Top 100 Inside Readers List
Here we are to the second yearly appointment with the Top 100 Inside Readers List, i.e. the top 100 books “my” Inside Readers compiled. At today the Inside Readers are almost 80, all LGBT authors of various experience. To assign the rank I again used LibraryThing, but all these books are recommendation from the authors and there is no limitation of release date or genre. So enjoy! Half a year ago I detailed the first 10 books, this time another 10...
1) Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. This very funny book, which opens with “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.” is about a good many things, including Greek relatives, genetics, gender, , silk worms, and Detroit. The main character is a hermaphrodite. Simply one of the best books I've ever read. --Lynn Flewelling
2) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay by Michael Chabon. The characters in this novel are so real, so touching, and so heartbreaking. I get all verklempt just thinking about it. --Astrid Amara
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay by Michael Chabon. I forget exactly why I picked up this novel initially, but I wasn’t fifty pages in before I was preparing to shelve it next to American Gods as a favorite novel-and this was before I knew one of the main characters was gay. Somehow I managed to go into this story so cold that I discovered Sammy’s orientation right along with him, which is a gift I’ll always cherish. (I realize I’ve just ruined it for anyone reading this who didn’t know. Ah. Sorry!) But the Sammy’s sexual journey is just one facet of the novel. It’s set in the period around the second World War, and overall it is a story of loss and change and growth. Not growing up, exactly. Just growth. Growth of a country, of the comic book industry, of men, of families. Loss of innocence, loss of love, of life. There are missed opportunities and opportunities made out of sorrow. The book is just so big I don’t know how to describe it. It’s a rich tapestry of lives and character and hope built out of great loss. It’s also flat-out a wonderful novel about men. --Heidi Cullinan
3) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin: I read this in college, as part of a class on science fiction literature. Not only is the writing superb, but the story just drew me right in. What I remember most, though, is this book presenting me with my first opportunity to really talk about what it means to be a woman or a man or neither or both, what it means to be straight or gay or bisexual. If nothing else, this book is the perfect starting point for some fascinating, NECESSARY conversations. -J.M. Snyder
I read all of her novels and stories as they come out, but this early book about a world of winter where people change -- seriously change -- with the seasons is one of her best still. LeGuin has this uncanny ability to make you feel, believe and at the same time be rapt in wonder at what she can write of. Sci-Fi for people who don’t usually read sci-fi. -Felice Picano
This was my first gender-bending book, and it had and has a deep appeal for me. What if people did change genders monthly? What a wonderful, equal world it would be! 'Nuff said! --Lynn Flewelling
4) A Separate Peace by John Knowles: While not blatantly a gay novel, any young gay man who read it in school knows its power. Knowles was a gay man and infused his writing with the pathos and desire that only gay people can know. This was the first gay romantic relationship I had ever read about, and the fact that teachers don´t comment on the underlying love affair when teaching is a true careless disservice to the book and gay youth. -Eric Arvin
But back in the day, I read a LOT of plays. So while everyone else might have been reading “A Separate Peace” in school, like my daughter, and discovering that they had questions about relationships that seemed to blur the lines between friendship and something more between two men or two women, I was reading “The Children’s Hour” and “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” and wondering about the same thing. -Z.A. Maxfield
5) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh: Ah, male costume drama! I saw the Masterpiece Theater series first, and forever imprinted on the cast. The book was lovely, fraught with not-so-thinly veiled homoeroticism, angst, and pathos. I remember the acerbic scenes between Charles and his father being a deliciously vivid contrast to his dreamy Oxford days with Sebastian and his teddy. Watching Sebastian's slow self destruction was heart breaking, as was Charles' projection of his forbidden feelings for Sebastian onto Julia, with tragic results. --Lynn Flewelling
6) Orlando by Virginia Woolf: A classic in so many ways, the history behind this book makes the meaning and the layers even more eloquent and opens up a whole new world of interpretation. Essentially a love letter to one of Woolf’s partners, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is a coded lesbian romance. Orlando is a nobleman who simply decides through his own will that he will never grow old. He moves through the centuries, has many romances and even changes sex, becoming the Lady Orlando. It was because of the gender-bendering and ‘fantastical’ elements that Woolf could, at the time, explore gender and sexuality in a way that had never been done before. It is a brilliant work that should be read by everybody. -Sean Kennedy
7) Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg: I´m a fan of the Southern gothic genre, as you will learn by the end of this post. Fannie Flagg captures the genre beautifully with a tale that centers on an "alternative family" in Depression-era Alabama. Whether you interpret tomboy Idgie and her best friend Ruth´s relationship as that of closet lesbians or nonsexual life partners, the unarguable fact remains that in raising a son and running a business together, these two women share a bond over several years that transcends both platonic and romantic love. I cry every time I read the book or watch the movie, yet I also laugh out loud throughout. This whimsical tale not only holds a place in my top ten GLBT reads, but in my top five favorite books, period. -Katrina Strauss
8) Dry by Augusten Burroughs: I did a lot of drinking in order to finish the manuscript of my most recent novel, “The Wolf at the Door”, in part, because the narrator heavily imbibes in order to survive his chaotic job at a guesthouse in New Orleans where he imagines he is seeing ghosts and angels and all sorts of oddities. Augusten Burrough’s memoir “Dry” is all about the author’s zeal to quench his addictive behavior with the bottle. It’s superbly crafted, full of angst and wit, particularly as the author seeks to remain sober and avoid a romance with an overly handsome crack addict. Another book readers might want to explore is Charles Jackson’s 1944 novel “The Lost Weekend”, about a man who cannot let go of his desire to drink. And note: all of the gay material in the novel was excised when it became the Oscar winning film. -Jameson Currier
Burroughs soul searing honesty regarding his alcoholism is what kept me turning page after page of this haunting memoir. There is no self pity here, no whining, just a blunt appraisal of the mess he was making of his life. Riveting. All his memoirs are exceptional reads, e.g. Running With Scissors, but Dry remains my favorite. -J.P. Bowie
9) Magical Thinking: True Stories by Augusten Burroughs: Rather than the more famous “Running With Scissors,” which I have to admit I haven't read, this is a hilarious series of essays in which the very gay Burroughs lets all his neuroses hang out. -Kyell Gold
10) Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters: In 2003-ish, there was a BBC miniseries based on this book. A good friend of mine called and invited herself over to watch it with me. I’d never even heard of Sarah Waters, but I genuinely enjoyed the miniseries, enough so that I went out and bought the book. I love a good Victorian epic, and I still think this is one of the best I’ve ever read. I think I also really identified with Nan, and it’s fun to watch her blossom over the course of the book. -Kate McMurray
11) Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel: No argument Alison Bechdel’s first books, “Dykes To Watch Out For,” are jewels in the crown of gay literature. But even their brilliance did not prepare me for the emotional depth and narrative complexity of “Fun Home.” Just when I thought the memoir had been thoroughly exhausted, Bechdel made two brilliant decisions. She used her skill as an artist to tell her story through amazing, detailed drawings. The pictures are so good she almost didn’t need words, but her writing is amazing. Bechdel is so concise (she has to be to fit a whole book into speech balloons!) I kept flipping back and re-reading pages to slow the book down. -Aaron Krach
12) Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin: Here again, like the Harry Potter books, I'm lumping them all together though each book stands on it's own. The characters are utterly beautiful in their flawed state of discovery and evolving. They start with Mary Ann Singleton, who, while on vacation in San Francisco, just stays. Here again, I loved the writer's style and the way he brought the characters to life. I read them from start to finish in about a month and I cried like a baby when I read the very last one. -Johnny Miles
Reading this series when I was a teenager made me want to be a writer. I felt such loss when I finished a book, because the characters had become part of me. I internalized Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, to the point that I still sometimes talk like him. I felt Mary Ann Singleton´s angst when she felt like she couldn´t connect to others upon moving to San Francisco, and I sobbed when characters starting dying of AIDS. To this day, it is my greatest dream to create a world as richly textured and believable as the one Maupin created at 28 Barbary Lane. -Bill Konigsberg
What I wouldn’t give to live at 28 Barbary Lane - which is actually saying a lot, considering I hated the fashion of the seventies. I mean really…could they have discovered a more revolting color palette to choose from? I don’t think so! But I’d suffer it all over again to live upstairs with Michael, Mary Ann, & Mona at Mrs. Madrigal’s. This was the first book I ever read where I was able to see myself, unapologetically staring back at me from the page. The ever-hopeless romantic, trying on new men - praying one of them would fit - never giving up, no matter how many times I wound up heartbroken and alone. While I haven’t tried on quite as many guys as Mouse did, I still to this day can’t seem to drive that wishful-thinking-someday-my-prince-will-come-mentality out of my own ditzy head. I keep trying, but no matter how much sarcasm I put on, it doesn’t seem to help. Go figure? Tales is fun, light, at times wickedly funny, and helped me justify a tiny little piece of my own identity as a gay man by showing me I wasn’t so alone after all. -Ethan Day
I was completely captivated by Maupin’s Tales of the City - a series of books revolving around the inhabitants of an apartment building in San Francisco run by an eccentric landlady, Anna Madrigal, who regards her tenants as her adopted children. Every character, Michael (Mouse) Tolliver, Mary Ann Singleton, Anna’s daughter Mona etc., come to vivid and endearing life within the pages. The series was addictive and hard to give up, and was the inspiration behind my own foray into this crazy world of writing. Many years later Maupin wrote Michael Tolliver Lives when an aging Michael, loving and living with a younger man, finds his past catching up with him as he is forced to face the complexities of his family’s, and long-lost friends’, issues. -J.P. Bowie
There is no denying that this is a gay classic, and it works so well because it shows gay people interacting with the straight community rather than being apart from it. The whacky residents of Barbary Lane can be followed through seven books, although you should be warned that as the books move into the eighties they become a bit more sombre when the impact of AIDS is first known. -Sean Kennedy
Does every gay man start their gay reading with this book? Possibly the answer is yes, and I think that’s a wonderful thing. It’s funny but real, risky but ultimately safe (like a mother’s approving hug), and it captures a moment in time that is the foundation of contemporary gay society. For any gay man who realizes and respects how significant the 70s were for gay life, owning this book is just as important as owning CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC by the Village People or cherishing those Tom of Finland drawings. -Geoffrey Knight
13) The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst: A perfectly rendered portrait of England in the 1980s and the rise of the new right, this story about young gay Nick Guest and his social and sexual awakening is harrowing stuff, since we know that tragedy lurks just around the corner for not only our naïve young-and often selfish-protagonist, but for a whole segment of society. -Rick R. Reed
Shows how life has changed for gay men in the seventy years since Maurice was written. I came to this book having seen the TV adaptation and was mostly delighted. (The start and end are magnificent, even if I felt as I read the middle bit “Oh, not another sex/drugs scene”). Anyone who lived through yuppie excesses and Mrs Thatcher’s tenure of number ten will appreciate this book and the way it holds hypocrisy up to ridicule. Reader beware, though. Nick Guest is just about the only likeable character in the book - he’s adorable but the rest…*shrugs*. -Charlie Cochrane
14) Death in Venice by Thomas Mann: Sad, poignant and homoerotic, Mann’s descriptions of turn-of-the-century Venice in the throes of a cholera epidemic have haunted me for decades. I did a book report on Death in Venice in high school: relaying the aging, stifled Aschenbach’s twisted obsession for twink Tadzio in front of a batch of Republican/Christian teenagers was my first act of coming out (Mrs. Carruth, my beloved English teacher, beamed at me throughout the entire presentation). -Nick Nolan
I have only one word to describe these two short novels which always seemed to me to be oddly paired: classics. Whether you enjoy them or not, they are must reads for every gay man. -Hal Bodner
Both this novel and the movie surprised me. Could it have been written in 1925? Again, the risk the author had taken in a society that shunned homosexuality, astounded me. Even as I watched the film with Dirk Bogarde I kept asking myself if this man was really lusting after a young boy. It was inconceivable to me that it was such a controversial story, yet possibly because the love had never been consummated it was forgiven. Call it what you like, but again, this story intrigued me. -G.A. Hauser
15) Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey: I put Magic’s Pawn here, but it’s actually the first of a trilogy and I’d say that the entire series is on my “favorites” list. Vanyel, the main character of this trilogy, is both an incredibly powerful mage and a young gay man in a world where being gay is not exactly celebrated. He does find acceptance from some people, though, and finds love, as well. The Last Herald-Mage trilogy is part of a larger Valdemar series from Mercedes Lackey, which was how I stumbled across it and managed to read it in middle school without raising eyebrows from my mother. That Vanyel found a home, and was valued for his abilities, was reassuring to me as I was dealing with my own burgeoning sexuality. -Dianne Fox
Soon after my agent sold my first m/m novel, Luck in the Shadows, in 1995, she urged me to read Magic's Pawn, saying it reminded her of my book. I could see some similarities, and was flattered to have my writing compared to Lackey's. I enjoyed the first two books very much, but was sorry to see how she ultimately destroyed her hero in the end. In writing the Nightrunner books, I had vowed that I would let my gay main characters be strong, heroic survivors, who emerged from terrible situations-if not unscathed- then at least victorious. They would not be victims. There are quite enough of those in literature and film already. After reading LHM, I also established a tongue-in-cheek "no pink cape" cover clause with my editor at Bantam. -Lynn Flewelling
It was a few years later before I randomly picked up my first Mercedes Lackey book and found myself immersed in her incredibly imaginative world of Valdemar. I was around fifteen at the time, and I immediately fell in love with her take on magic and fantasy. I devoured all her books I could find. Then I read Magic's Pawn, and it's not an exaggeration to say my life changed forever. It was the first time I'd ever seen a gay character in a book. And that wasn't all. Vanyel wasn't just gay. He fell in love and had sex, and it was all presented as being completely natural. My entire world-view shifted in that reading. All three books in the trilogy left a deep, lasting impression on me. Vanyel was my first literary crush, and he still holds a special place in my heart after all these years. -Josh Aterovis
