Pittsburgh Gay Book Club

MARCH SELECTION: Water for Elephants: A Novel

2011-02-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:
Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.

Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea.

The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena's and Rosie's pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it--and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely. --Valerie Ryan

With its spotlight on elephants, Gruen's romantic page-turner hinges on the human-animal bonds that drove her debut and its sequel (Riding Lessons and Flying Changes)—but without the mass appeal that horses hold. The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures[...] He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show's star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena's husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for. Despite her often clichéd prose and the predictability of the story's ending, Gruen skillfully humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book.

MEETING MARCH 3rd TO DISCUSS WATER FOR ELEPHANTS

2011-02-20T10:50:00.000-08:00

We will be Meeting March 3rd at Borders in the Pittsburgh Mills Mall at 7pm. Discussing "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen

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Meeting Rescheduled!

2011-01-29T16:58:00.000-08:00

Meeting to discuss JUST KIDS rescheduled: Thursday, February 3rd, 7:00 at the Waterfront Barnes and Noble.

January Selection: Just Kids by Patti Smith

2010-12-27T19:39:00.000-08:00

It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.
Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max's Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous — the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.

Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.

Review:
"In 1967, 21-year-old singer-songwriter Smith, determined to make art her life and dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities in Philadelphia to live this life, left her family behind for a new life in Brooklyn. When she discovered that the friends with whom she was to have lived had moved, she soon found herself homeless, jobless, and hungry. Through a series of events, she met a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe who changed her life — and in her typically lyrical and poignant manner Smith describes the start of a romance and lifelong friendship with this man: It was the summer Coltrane died. Flower children raised their arms... and Jimi Hendrix set his guitar in flames in Monterey. It was the summer of "Elvira Madigan", and the summer of love.... This beautifully crafted love letter to her friend (who died in 1989) functions as a memento mori of a relationship fueled by a passion for art and writing. Smith transports readers to what seemed like halcyon days for art and artists in New York as she shares tales of the denizens of Max's Kansas City, the Hotel Chelsea, Scribner's, Brentano's, and Strand bookstores. In the lobby of the Chelsea, where she and Mapplethorpe lived for many years, she got to know William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Johnny Winter. Most affecting in this tender and tough memoir, however, is her deep love for Mapplethorpe and her abiding belief in his genius. Smith's elegant eulogy helps to explain the chaos and the creativity so embedded in that earlier time and in Mapplethorpe's life and work."(Jan.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.)

January Meeting Location!

2010-12-27T18:11:00.000-08:00

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January Meeting!

2010-12-27T18:01:00.000-08:00

JANUARY SELECTION: The selection for the PGBC is "Just Kids" by Patti Smith. The meeting will take place on Jan 20th at 7pm at The Barnes and Noble at the waterfront.

December Book Club Selection!

2010-10-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

Decenber's book was "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Díaz. We choose the date of the meeting (due to holidays) as Thursday Dec. 2nd. New Location out in Robinson at Settlers Ridge Barnes & Noble, 800 Settlers Ridge Center Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15205.

October 28th Meeting Location

2010-10-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

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Mark Your Calendar for Thursday, October 28th

2010-10-10T07:42:00.000-07:00

The October meeting for the PGBC will be held on October 28th. We will be meeting at the Barnes and Noble at the Waterfront at 7:00 p.m.

Words of Praise for Secret Historian

2010-10-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

“Somewhere in the United States, there may be an attic containing the written remnants of a previously unchronicled 20th-century life that was even more astonishing than the one the writer Justin Spring discovered in San Francisco a few years ago. But even the most skeptical reader of his new book, Secret Historian, will have to admit that the bar is now set high. Samuel Steward, the subject of this absorbing act of biographical excavation, had many identities, including several that the subtitle of the book omits . . . Be assured that it’s all for real, and that Spring, even when neck-deep in sensational material, is not a sensationalist. As a biographer, he’s humble but firm—he lets Steward’s vivid, energetic prose do much of the talking but keeps his own hand on the tiller and never gets giddy, even when Steward seems to be carousing his way through the entire Modern Library . . . The probity and expansive vision of Spring’s work is a reminder that a great, outspread terrain of gay history remains to be mapped . . . One suspects there are many more stories of that time worth telling, and too few treasure-packed attics.” —Mark Harris, The New York Times Book Review

