What I read over my Spring Vacation

[twincityhacker]

I have two lesbian mysteries, and a a lesbian historical fiction. ( Is it obvious I went to the GLBT library today? ) Hopefully they'll be better than some of the other books I've tried reading lately.

"The International Penguin book of Gay Writing": most of the selections were boring, full of woman!hate, or just plain ICK like the gender-reversed version of Lolita. The good parts where an excerpt from the Symposium, a journal extract detailing a party of Michelangelo's, and an essay on Greek myth.

Stella Duffy's "The Wavewalker" problem is that it's told non-linearly. So you know who did it, how they did it, and what's the probable outcome of the novel within the first few chapters. And while the details are somewhat interesting on how they get to the end, not interesting enough not to just flip to the back, see if you're right about the ending, and put down the book.

"Eight Spanish Play's" issue was really, really bad translations. One of the defining features of Spanish drama of the Golden Age was that it was all metered - and the translation didn't bother trying to get at that.

I've already mentioned my problems with "Only Human."

Comments

[trinfaneb.livejournal.com]

Yeah I've had a hard time finding good lesbian fiction too (I've had alot of lesbian friends). Maybe that's why for one of my English class papers I wrote a short story slashing two female characters from an English novelist like D.H. Lawrence or Thomas Hardy (its driving me crazy that I can't remember the author or novel right now).

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

It's hard finding books involving gays, and it's hard to find books with women. So trying to find good books with lesbians? Very hard.

It's also a nightmare trying to find general histories about non-hetrosexual women. Even the General Homosexuality books are mostly about men.

So far I'm batting 0/3, but I still have two more books I checked out. Hopefully they won't suck.

[trinfaneb.livejournal.com]

Yeah there does seem to be less historical works about lesbians. You might be able to get some harder to find books through inter-library loan. Talk to a reference librarian at your library to find out the best way to find and request the type of books you are looking for.