16) Magic's Price by Mercedes Lackey: Male romance and magic and myth-oh my! The first time I read Mercedes Lackey’s Last Herald Mage trilogy I thought I’d died and gone to fantasy heaven. It was my first time falling into a fantasy world where men made magic-and made love to each other. All three books in this series should be read, preferably in order. But the last in the series is my favorite. -Dan Stone
17) The Passion by Jeanette Winterson: Another novel I read in college. This is about Henri, a soldier, who falls in love with Villanelle, the daughter of a Venetian boatman, who lost her heart (literally) to a married noblewoman and wanders the world in search of it. When I say "lost," I mean physically ~ one of the best things about Winterson's writing is her words. I loved the language of the book, and I remember falling in love with Winterson's writing style (and it didn't hurt that her first name is the same as mine). Immediately after I read this book, I wrote quite a few poems about keeping one's heart safe in a box, then went out and bought a number of Winterson's other novels. If you haven't read anything by her, you're missing out. -J.M. Snyder
"Magical Realism" was coined for books like this. Set in the Napoleonic Wars, it´s about a woman whose heart is literally stolen by another woman and she goes searching to reclaim it. Breathtaking. Like all the books on my Top 10 list, after I put this down I asked myself what the hell I was doing writing. Nothing I ever scratched out would ever compare to this. -Eric Arvin
18) Cry to Heaven by Anne Rice: I probably once considered this a masterwork of gay fiction. Years later, I realize it’s a masterwork exploration of male sexuality, manhood, and gender, and that the themes and concepts of homosexuality explored therein were an enforced part of the castrati way of life, as inescapable to them as breathing air, and as necessary. Set in 18th century Venice and the countryside and cities of Europe, “Cry to Heaven” is a big book (576 pages) and worth every second spent reading it. I could find no fault with the history or prose in this novel (Anne Rice does her research almost too well), but it’s a novel that leaves you wanting so much more on the romance side. Although Tonio Treschi- a noble Venetian castrated against his will to impede his inheritance of his father’s estate - and his maestro/lover Guido are both solid and well-rounded characters with great depth, their affair never quite hits the highs that are associated with the romance genre. Neither does Tonio quite hit that note with anyone. His affair with the older Guido is, in the beginning, strictly on Guido’s terms. Guido takes other lovers and refuses to stop, citing his own needs and saying Tonio will understand “one day”. Tonio swallows his pain and does seem to eventually come around to Guido’s point of view. In my opinion, that move truly killed the romance element of the book, for by the time Tonio comes into his own sexual power and can make his own terms, he has lost his passion (though not his love) for Guido, and though they still have a life together, it’s a bit crowded with the other loves they bring into the relationship. One of the things I learned from “Cry to Heaven” was how not to disappoint readers who pick a book up for its promise of romance. To this day, I stop re-reading “Cry to Heaven” at the part where Guido breaks Tonio’s heart. -Kirby Crow
This book has the distinction of being the only non-romance on the list, though it does have a sprinkling of romantic elements. When I think back, this is the book that sparked that ‘ah!’ moment. I bought it because I was a fan of Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches series. I ended up with something entirely different than anything I’d ever read, and I loved it. I was completely captivated by the beautiful Tonio and his struggles to reconcile himself to his fate as a castrati and find his place in that world. It was literally years later when I stumbled upon erotic romances that featured bisexual heroes (no gay heroes in those), and it took another few years to stumble upon m/m romance ebooks. Though once I found m/m romance, it didn’t take me nearly as long before I started to write my own stories. -Ava March
What was it about those castrati? Tonio’s sexual encounters with men after he became a eunuch, his affair with a Cardinal were all so shocking and delightfully sacrilegious. It was after this novel I went slightly crazy looking for more. Nothing came close at the time to the teasing prose of Anne Rice’s darkness and sorrow. So I read this book again and again. Her characters had a profound influence on me. -G.A. Hauser
19) Maurice by E.M. Forster: Forster is, of course, one of our literary lions. This tale of love between men was written deep in the past and, at the author’s request, published posthumously. So no punches were pulled. Taking on the class structure as well as societal disdain for gay love, there is no question what desires lay deep in Forster’s eloquent heart. -Lee Bantle
Jimmy gave me this novel as a 7th anniversary gift, Memorial Day 1972. (I just showed the inscribed edition to him; he exclaimed: "How sweet! Now don't cry! Don't burst into tears!" Why do I write romantic novels?!) I love this book so much that its two central characters, Maurice Hall and the heavenly Alec Scudder are currently frequent guests at Gaywyck and are the greatest pals with Robert Gaylord in “Children of Paradise”. And why not? I love them! Forster thinks they "still roam the greenwood." He may have written one of favorite novels, “Howard's End”, but he can be very silly. They needed to "connect" with their brothers in this our life. So I've given them the community Forster never had while he was alive. "A happy ending was imperative," he writes in the novel's "Terminal Notes, even though Maurice says: "All the world's against us." Forster was right and helped inspire me to act accordingly with “Gaywyck”. (If I had a happy "ending" why couldn't they?) Meanwhile, my heart swells every time Alec says to Maurice: "And now we shan't be parted no more, and that's finished." -Vincent Virga
A work that’s beautifully lyrical, understated and full of wonderful characters; most of the things I’d like to say about Maurice have already been said by better folk than me. I’ll just add one note - this book was written by a gay man, yet it resembles (style, pacing, slowly building and hesitant romance) some of the gay romances which originate from a female pen. To me, it’s one of the great pieces of evidence to counter the ‘men don’t write like women do, they understand gay relationships differently’ argument. Some men clearly do/did think and write this way. The extent to which Maurice is autobiographical (or at least based on EMF’s experiences) is a matter for debate - the author said that Maurice was very different from him - but I see EMF when I read it…. -Charlie Cochrane
Male costume drama with a happy ending! I loved Forster's skewering of the Victorian British social hierarchy, contrasting Maurice's strangled, hamstrung relationship with the self-hating but socially equal Clive, with his ultimate, willing conquest by the Pan-like game keeper's son, Alec Scutter. Caught between the two, tossing and turning on his bed in Clive's house, Maurice finally throws open the window and shouts hopelessly, "Come!" And Alec does. And so does Maurice, in short order. And did I mention that it actually has a happy ending? Good movie, too. -Lynn Flewelling
Maurice is, again, long and beautifully written. It's a comfort read for me, because despite Maurice's ill fated affair with his university sweetheart Clive, by the time Clive has become a pompous hypocrite, Alec has breezed onto the scene. And I may be a little in love with Alec, who is aggressive and inarticulate and lower class, perfectly willing to engage in blackmail, and literally a breath of fresh air. This was a ground-breaking book in its day, with its insistence on a happy ending for its two heroes, and I appreciate that a lot. There's something, even in the book, that lets you know how unbearably poignant, how lucky, how unexpected are the tender scenes between stuffy old Maurice and forthright, unashamed Alec. I'd have liked more of Maurice/Alec and less of Maurice/Clive, but I can see that it took the failure of the first relationship to enable the success of the second. Another classic, as it should be. -Alex Beecroft