“Can a secret sex diary furnish an artistic legacy as meaningful as Emily Dickinson’s sewn-up bundles of poems, or the piles of paintings Theo van Gogh inherited after his brother’s premature demise? Samuel Steward may never have imagined it, but his erotic history raises the question. A talented writer who early attracted the attention of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder, he found his career blocked by a determination (so different from hers and his) to write candidly about his homosexuality . . . Steward was an obsessive record keeper, and his journals and his ‘Stud File’ of thousands of encounters allow [Justin Spring] to create a remarkably full portrait of a man whose life was what Edmund White’s might have been had White been born three decades earlier . . . [This] extensive documentation—and the miraculous rescue of that documentation, recounted in the book’s preface—left his biographer material to reconstruct an emblematic homosexual life.” —Benjamin Moser, Harper’s

“Justin Spring’s jaw-dropping Secret Historian reads like a novel probing a lifelong rebel’s courage, creativity and ultimate sadness . . . Spring has reconstituted Steward, as Phil Andros might say, in flesh and blood and all sorts of bodily fluids.” —David D’Arcy, San Francisco Chronicle

“This is a rich and exuberant biography of a man who deserves to be better known” —The Economist

“A fascinating biography . . . [Steward] tackled life with awe-inspiring abandon” —Details

“Life in the closet proves boisterous indeed in this biography of an iconic figure of the pre-Stonewall gay demimonde . . . Spring’s sympathetic and entertaining story of a life registers the limitations imposed on homosexuals by a repressive society, but also celebrates the creativity and daring with which Steward tested them.” —Publishers Weekly

“[A] provocative biography . . . Generous excerpts from Steward’s journals and unpublished memoirs fortify an already comprehensive examination of a life lived with unabashed independence and homoerotic expression during the sexual rebellion of the pre-Stonewall era . . . A vivid, candid portrait.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Justin Spring documents the extraordinary life of one of Kinsey’s crucial gay witnesses, and reading Secret Historian is like reading Kinsey dramatized. A cultivated, rather shy professor of English literature, Sam Steward dropped out in midlife to become an eminent tattooist and writer of S&M porn. As the story of a sex-obsessed recovering alcoholic later addicted to barbiturates and to masochistic thrills, this could easily have become a portrait of a failure. Instead, through Steward’s copious records, we have a brave, fly-on-the-wall account of American homosexual subculture and persecution.” —Martin Stannard, author of Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark: The Biography

“A true page-turner—and a memorable act of historical reclamation. Sammy Steward is all but unknown except by a handful of historians, but Justin Spring’s lively biography—which is full of important new information about pre-Stonewall gay life—should put Sammy on the map, which is where he decidedly belongs.” —Martin Duberman, author of Cures: A Gay Man’s Odyssey

“Secret Historian is a startlingly, unforgettably vivid glimpse into a life—and a world—that few of us can imagine.” —Terry Teachout, author of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong

“Samuel Steward, secret sexual historian, is a secret no longer. From an evangelical Ohio boardinghouse to the gardens of the Villa Borghese, from the lobby of the City Opera to the South Side YMCA, Steward led—and recorded—an improbably revealing, representative life. Bedding Oscar Wilde’s Bosie, taking tea with Stein and Toklas, and confessing to (and performing for!) Dr. Kinsey, he seemed determined to leave no corner of twentieth-century American queer culture unexplored and undocumented. Justin Spring has rescued his story from a San Francisco attic and set it before twenty-first-century readers with unflagging patience, authority, and humanity—Secret Historian is a major achievement.” —Langdon Hammer, author of Hart Crane and Allen Tate

