some parents do not address the issue at all. However, pain is part of healing in everyday life. One of the horrors of cancer is that pain is often not felt until it is too late. Parents of children who are born without pain receptors pray for their children to one day feel pain. The liberation of honesty can mute pain for a while, but only temporarily. Having a place where you are accepted, regardless of your behavior, also makes it difficult to face your pain; this is true in all cases, for all types of struggles.
I was pleasently suprised by the usefullness of this book. If you disagree with his beliefs, at least be mindful that he is helping us be more understanding and compassionate in an age of hate.』 『
101 Probing Questions...101 Compassionate and Scriptural Answers
fromFocus on the Family’s Mike Haley
Almost daily we hear news reports that confirm the acceptance of homosexuality in our culture. Homosexuals are adopting children, appearing as characters on television programs, taking vacations catering to an exclusively gay clientele, and even seeking the right to “marry” their partners. But is this acceptance healthy for society?
Few topics can raise so many questions so quickly. And for many readers, those questions hit close to home as they learn of the homosexuality of a loved one or close friend.
Here are the answers to the most often asked questions about homosexuality, fielded by an expert on the subject...and a former homosexual himself.
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