One of England’s most prominent novelists, the story that was closest to Forster’s heart was only published after his death. This book means so much to me because it was one of the first ‘gay’ books I ever read, sneaking it off my older sister’s shelf. It was also one of the first representations of a gay couple I discovered in film or literature that didn’t end in tragedy. Seriously, check out the excellent documentary The Celluloid Closet to discover just how often a gay, or gay-coded, character doesn’t survive the film they’re in. Imagine my relief where I read a story where the characters slipped away into the mist, presumably to find a place where they could live freely and happily. -Sean Kennedy
20) Lord John and the Private Matter by Diana Gabaldon: There are several Lord John Grey books including Lord John and the Private Matter, Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, and Lord John and the Hand of Devils. This is a mixed recommendation because there´s a lot about these books that makes me insanely furious (like why doesn´t John just GET OVER his stupid love of Jamie Fraser and move on already and why oh why won´t the author just let him get what he deserves for once). That said, I still recommend them because the writing is really well done. The historic details are engrossing, and I DO like the character a great deal. So it´s a GRR! recommendation because I think it could be so much more. -Astrid Amara
Another long, plot heavy, sex light book which is written beautifully, has some amazing characters and pays lots of attention to the setting. I think it's admirable that Gabaldon, the author of a hugely successful time travelling mainstream fantasy/romance series should have chosen to foreground one of her gay characters and give him his own series. And I love Lord John's careful, methodical character. I love his mum and his brother, and all the supporting characters. I love the setting in 18th Century England, particularly when Gabaldon explores the molly houses and gay subculture in this novel. I'm less keen on the fact that John continues to moon after Jamie, the resolutely heterosexual and rather homophobic hero of Gabaldon's larger series, and John's discomfort with his own sexuality may be in keeping with the times, but also discomforts me. The balance is very much for the book, though, and I'm still patiently hoping for John to tell Jamie where to get off, and to find a nice steady English lad to settle down with. -Alex Beecroft
21) Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
22) A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
23) Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
24) Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
25) Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner
26) Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling
27) Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
28) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
29) The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
30) Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold
31) At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill
32) Drawing Blood by Poppy Z. Brite
33) Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
34) Another Country by James Baldwin
35) Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault
36) Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block
37) The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Holinghurst: I sometimes pull down from my shelves a favorite book that I had read years before-sometimes for enjoyment, sometimes to study an author’s technique. I recently had the joy of rediscovering Alan Hollinghurst’s “The Swimming-Pool Library”, about London’s underground gay community in the 1980s. When I first read the book in 1989 I was awed by the author’s prose style and his unabashed depiction of gay life. It was a marvelously sexy book and it was just as magnificent in my re-reading of it. -Jameson Currier
Many folks may be more familiar with Hollinghurst´s Man Booker Prizewinning The Line of Beauty, but I prefer this earlier novel. It explores many of the themes of the more famous book - 1980s London, the embattled British class system, cocaine, AIDS, race, and gay subculture - but with the freshness of the first look, the raw mad joy of discovery, and the recklessness of a supremely talented author establishing his voice. -Lee Benoit
38) The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
39) Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
40) Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
41) Melusine by Sarah Monette
42) A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White
43) The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide
44) A Density of Souls by Christopher Rice
45) Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham
46) Angels in America by Tony Kushner
47) Maybe the Moon by Armistead Maupin: Harper Collins. Great story about a dwarf actress whose claim to fame was starring in an ET-like movie. I’ve always loved stories/books/movies about those who (like myself!) came to Hollywood to make it in some way. Most of us, of course, don’t make it or have many strange twists and turns on that journey, and this is such a story. The heroine, Cady, is a take-no-prisoners little person who somewhere in the book refers to herself as a “fat baby with tits and pubic hair.” It’s hard not to love a character like that. I found this a somewhat more serious and touching novel than the “Tales of the City” series, just a beautiful piece of work. -Jim Arnold
48) Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin: Back in the late 1970s a friend gave me a copy of Armistead Maupin’s novel “Tales of the City”, which set me onto a course of coming out as a gay man and writing about gay lives. As I made my way through other gay books by other gay writers, I also made my way through Maupin’s thrilling six-volume odyssey of his family of queer characters at 28 Barbary Lane in San Francisco. These books were lent to friends and passed along to other friends, who lent them to other friends. There were phone calls and discussions at bars and dinner parties on which book we liked best and what character was our favorite. The series ended in 1989, with Michael “Mouse” Tolliver HIV-positive, and in 1989 many of us believed that this was not a good sign; within the eleven-year publishing period of “Tales of the City” and its sequels, life in the gay community had significantly changed because of the impact of AIDS. “Michael Tolliver Lives”, published in 2007, reunites us with Michael almost two decades later, now approaching 55, buoyed by a drug cocktail and “glad to belong to this sweet confederacy of survivors.” This book made me burst into tears of joy - a rare feat. Written in the first person - from Michael’s point of view - “Michael Tolliver Lives” at times feels more like a memoir than a novel to me, perhaps because I harbor the belief that Mouse is an old friend I haven’t heard from in a while (and delighted to find is still around). I could not put this book down, tugged by the glow and melodrama of memories - both Maupin’s and my own. -Jameson Currier
The Tales of the City books, like The Front Runner, were eye-openers and touchstones for me as a young gay man coming to grips with his own identity. Reading this last entry in the series really resonated with me and touched me, since I am not far behind Michael himself and have experienced many, if not most, of his same joys and sorrows. -Rick R. Reed
49) Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany
50) Luna by Julie Anne Peters
51) Smoke and Shadows by Tanya Huff
52) The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt
53) Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
54) China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh
55) Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez
56) Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger
57) Geography Club by Brent Hartinger
58) Troll by Johanna Sinisalo
59) Hero by Perry Moore
60) Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story by Paul Monette
61) The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant by Dan Savage
62) Trash by Dorothy Allison