“Justin Spring has painstakingly and compassionately unearthed the labyrinthine world of a brilliant, multifaceted, and troubled creator. A classically educated and highly talented renegade intellectual, Steward’s trajectory was impacted at every turn by his sexual compulsions. This bittersweet story, with its hair-raising and obsessively recorded details, is astonishing. Steward’s humor, empathy, and refusal to bow to the repressive status quo are a moving testimonial to honesty, courage, and integrity. His story should resonate with anyone engaged in the ongoing struggle for personal freedom of identity.” —Ed Hardy

“This is a rare and important book. Secret Historian is a genuinely captivating combination of clear writing, a clean conscience, and more dirty stories than I ever imagined one life could hold.” —Debby Applegate, author of The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher

OCTOBER SELECTION: Secret Historian

2010-10-10T07:39:00.000-07:00

Life in the closet proves boisterous indeed in this biography of an iconic figure of the pre-Stonewall gay demimonde. Steward (1909–1993) was an English professor, a novelist who wrote both well-received literary fiction and gay porn, a confidant of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder, a furtive but exuberant erotic adventurer whose taste for sailors, rough trade, and violent sadomasochism endeared him to sex researcher Alfred Kinsey; later in life, he became Phil Sparrow, official tattoo artist of the Oakland, Calif., Hell's Angels. Spring (Paul Cadmus) fleshes out this colorful story by quoting copiously from his subject's highly literate journals and sex diaries—his Stud File contained entries on trysts with everyone from Rudolph Valentino to Rock Hudson—which afford an unabashed account of Steward's erotic picaresque and the yearnings that drove it. (His swerve from academia into tattooing, with its mix of physical pain and proximity to nubile male flesh, was essentially a fetish turned into a business.) Spring's sympathetic and entertaining story of a life registers the limitations imposed on homosexuals by a repressive society, but also celebrates the creativity and daring with which Steward tested them. Photos. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

SEPTEMBER MEETING - THURSDAY September 16th

2010-09-03T05:01:00.000-07:00

The September meeting will be held on THURSDAY the 16th of September at the COFFEE TREE ROASTERS in SHADYSIDE - 5524 Walnut Street, Shadyside. The meeting will begin at 7:00. The host location requests that we bring no outside food or drinks.

Join us as we discuss DIPLOMACY by ZHARA OWENS!

Please RSVP to pittsburghgaybookclub@gmail.com as the room only accommodates 20.

SEPTEMBER BOOK SELECTION: Diplomacy by Zahra Owens

2010-08-22T06:39:00.000-07:00

Diplomacy by Zahra Owens

Jack Christensen has everything he ever wanted. He's a rising star in US Diplomacy, the youngest man to have been appointed as an Ambassador of the United States. A career diplomat who's just been sent to a politically interesting Embassy in Europe, he has the perfect wife, speaks five languages and has all the right credentials, yet there's something missing and he doesn't quite know what. Then Lucas Carlton walks into an Embassy reception and introduces himself and his American fiancée. From the first handshake, the young Englishman makes an impression on Jack that leaves him confused and uncharacteristically insecure. Lucas' position as the British liaison to the American Embassy means they are forced to work together closely and they have a hard time denying the attraction between them, despite their current relationships. When their women decide to go on a weekend trip together, Jack and Lucas start a passionate relationship, which continues long after their partners return. Diplomatic circles are notoriously conservative though, and they each know that the right woman by their side makes a very significant contribution to their success. Will they be able to make the right choices in their professional and personal lives? Or will they need to sacrifice one for the other? Full Chapter excerpt available at http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

DREAMSPINNER PRESS:
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=961

AMAZON:

http://www.amazon.com/Diplomacy-Zahra-Owens/dp/0980101867/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282484358&sr=8-6

AUGUST MEETING RECAP

2010-07-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

The PGBC met on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 and we discussed The Bucolic Plague by Josh Kilmer-Purcell. We met at the Joseph-Beth Booksellers on the Southside at 7:00 p.m. and we had a record attendance of 19 members.

We had a rousing discussion with many perspectives of the book being shared. Initially receiving mixed reviews, the consensus seemed to shift when many members recalled specific events and entries in the book which seemed to relate and resonate with their own personal experiences. Qualified as a very easy read, there seemed to be agreement that the book is a worthwhile read, and many felt strongly that the book exceeded expectations in wit and substance. Discussions on other Kilmer-Purcell works and the fabulous Beekman Boys television reality show added to the discussion.

