ALA President Offers Reading Suggestions for Gay Pride Month

Celebrate their sexuality?
How does one celebrate their sexuality? I mean so that others will know you are celebrating your sexuality without getting arrested.

Is there a heterosexual or celebite reading list?

If I read this list correctly the first book ‘celebrates’ infidelity, the second book ‘celebrates’ who knows what as it seemed a bit of nonsense about dogs, scarecrows and some bizarre incestious relationship between cousins by a Nazi member of the Waffen-SS.

The third book is an autobiography of a gossip columnist who insists on telling the world with whom he engaged in dalliances.

The fourth book offers a fictionalized account of the relationship between Hardy and Ramanujan (of course not to be confused with Ranganathan). Since Ramanujan had a wife, it can’t be the characters who are celebrating their sexuality, but perhaps because the author is gay it is included in the list. Why the sexuality of the author should make any difference perplexes me.

Mississippi Sissy seems to be one of the few books on the list that offers any value beyond the author’s sexual escapades. It does indeed, as the reviews suggest, delve into a young white boy’s growing up in the segregated 1960’s south. For that reason I would read the book, not because the author is gay, then again I wouldn’t avoid the book because the author is gay. I simply don’t care.

The next book seems to be the author attempting to provide mental health services to persons who desperately need more than some woman telling them her life story.

The last book is a fantastic story about the woman who made the pot brownie famous.

You want books by gay people, sure I can suggest some that are great.
Are You Somebody by Nuala O’Faolain. I picked that up at a used bookstore in my city because the name was familiar. I recall her as being a journalist from RTE in Ireland. I read it on a recent plane flight and was disappointed the flight ended before I could finish the book and had to put it away and go to work. Ms. O’Faolain recently died.

Try some Rita Mae Brown, I like the mysteries she co-authors with her cat. (look if the LOC can have the spirit of John Lennon as an author I can think a cat writes books). She also wrote Rubyfruit Jungle, but I have not read that yet.

Perhaps some Harper Lee, Truman Capote; perchance Remembrance of Things Past, Brideshead Revisited, these are literature but not such that celebrating one’s sexuality is the theme.

Why anyone would need to celbrate their sexuality is a mystery to me. It seems to be like celebrating digestion, or respiration. Something everyone has but really not talked about in polite company.

I don’t care who is or is not gay, lesbian, bisexual, or any of the other letters being added to the acronym of diversity. Can’t some things remain a mystery. Often the mystery is more intriguing than reality.