63) As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann
64) Was by Geoff Ryman
65) The Beautiful Room Is Empty by Edmund White
66) Liquor by Poppy Z. Brite
67) Six of One by Rita Mae Brown
68) The Charioteer by Mary Renault
69) Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim
70) Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal
71) Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley
72) Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran
73) The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies by Vito Russo
74) Ash by Malinda Lo
75) Forbidden Colors by Yukio Mishima
76) Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chancey
77) The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp
78) The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren
79) Carnival by Elizabeth Bear
80) My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park by Steve Kluger
81) The Spell by Alan Hollinghurst: Hollinghurst is one of my favorite living writers. He seems to be incapable of composing a dull sentence, and his insights into the smallest details of his characters’ gestures and behavior are so precise and revealing, they’re truly exhilarating. Although this novel didn’t receive as much praise as his others--and is not “major” in the way of The Line of Beauty-it’s a charming, sexy, comedy of manners with something to admire on every page. Hollinghurst is a challenge for critics-an unquestionably brilliant novelist who writes about gay sex (among men) with unflinching, titillating honesty. Google John Updike’s review of this book for The New Yorker for an example of admiration mixed with extreme discomfort. -Stephen McCauley
82) The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara
83) The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal
84) All Through the Night: A Troubleshooter Christmas by Suzanne Brockmann
85) Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir by Paul Monette
86) The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer
87) Diving Into The Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 by Adrienne Rich
88) The Object of My Affection by Stephen McCauley
89) The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village by Samuel R. Delany
90) No Night Is Too Long by Ruth Rendell
91) Catch Trap by Marion Zimmer Bradley
92) Family Album by Danielle Steel
93) The Orton Diaries
94) SM 101: A Realistic Introduction by Jay Wiseman
95) Like People in History by Felice Picano
96) Arkansas: Three Novellas by David Leavitt
97) The Life to Come: And Other Stories by E.M. Forster: E.M. Forster is well-known for his seminal gay novel “Maurice”, as well as for mainstream classics like “A Passage to India” and “Howard's End.” The quality of writing in this short story collection, however, shows that Forster was equally adept at writing shorter pieces. Many of the stories were unpublished until 1970 due to gay themes, and include standouts like the humorous seaside vignette “The Obelisk” and “The Other Boat,” a tragic story of an interracial relationship during the days of the Empire. -G.S. Wiley
98) The Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram
99) Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea
100) Almost Like Being in Love by Steve Kluger
1) Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. This very funny book, which opens with “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.” is about a good many things, including Greek relatives, genetics, gender, , silk worms, and Detroit. The main character is a hermaphrodite. Simply one of the best books I've ever read. --Lynn Flewelling
2) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay by Michael Chabon. The characters in this novel are so real, so touching, and so heartbreaking. I get all verklempt just thinking about it. --Astrid Amara
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay by Michael Chabon. I forget exactly why I picked up this novel initially, but I wasn’t fifty pages in before I was preparing to shelve it next to American Gods as a favorite novel-and this was before I knew one of the main characters was gay. Somehow I managed to go into this story so cold that I discovered Sammy’s orientation right along with him, which is a gift I’ll always cherish. (I realize I’ve just ruined it for anyone reading this who didn’t know. Ah. Sorry!) But the Sammy’s sexual journey is just one facet of the novel. It’s set in the period around the second World War, and overall it is a story of loss and change and growth. Not growing up, exactly. Just growth. Growth of a country, of the comic book industry, of men, of families. Loss of innocence, loss of love, of life. There are missed opportunities and opportunities made out of sorrow. The book is just so big I don’t know how to describe it. It’s a rich tapestry of lives and character and hope built out of great loss. It’s also flat-out a wonderful novel about men. --Heidi Cullinan
3) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin: I read this in college, as part of a class on science fiction literature. Not only is the writing superb, but the story just drew me right in. What I remember most, though, is this book presenting me with my first opportunity to really talk about what it means to be a woman or a man or neither or both, what it means to be straight or gay or bisexual. If nothing else, this book is the perfect starting point for some fascinating, NECESSARY conversations. -J.M. Snyder
I read all of her novels and stories as they come out, but this early book about a world of winter where people change -- seriously change -- with the seasons is one of her best still. LeGuin has this uncanny ability to make you feel, believe and at the same time be rapt in wonder at what she can write of. Sci-Fi for people who don’t usually read sci-fi. -Felice Picano
This was my first gender-bending book, and it had and has a deep appeal for me. What if people did change genders monthly? What a wonderful, equal world it would be! 'Nuff said! --Lynn Flewelling
4) A Separate Peace by John Knowles: While not blatantly a gay novel, any young gay man who read it in school knows its power. Knowles was a gay man and infused his writing with the pathos and desire that only gay people can know. This was the first gay romantic relationship I had ever read about, and the fact that teachers don´t comment on the underlying love affair when teaching is a true careless disservice to the book and gay youth. -Eric Arvin
But back in the day, I read a LOT of plays. So while everyone else might have been reading “A Separate Peace” in school, like my daughter, and discovering that they had questions about relationships that seemed to blur the lines between friendship and something more between two men or two women, I was reading “The Children’s Hour” and “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” and wondering about the same thing. -Z.A. Maxfield
5) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh: Ah, male costume drama! I saw the Masterpiece Theater series first, and forever imprinted on the cast. The book was lovely, fraught with not-so-thinly veiled homoeroticism, angst, and pathos. I remember the acerbic scenes between Charles and his father being a deliciously vivid contrast to his dreamy Oxford days with Sebastian and his teddy. Watching Sebastian's slow self destruction was heart breaking, as was Charles' projection of his forbidden feelings for Sebastian onto Julia, with tragic results. --Lynn Flewelling
6) Orlando by Virginia Woolf: A classic in so many ways, the history behind this book makes the meaning and the layers even more eloquent and opens up a whole new world of interpretation. Essentially a love letter to one of Woolf’s partners, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is a coded lesbian romance. Orlando is a nobleman who simply decides through his own will that he will never grow old. He moves through the centuries, has many romances and even changes sex, becoming the Lady Orlando. It was because of the gender-bendering and ‘fantastical’ elements that Woolf could, at the time, explore gender and sexuality in a way that had never been done before. It is a brilliant work that should be read by everybody. -Sean Kennedy
7) Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg: I´m a fan of the Southern gothic genre, as you will learn by the end of this post. Fannie Flagg captures the genre beautifully with a tale that centers on an "alternative family" in Depression-era Alabama. Whether you interpret tomboy Idgie and her best friend Ruth´s relationship as that of closet lesbians or nonsexual life partners, the unarguable fact remains that in raising a son and running a business together, these two women share a bond over several years that transcends both platonic and romantic love. I cry every time I read the book or watch the movie, yet I also laugh out loud throughout. This whimsical tale not only holds a place in my top ten GLBT reads, but in my top five favorite books, period. -Katrina Strauss
8) Dry by Augusten Burroughs: I did a lot of drinking in order to finish the manuscript of my most recent novel, “The Wolf at the Door”, in part, because the narrator heavily imbibes in order to survive his chaotic job at a guesthouse in New Orleans where he imagines he is seeing ghosts and angels and all sorts of oddities. Augusten Burrough’s memoir “Dry” is all about the author’s zeal to quench his addictive behavior with the bottle. It’s superbly crafted, full of angst and wit, particularly as the author seeks to remain sober and avoid a romance with an overly handsome crack addict. Another book readers might want to explore is Charles Jackson’s 1944 novel “The Lost Weekend”, about a man who cannot let go of his desire to drink. And note: all of the gay material in the novel was excised when it became the Oscar winning film. -Jameson Currier
Burroughs soul searing honesty regarding his alcoholism is what kept me turning page after page of this haunting memoir. There is no self pity here, no whining, just a blunt appraisal of the mess he was making of his life. Riveting. All his memoirs are exceptional reads, e.g. Running With Scissors, but Dry remains my favorite. -J.P. Bowie
9) Magical Thinking: True Stories by Augusten Burroughs: Rather than the more famous “Running With Scissors,” which I have to admit I haven't read, this is a hilarious series of essays in which the very gay Burroughs lets all his neuroses hang out. -Kyell Gold
10) Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters: In 2003-ish, there was a BBC miniseries based on this book. A good friend of mine called and invited herself over to watch it with me. I’d never even heard of Sarah Waters, but I genuinely enjoyed the miniseries, enough so that I went out and bought the book. I love a good Victorian epic, and I still think this is one of the best I’ve ever read. I think I also really identified with Nan, and it’s fun to watch her blossom over the course of the book. -Kate McMurray
11) Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel: No argument Alison Bechdel’s first books, “Dykes To Watch Out For,” are jewels in the crown of gay literature. But even their brilliance did not prepare me for the emotional depth and narrative complexity of “Fun Home.” Just when I thought the memoir had been thoroughly exhausted, Bechdel made two brilliant decisions. She used her skill as an artist to tell her story through amazing, detailed drawings. The pictures are so good she almost didn’t need words, but her writing is amazing. Bechdel is so concise (she has to be to fit a whole book into speech balloons!) I kept flipping back and re-reading pages to slow the book down. -Aaron Krach
12) Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin: Here again, like the Harry Potter books, I'm lumping them all together though each book stands on it's own. The characters are utterly beautiful in their flawed state of discovery and evolving. They start with Mary Ann Singleton, who, while on vacation in San Francisco, just stays. Here again, I loved the writer's style and the way he brought the characters to life. I read them from start to finish in about a month and I cried like a baby when I read the very last one. -Johnny Miles
Reading this series when I was a teenager made me want to be a writer. I felt such loss when I finished a book, because the characters had become part of me. I internalized Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, to the point that I still sometimes talk like him. I felt Mary Ann Singleton´s angst when she felt like she couldn´t connect to others upon moving to San Francisco, and I sobbed when characters starting dying of AIDS. To this day, it is my greatest dream to create a world as richly textured and believable as the one Maupin created at 28 Barbary Lane. -Bill Konigsberg
What I wouldn’t give to live at 28 Barbary Lane - which is actually saying a lot, considering I hated the fashion of the seventies. I mean really…could they have discovered a more revolting color palette to choose from? I don’t think so! But I’d suffer it all over again to live upstairs with Michael, Mary Ann, & Mona at Mrs. Madrigal’s. This was the first book I ever read where I was able to see myself, unapologetically staring back at me from the page. The ever-hopeless romantic, trying on new men - praying one of them would fit - never giving up, no matter how many times I wound up heartbroken and alone. While I haven’t tried on quite as many guys as Mouse did, I still to this day can’t seem to drive that wishful-thinking-someday-my-prince-will-come-mentality out of my own ditzy head. I keep trying, but no matter how much sarcasm I put on, it doesn’t seem to help. Go figure? Tales is fun, light, at times wickedly funny, and helped me justify a tiny little piece of my own identity as a gay man by showing me I wasn’t so alone after all. -Ethan Day
I was completely captivated by Maupin’s Tales of the City - a series of books revolving around the inhabitants of an apartment building in San Francisco run by an eccentric landlady, Anna Madrigal, who regards her tenants as her adopted children. Every character, Michael (Mouse) Tolliver, Mary Ann Singleton, Anna’s daughter Mona etc., come to vivid and endearing life within the pages. The series was addictive and hard to give up, and was the inspiration behind my own foray into this crazy world of writing. Many years later Maupin wrote Michael Tolliver Lives when an aging Michael, loving and living with a younger man, finds his past catching up with him as he is forced to face the complexities of his family’s, and long-lost friends’, issues. -J.P. Bowie
There is no denying that this is a gay classic, and it works so well because it shows gay people interacting with the straight community rather than being apart from it. The whacky residents of Barbary Lane can be followed through seven books, although you should be warned that as the books move into the eighties they become a bit more sombre when the impact of AIDS is first known. -Sean Kennedy
Does every gay man start their gay reading with this book? Possibly the answer is yes, and I think that’s a wonderful thing. It’s funny but real, risky but ultimately safe (like a mother’s approving hug), and it captures a moment in time that is the foundation of contemporary gay society. For any gay man who realizes and respects how significant the 70s were for gay life, owning this book is just as important as owning CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC by the Village People or cherishing those Tom of Finland drawings. -Geoffrey Knight
13) The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst: A perfectly rendered portrait of England in the 1980s and the rise of the new right, this story about young gay Nick Guest and his social and sexual awakening is harrowing stuff, since we know that tragedy lurks just around the corner for not only our naïve young-and often selfish-protagonist, but for a whole segment of society. -Rick R. Reed
Shows how life has changed for gay men in the seventy years since Maurice was written. I came to this book having seen the TV adaptation and was mostly delighted. (The start and end are magnificent, even if I felt as I read the middle bit “Oh, not another sex/drugs scene”). Anyone who lived through yuppie excesses and Mrs Thatcher’s tenure of number ten will appreciate this book and the way it holds hypocrisy up to ridicule. Reader beware, though. Nick Guest is just about the only likeable character in the book - he’s adorable but the rest…*shrugs*. -Charlie Cochrane
14) Death in Venice by Thomas Mann: Sad, poignant and homoerotic, Mann’s descriptions of turn-of-the-century Venice in the throes of a cholera epidemic have haunted me for decades. I did a book report on Death in Venice in high school: relaying the aging, stifled Aschenbach’s twisted obsession for twink Tadzio in front of a batch of Republican/Christian teenagers was my first act of coming out (Mrs. Carruth, my beloved English teacher, beamed at me throughout the entire presentation). -Nick Nolan