OTHER BUSINESS: We discussed a change in the meeting night from the third Wednesday to the third Thursday of each month. A venue with a private room was discussed as an essential asset at future locations. We are looking into THE COFFEE TREE for our September Meeting location. The October meeting will be held at the Pittsburgh Gay and Lesbian Community Center in downtown Pittsburgh. Bring to the September meeting your recommendations celebrating gay history.

THANKS TO JOSEPH-BETH FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY!!!

AUGUST BOOK SELECTION

2010-07-22T12:39:00.000-07:00

The Pittsburgh Gay Book Club is pleased to announce our AUGUST selection:

THE BUCOLIC PLAGUE ~ How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers:
An Unconventional Memoir.
By Josh Kilmer-Purcell

What happens when two New Yorkers (one an ex–drag queen) do the unthinkable: start over, have a herd of kids, and get a little dirty?
Find out in this riotous and moving true tale of goats, mud, and a centuries-old mansion in rustic upstate New York—the new memoir by Josh Kilmer-Purcell, author of the New York Times bestseller I Am Not Myself These Days. A happy series of accidents and a doughnut-laden escape upstate take Josh and his partner, Brent, to the doorstep of the magnificent (and fabulously for sale) Beekman Mansion. One hour and one tour later, they have begun their transformation from uptight urbanites into the two-hundred-year-old-mansion-owning Beekman Boys.

Suddenly, Josh—a full-time New Yorker with a successful advertising career—and Brent are weekend farmers, surrounded by nature’s bounty and an eclectic cast: roosters who double as a wedding cover band; Bubby, the bionic cat; and a herd of eighty-eight goats, courtesy of their new caretaker, Farmer John. And soon, a fledgling business, born of a gift of handmade goat-milk soap, blossoms into a brand, Beekman 1802.

The Bucolic Plague is tart and sweet, touching and laugh out loud funny, a story about approaching middle age, being in a long-term relationship, realizing the city no longer feeds you in the same way it used to, and finding new depths of love and commitment wherever you live.

See post below for more information on the FABULOUS BEEKMAN BOYS.

WORDS OF PRAISE:
“Kilmer-Purcell writes with dramatic flair and trenchant wit, uncovering mirthful metaphors as he plows through their daily experiences.” (Publishers Weekly )

“The witty new memoir from Josh Kilmer-Purcell.” (Food & Wine, Online Review )

“This particular merging of city and country is both sweet and savory.” (Kirkus Reviews )

“A delicious book about two city boys who buy a farm, fall in love with a herd of goats, and attempt to revive the American dream. . . . Never has mucking out a stall been more scintillating!” (Alison Smith, author of Name All the Animals )

“My Amtrak seat mate in the Quiet Car, a complete stranger, insisted that I read out loud the scene -- a goat in labor -- that was making me laugh so hard I was crying. . . . Kilmer-Purcell’s book is manically funny, sweetly open and trusting, and slick and snarky.” (New York Times Book Review )

“I gobbled up this book like-well, like goat cheese on a cracker. Kilmer-Purcell’s genius lies in his ability to blindside the reader with heart-wrenching truths in the midst of the most outlandish scenarios. He makes you laugh until you care.” (Armistead Maupin )

“A hilarious memoir.” (Whole Living )

“I adore the Beekman boys’ story. Their unlikely story of love, the land, and a herd of goats is hilariously honest. If these two can go from Manhattan to a goat farm in upstate New York, then I can’t help feeling there is hope for us all.” (Alice Waters )

“Baby goats, diarrhea, and Martha Stewart. Former drag queen turned goat farmer Josh Kilmer-Purcell begins his latest book, The Bucolic Plague, with a hilarious vignette involving all three. Clearly, the man has an interesting story to tell.” (Wisconsin State Journal )

“Mr. Kilmer-Purcell fertilizes this narrative until it reeks of charm.” (New York Times )

The Fabulous Beekman Boys... The subject of our September book selection.

