AUGUST BOOK SELECTION

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.

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/

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JULY MEETING RECAP!

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:

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

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!

MAY BOOK CLUB MEETING RECAP

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

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

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!

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