I have only one word to describe these two short novels which always seemed to me to be oddly paired: classics. Whether you enjoy them or not, they are must reads for every gay man. -Hal Bodner
Both this novel and the movie surprised me. Could it have been written in 1925? Again, the risk the author had taken in a society that shunned homosexuality, astounded me. Even as I watched the film with Dirk Bogarde I kept asking myself if this man was really lusting after a young boy. It was inconceivable to me that it was such a controversial story, yet possibly because the love had never been consummated it was forgiven. Call it what you like, but again, this story intrigued me. -G.A. Hauser
15) Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey: I put Magic’s Pawn here, but it’s actually the first of a trilogy and I’d say that the entire series is on my “favorites” list. Vanyel, the main character of this trilogy, is both an incredibly powerful mage and a young gay man in a world where being gay is not exactly celebrated. He does find acceptance from some people, though, and finds love, as well. The Last Herald-Mage trilogy is part of a larger Valdemar series from Mercedes Lackey, which was how I stumbled across it and managed to read it in middle school without raising eyebrows from my mother. That Vanyel found a home, and was valued for his abilities, was reassuring to me as I was dealing with my own burgeoning sexuality. -Dianne Fox
Soon after my agent sold my first m/m novel, Luck in the Shadows, in 1995, she urged me to read Magic's Pawn, saying it reminded her of my book. I could see some similarities, and was flattered to have my writing compared to Lackey's. I enjoyed the first two books very much, but was sorry to see how she ultimately destroyed her hero in the end. In writing the Nightrunner books, I had vowed that I would let my gay main characters be strong, heroic survivors, who emerged from terrible situations-if not unscathed- then at least victorious. They would not be victims. There are quite enough of those in literature and film already. After reading LHM, I also established a tongue-in-cheek "no pink cape" cover clause with my editor at Bantam. -Lynn Flewelling
It was a few years later before I randomly picked up my first Mercedes Lackey book and found myself immersed in her incredibly imaginative world of Valdemar. I was around fifteen at the time, and I immediately fell in love with her take on magic and fantasy. I devoured all her books I could find. Then I read Magic's Pawn, and it's not an exaggeration to say my life changed forever. It was the first time I'd ever seen a gay character in a book. And that wasn't all. Vanyel wasn't just gay. He fell in love and had sex, and it was all presented as being completely natural. My entire world-view shifted in that reading. All three books in the trilogy left a deep, lasting impression on me. Vanyel was my first literary crush, and he still holds a special place in my heart after all these years. -Josh Aterovis
16) Magic's Price by Mercedes Lackey: Male romance and magic and myth-oh my! The first time I read Mercedes Lackey’s Last Herald Mage trilogy I thought I’d died and gone to fantasy heaven. It was my first time falling into a fantasy world where men made magic-and made love to each other. All three books in this series should be read, preferably in order. But the last in the series is my favorite. -Dan Stone
17) The Passion by Jeanette Winterson: Another novel I read in college. This is about Henri, a soldier, who falls in love with Villanelle, the daughter of a Venetian boatman, who lost her heart (literally) to a married noblewoman and wanders the world in search of it. When I say "lost," I mean physically ~ one of the best things about Winterson's writing is her words. I loved the language of the book, and I remember falling in love with Winterson's writing style (and it didn't hurt that her first name is the same as mine). Immediately after I read this book, I wrote quite a few poems about keeping one's heart safe in a box, then went out and bought a number of Winterson's other novels. If you haven't read anything by her, you're missing out. -J.M. Snyder
"Magical Realism" was coined for books like this. Set in the Napoleonic Wars, it´s about a woman whose heart is literally stolen by another woman and she goes searching to reclaim it. Breathtaking. Like all the books on my Top 10 list, after I put this down I asked myself what the hell I was doing writing. Nothing I ever scratched out would ever compare to this. -Eric Arvin
18) Cry to Heaven by Anne Rice: I probably once considered this a masterwork of gay fiction. Years later, I realize it’s a masterwork exploration of male sexuality, manhood, and gender, and that the themes and concepts of homosexuality explored therein were an enforced part of the castrati way of life, as inescapable to them as breathing air, and as necessary. Set in 18th century Venice and the countryside and cities of Europe, “Cry to Heaven” is a big book (576 pages) and worth every second spent reading it. I could find no fault with the history or prose in this novel (Anne Rice does her research almost too well), but it’s a novel that leaves you wanting so much more on the romance side. Although Tonio Treschi- a noble Venetian castrated against his will to impede his inheritance of his father’s estate - and his maestro/lover Guido are both solid and well-rounded characters with great depth, their affair never quite hits the highs that are associated with the romance genre. Neither does Tonio quite hit that note with anyone. His affair with the older Guido is, in the beginning, strictly on Guido’s terms. Guido takes other lovers and refuses to stop, citing his own needs and saying Tonio will understand “one day”. Tonio swallows his pain and does seem to eventually come around to Guido’s point of view. In my opinion, that move truly killed the romance element of the book, for by the time Tonio comes into his own sexual power and can make his own terms, he has lost his passion (though not his love) for Guido, and though they still have a life together, it’s a bit crowded with the other loves they bring into the relationship. One of the things I learned from “Cry to Heaven” was how not to disappoint readers who pick a book up for its promise of romance. To this day, I stop re-reading “Cry to Heaven” at the part where Guido breaks Tonio’s heart. -Kirby Crow
This book has the distinction of being the only non-romance on the list, though it does have a sprinkling of romantic elements. When I think back, this is the book that sparked that ‘ah!’ moment. I bought it because I was a fan of Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches series. I ended up with something entirely different than anything I’d ever read, and I loved it. I was completely captivated by the beautiful Tonio and his struggles to reconcile himself to his fate as a castrati and find his place in that world. It was literally years later when I stumbled upon erotic romances that featured bisexual heroes (no gay heroes in those), and it took another few years to stumble upon m/m romance ebooks. Though once I found m/m romance, it didn’t take me nearly as long before I started to write my own stories. -Ava March
What was it about those castrati? Tonio’s sexual encounters with men after he became a eunuch, his affair with a Cardinal were all so shocking and delightfully sacrilegious. It was after this novel I went slightly crazy looking for more. Nothing came close at the time to the teasing prose of Anne Rice’s darkness and sorrow. So I read this book again and again. Her characters had a profound influence on me. -G.A. Hauser
19) Maurice by E.M. Forster: Forster is, of course, one of our literary lions. This tale of love between men was written deep in the past and, at the author’s request, published posthumously. So no punches were pulled. Taking on the class structure as well as societal disdain for gay love, there is no question what desires lay deep in Forster’s eloquent heart. -Lee Bantle