2010-07-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you combine a former Vice President of Martha Stewart Living, a drag queen turned ad exec and New York Times bestselling author, an estate and farm in upstate New York, a few quirky neighbors and goats, pigs and a llama to boot?

WATCH VIDEO: Get to Know Brent and Josh

The answer: a funny and irreverent Planet Green series focused on organic living, connecting to the earth, raising animals humanely, and just living a simple, sustainable lifestyle.
The Fabulous Beekman Boys, is not to be missed.

Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge

These guys are total city-slicker New Yorkers, but they have moved upstate to try and revive a farm and create a new organic lifestyle brand, 'Beekman 1802'. For them, that turns out to mean wrangling pigs and wrapping 14,000 bars of organic goat milk soap—not a typical day in their previous New York life.
But, as they said: "We believe that a farm can be much larger than its fences. If someone told us that we'd trade in New York City for eighty goats, two pigs, a dozen chickens and a narcissistic llama, we would have told them that they were crazy. It turns out that we are."
They keep themselves quite busy—especially with Josh commuting to the city during the week—and they even organize a harvest festival to benefit the nearby town of Sharon Springs.

Click to learn all about the boys!

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tv/the-fabulous-beekman-boys/the-fabulous-beekman-boys.html

Another Video about the Boys!

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/videos/fabulous-brent-josh/

Join the P.G.B.C. !

2010-07-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

KEEP IN TOUCH VIA FACEBOOK!

2010-06-28T16:33:00.001-07:00

Click the above title to visit the PGBC Facebook page. Send request to add as a friend!

JULY MEETING RECAP!

2010-06-27T14:22:00.000-07:00

The Pittsburgh Gay Book Club met on July 21st, 2010 at the Borders Bookstore on McKnight Road at NorthWay Mall (Near Ross Park Mall). We had a great time as we discussed the July Book selection.

Overall, the club really enjoyed reading THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY. Most found the intertwined stories of the two men very unique and interesting. Although one member thought it was a little cumbersome at times, and another thought it to be 'claustrophobic', there was agreement that the vast content of interesting facts and incidents made for a very compelling read. A member presented those in attendance with an original souvenir book of the actual World’s Fair featured in the book. The wealth of photographic documentation in it greatly enhanced all of our understanding and appreciation of the Fair and THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY. We recommend this read to any website followers of the club!

JULY BOOK SELECTION:

2010-06-27T14:14:00.000-07:00

THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY by ERIK LARSON

Not long after Jack the Ripper haunted the ill-lit streets of 1888 London, H.H. Holmes (born Herman Webster Mudgett) dispatched somewhere between 27 and 200 people, mostly single young women, in the churning new metropolis of Chicago; many of the murders occurred during (and exploited) the city's finest moment, the World's Fair of 1893. Larson's breathtaking new history is a novelistic yet wholly factual account of the fair and the mass murderer who lurked within it. Bestselling author Larson (Isaac's Storm) strikes a fine balance between the planning and execution of the vast fair and Holmes's relentless, ghastly activities. The passages about Holmes are compelling and aptly claustrophobic; readers will be glad for the frequent escapes to the relative sanity of Holmes's co-star, architect and fair overseer Daniel Hudson Burnham, who managed the thousands of workers and engineers who pulled the sprawling fair together 0n an astonishingly tight two-year schedule. A natural charlatan, Holmes exploited the inability of authorities to coordinate, creating a small commercial empire entirely on unpaid debts and constructing a personal cadaver-disposal system. This is, in effect, the nonfiction Alienist, or a sort of companion, which might be called Homicide, to Emile Durkheim's Suicide. However, rather than anomie, Larson is most interested in industriousness and the new opportunities for mayhem afforded by the advent of widespread public anonymity. This book is everything popular history should be, meticulously recreating a rich, pre-automobile America on the cusp of modernity, in which the sale of "articulated" corpses was a semi-respectable trade and serial killers could go well-nigh unnoticed.

LINK TO THE BOOK AT BORDERS.COM

http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=0375725601

JUNE MEETING RECAP

2010-05-27T18:42:00.001-07:00

The June meeting took place as planned and we discussed The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

The meeting was held on Wednesday June 16th, 2010. We met at the Borders Bookstore in Monroeville, PA.

Watch for an article on the PGBC in Pittsburgh OUT!

2010-05-23T14:50:00.001-07:00

MAY BOOK CLUB MEETING RECAP

2010-05-10T04:15:00.000-07:00

The May meeting of the Pittsburgh Gay Book Club took place on MAY 19th, 2010. We met at the BORDERS BOOK STORE in Monroeville, PA at 7:00 p.m. and discussed "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."

MAP TO THE MONROEVILLE LOCATION http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=13259504532551725754&q=borders&hl=en&cd=1&ei=lom-S86DOpyiM5yYqIMM&sig2=7ki1xhGLx1WU3UiYe_zrTA&sll=40.432265,-79.78941&sspn=0.002091,0.004801&ie=UTF8&ll=40.433752,-79.791813&spn=0,0&z=18&iwloc=A

MAY BOOK CLUB SELECTION

2010-05-10T04:11:00.001-07:00

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist has made his living uncovering the corrupt and crooked practices of Stockholm's leading financiers in his magazine, Millennium. But one expose unexpectedly backfires, and Blomkvist's reputation is in tatters. When he is offered an investigative job by powerful businessman Henrik Vanger, he is in no position to refuse. But he is surprised to find it has nothing to do with high finance - this time, it is a case of murder.

Many years ago, Henrik's niece, Harriet, disappeared during a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the Vangers. No-one saw her leave the island, and no body was ever found. Even so, Henrik is convinced that she was murdered by a member of his own family - the tightly knit but dysfunctional Vanger clan.

Blomkvist is soon in over his head. He has linked Harriet's disappearance to a number of gruesome murders from forty years ago, but it has become too dangerous to proceed alone. He needs a competent assistant, and he gets one: the gifted and conscience-free computer specialist, Lisbeth Salander.

This truculent young woman has problems of her own. She in unwilling to take orders, rides a motorbike like a Hell's Angel and handles makeshift weapons with a skill born of rage.
This improbably pair unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.

APPRIL.MEETING RECAP

2010-03-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

The April meeting of the Pittsburgh Gay Book Club will take place on APRIL 21, 2010! We will be having a special meeting at the BORDERS BOOK STORE in Monroeville, PA at 7:00 p.m. Join us as we discuss "A Single Man" and plan our May and June Meetings. (A tentative 'meet the author' meeting for May, and possibly having our June meeting at the Warhol Museum is in the works.)

MAP TO THE MONROEVILLE LOCATION
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=13259504532551725754&q=borders&hl=en&cd=1&ei=lom-S86DOpyiM5yYqIMM&sig2=7ki1xhGLx1WU3UiYe_zrTA&sll=40.432265,-79.78941&sspn=0.002091,0.004801&ie=UTF8&ll=40.433752,-79.791813&spn=0,0&z=18&iwloc=A

APRIL BOOK SELECTION MADE!

2010-03-23T19:00:00.000-07:00

OUR APRIL BOOK CLUB SELECTION IS

"A Single Man" by Christopher Isherwood

The author's favorite of his own novels. When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, and determines to persist in the routines of his daily life; the course of A Single Man spans twenty-four hours in an ordinary day. An Englishman and a professor living in suburban Southern California, he is an outsider in every way, and his internal reflections and interactions with others reveal a man who loves being alive despite everyday injustices and loneliness. Wry, suddenly manic, constantly funny, surprisingly sad, this novel catches the texture of life itself.

"A testimony to Isherwood's undiminished brilliance as a novelist."
—Anthony Burgess

"An absolutely devastating, unnerving, brilliant book."
—Stephen Spender

"Just as his Prater Violet is the best novel I know about the movies, Isherwood's A Single Man, published in 1964, is one of the first and best novels of the modern gay liberation movement."
—Edmund White

MARCH MEETING RECAP

2010-02-20T19:06:00.000-08:00

We met on Wednesday, March 17 (Yes, St. Patrick's Day!) and discussed THE BILLIONAIRE'S VINEGAR by BENJAMIN WALLACE. A rousing discussion on the merits of the book took place, and members shared insights on the content and the related it to present day happenings within the wine world. There was agreement that the book is peppered with witty quotations and interesting personalities. Another great read for the Pittsburgh Gay Book Club!

MARCH BOOK SELECTION

2010-02-20T19:00:00.000-08:00

THE BILLIONAIRE'S VINEGAR by BENJAMIN WALLACE

REVIEW:
The titular bottle, from a cache of allegedly fine, allegedly French wine, allegedly owned by Thomas Jefferson in the 1780s, set a record price when auctioned in 1985. The subsequent brouhaha over the cache's authenticity takes wine journalist Wallace on a piquant journey into the mirage-like world of rare wines. At its center are Hardy Rodenstock, an enigmatic German collector with a suspicious knack for unearthing implausibly old and drinkable wines, and Michael Broadbent, a Christie's wine expert, who auctioned Rodenstock's lucrative finds. The argument over the Jefferson bottles and other rarities aged for decades, flummoxed a wine establishment desperate to keep the cork in a controversy that might deflate the market for antique vintages. (In the author's telling, a 2006 lawsuit almost settles the issue.) Wallace sips the story slowly, taking leisurely digressions into techniques for faking wine and detecting same with everything from Monticello scholarship to nuclear physics. He paints a colorful backdrop of eccentric oenophiles, decadent tastings and overripe flavor rhetoric (Broadbent describes one wine as redolent of chocolate and schoolgirls' uniforms). Investigating wines so old and rare they could taste like anything, he playfully questions the very foundations of connoisseurship.

FEBRUARY MEETING RECAP

2010-01-22T20:07:00.000-08:00

On February 17th, we met and discussed A SEPARATE PEACE by JOHN KNOWLES. A rousing discussion ensued as we covered the merits of, and occasional flaws in the story and the author's writing style. The consensus was that it is a worthwhile read that leaves the reader to fill in blanks, perhaps more so than some of us would have liked. Interested online members can share their opinion of the gay innuendo that seemed to be peppered throughout. Was it obvious to you? or, are we just perhaps 'reading' too much into it? Use the comments button below to voice your opinion!

FEBRUARY BOOK SELECTION

2010-01-22T20:03:00.000-08:00

A SEPARATE PEACE by JOHN KNOWLES

Knowles' classic story of two friends at boarding school during World War II--one of the most starkly moving parables ever written about the dark forces that brood over the tortured world of adolescence--has been a consistent seller for more than 20 years.

Gene was a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas was a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happened between them at school one summer during the early years of World War II is the subject of A Separate Peace. A great bestseller for over thirty years--one of the most starkly moving parables ever written of the dark forces that brood over the tortured world of adolescence.
"I think it is the best-written, best-designed and most moving novel I have read in many years. Beginning with a tiny incident among ordinary boys, it ends by being as deep and as big as evil itself." -- Aubrey Menen

"A quietly vital and cleanly written novel that moves, page by page, towards a most interesting target." -- Truman Capote

"Is he the successor to Salinger for whom we have been waiting so long? -- Encounter.

"A masterpiece." -- National Review.

JANUARY MEETING RECAP

2009-12-17T18:42:00.000-08:00

PGBC Met on Wednesday, January 20th to discuss A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE. A great time was had by all!

JANUARY BOOK CLUB SELECTION

2009-12-17T18:32:00.001-08:00

The January Pittsburgh Gay Book Club selection: A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole.

DECEMBER MEETING RECAP

2009-11-23T19:14:00.001-08:00

The December meeting took place on Wednesday December 16th at the Borders Books in the Pittsburgh Mills Mall. We discussed YOU BETTER NOT CRY: STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS. All in attendance were in agreement that the book made for a great, and timely, selection. High praise and reccomendations all around! We chose the January book selection, which Jason reccomended and Augusten Burroughs seconded with entheusistic praise. (Ok, Ok, Augusten wasn't there, but he commented in a recent interview that he would like to write a biography on the author of the new selection.)

COMMENT ON THE DECEMBER BOOK SELECTION

2009-11-23T18:48:00.000-08:00

We made the yule-tide gay! Our December book club selection was YOU BETTER NOT CRY: STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS by Augusten Burroughs. This collection of short stories by gay author Augusten Burroughs was recently released in October of 2009. We knew it was going to be a busy time of year, and we heard that it's a quick read... so congrats to all of you for putting this on your nice, not naughty, list. LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THOUGHT BY COMMENTING BELOW!

PROMOTIONAL FLIER - Click to Enlarge

2009-11-01T17:26:00.000-08:00

NOVEMBER MEETING A SUCCESS!

2009-10-18T08:34:00.000-07:00

The group met on Wednesday, November 18th at the Borders Books in the Pittsburgh Mills Mall. Ralph Ashworth, Pittsburgh native and author of November's selection, joined us for the discussion. It was exciting to hear his perspective on the writing of the story and its characters. We also got a preview of whats on the horizon for the Jeff and Xander mysteries to come. THANKS RALPH! We anxiously await new installments, and will undoubtedly add them to our book club choices. There were 6 members in attendance and suggestions were made for next months book selection by members present. We left without a decision, so Tim and Jason chose a holiday themed new release by Augusten Burroughs to discuss at the December meeting.

COMMENT ON THE NOVEMBER BOOK CLUB SELECTION...

2009-10-03T19:52:00.001-07:00

The first book club selection for the PITTSBURGH GAY BOOK CLUB was the mystery/thriller KILLER OF ORCHIDS by Ralph Ashworth.

FROM THE BOOK JACKET:
Ralph Ashworth's powerful and brilliantly written debut novel takes you on an intellectual and thrilling ride. It's a heart stopping tale told in a unique and fresh voice.

Jeff and Xander aren't your typical friends...
Xander Pooka is a remarkably brainy 11 year old, and Jeff Redwing is a middle-aged computer genius with Native American roots. But this young neighborhood boy and his aloof bachelor friend are about to embark on a dangerous adventure that could change their lives forever.
When the Butler County headlines splash the news of two murdered men and a mysterious samurai with an ancient sword, Jeff and Xander decide to investigate this hometown killing. Whats starts out as a fun afternoon of playing detective quickly becomes a life and death race for the truth. Using the latest in computer technology and pure detective work, these two amateur sleuths work together to track down a killer, unleashing a series of events that neither could have foreseen. As the pair uncover the dirty secrets of Butler County, and Jeff gets caught in the middle of yet another murder, it will take every bit of skill and daring to keep Xander and Jeff alive and out of jail. Will these two friends survive their brush with evil?

HAVE YOU READ THE BOOK? Take part in our Book Club online by commenting below. Click 'comments' to see others.

THE PITTSBURGH GAY BOOK CLUB: HELP SPREAD THE WORD!

2009-08-02T08:53:00.001-07:00

Click on the Image above for a promotional flier (JPG) you can email or printout and post.

THE PITTSBURGH GAY BOOK CLUB: JOIN US!

2009-08-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

Like most great ideas... this one is simple. PGBC is open to anyone into gay-authored or gay-theme books representing all literary genres. We meet on the third Wednesday of each month at the Borders in the Pittsburgh Mills Mall and discuss a book selection. Future book selections are made by suggestions from members, and determined by consensus or vote at the conclusion of each meeting. Interested in joining? Email us at PittsburghGayBookClub@gmail.com for all the info.

THIS AIN'T YOUR GRAND-MOTHER'S BOOK CLUB!
We are looking for members who are free spirited and open minded! We encourage both deeply insightful book selections, as well as wonderfully creative lighter fare!

OUR FOUNDERS - The Pittsburgh Gay Book Club was founded by Jason Ward, a flooring specialist for a home improvement center, and Tim Lehner, a graphic designer and marketing consultant. Jason can be contacted at jasonpghbear@gmail.com and Tim can be reached at Timbo8888@gmail.com.