Jimmy gave me this novel as a 7th anniversary gift, Memorial Day 1972. (I just showed the inscribed edition to him; he exclaimed: "How sweet! Now don't cry! Don't burst into tears!" Why do I write romantic novels?!) I love this book so much that its two central characters, Maurice Hall and the heavenly Alec Scudder are currently frequent guests at Gaywyck and are the greatest pals with Robert Gaylord in “Children of Paradise”. And why not? I love them! Forster thinks they "still roam the greenwood." He may have written one of favorite novels, “Howard's End”, but he can be very silly. They needed to "connect" with their brothers in this our life. So I've given them the community Forster never had while he was alive. "A happy ending was imperative," he writes in the novel's "Terminal Notes, even though Maurice says: "All the world's against us." Forster was right and helped inspire me to act accordingly with “Gaywyck”. (If I had a happy "ending" why couldn't they?) Meanwhile, my heart swells every time Alec says to Maurice: "And now we shan't be parted no more, and that's finished." -Vincent Virga
A work that’s beautifully lyrical, understated and full of wonderful characters; most of the things I’d like to say about Maurice have already been said by better folk than me. I’ll just add one note - this book was written by a gay man, yet it resembles (style, pacing, slowly building and hesitant romance) some of the gay romances which originate from a female pen. To me, it’s one of the great pieces of evidence to counter the ‘men don’t write like women do, they understand gay relationships differently’ argument. Some men clearly do/did think and write this way. The extent to which Maurice is autobiographical (or at least based on EMF’s experiences) is a matter for debate - the author said that Maurice was very different from him - but I see EMF when I read it…. -Charlie Cochrane
Male costume drama with a happy ending! I loved Forster's skewering of the Victorian British social hierarchy, contrasting Maurice's strangled, hamstrung relationship with the self-hating but socially equal Clive, with his ultimate, willing conquest by the Pan-like game keeper's son, Alec Scutter. Caught between the two, tossing and turning on his bed in Clive's house, Maurice finally throws open the window and shouts hopelessly, "Come!" And Alec does. And so does Maurice, in short order. And did I mention that it actually has a happy ending? Good movie, too. -Lynn Flewelling
Maurice is, again, long and beautifully written. It's a comfort read for me, because despite Maurice's ill fated affair with his university sweetheart Clive, by the time Clive has become a pompous hypocrite, Alec has breezed onto the scene. And I may be a little in love with Alec, who is aggressive and inarticulate and lower class, perfectly willing to engage in blackmail, and literally a breath of fresh air. This was a ground-breaking book in its day, with its insistence on a happy ending for its two heroes, and I appreciate that a lot. There's something, even in the book, that lets you know how unbearably poignant, how lucky, how unexpected are the tender scenes between stuffy old Maurice and forthright, unashamed Alec. I'd have liked more of Maurice/Alec and less of Maurice/Clive, but I can see that it took the failure of the first relationship to enable the success of the second. Another classic, as it should be. -Alex Beecroft
One of England’s most prominent novelists, the story that was closest to Forster’s heart was only published after his death. This book means so much to me because it was one of the first ‘gay’ books I ever read, sneaking it off my older sister’s shelf. It was also one of the first representations of a gay couple I discovered in film or literature that didn’t end in tragedy. Seriously, check out the excellent documentary The Celluloid Closet to discover just how often a gay, or gay-coded, character doesn’t survive the film they’re in. Imagine my relief where I read a story where the characters slipped away into the mist, presumably to find a place where they could live freely and happily. -Sean Kennedy
20) Lord John and the Private Matter by Diana Gabaldon: There are several Lord John Grey books including Lord John and the Private Matter, Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, and Lord John and the Hand of Devils. This is a mixed recommendation because there´s a lot about these books that makes me insanely furious (like why doesn´t John just GET OVER his stupid love of Jamie Fraser and move on already and why oh why won´t the author just let him get what he deserves for once). That said, I still recommend them because the writing is really well done. The historic details are engrossing, and I DO like the character a great deal. So it´s a GRR! recommendation because I think it could be so much more. -Astrid Amara
Another long, plot heavy, sex light book which is written beautifully, has some amazing characters and pays lots of attention to the setting. I think it's admirable that Gabaldon, the author of a hugely successful time travelling mainstream fantasy/romance series should have chosen to foreground one of her gay characters and give him his own series. And I love Lord John's careful, methodical character. I love his mum and his brother, and all the supporting characters. I love the setting in 18th Century England, particularly when Gabaldon explores the molly houses and gay subculture in this novel. I'm less keen on the fact that John continues to moon after Jamie, the resolutely heterosexual and rather homophobic hero of Gabaldon's larger series, and John's discomfort with his own sexuality may be in keeping with the times, but also discomforts me. The balance is very much for the book, though, and I'm still patiently hoping for John to tell Jamie where to get off, and to find a nice steady English lad to settle down with. -Alex Beecroft
21) Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
22) A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
23) Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
24) Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
25) Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner
26) Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling
27) Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
28) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
29) The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
30) Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold
31) At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill
32) Drawing Blood by Poppy Z. Brite
33) Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
34) Another Country by James Baldwin
35) Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault
36) Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block
37) The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Holinghurst: I sometimes pull down from my shelves a favorite book that I had read years before-sometimes for enjoyment, sometimes to study an author’s technique. I recently had the joy of rediscovering Alan Hollinghurst’s “The Swimming-Pool Library”, about London’s underground gay community in the 1980s. When I first read the book in 1989 I was awed by the author’s prose style and his unabashed depiction of gay life. It was a marvelously sexy book and it was just as magnificent in my re-reading of it. -Jameson Currier
Many folks may be more familiar with Hollinghurst´s Man Booker Prizewinning The Line of Beauty, but I prefer this earlier novel. It explores many of the themes of the more famous book - 1980s London, the embattled British class system, cocaine, AIDS, race, and gay subculture - but with the freshness of the first look, the raw mad joy of discovery, and the recklessness of a supremely talented author establishing his voice. -Lee Benoit
38) The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
39) Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
40) Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
41) Melusine by Sarah Monette
42) A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White
43) The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide
44) A Density of Souls by Christopher Rice
45) Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham
46) Angels in America by Tony Kushner
47) Maybe the Moon by Armistead Maupin: Harper Collins. Great story about a dwarf actress whose claim to fame was starring in an ET-like movie. I’ve always loved stories/books/movies about those who (like myself!) came to Hollywood to make it in some way. Most of us, of course, don’t make it or have many strange twists and turns on that journey, and this is such a story. The heroine, Cady, is a take-no-prisoners little person who somewhere in the book refers to herself as a “fat baby with tits and pubic hair.” It’s hard not to love a character like that. I found this a somewhat more serious and touching novel than the “Tales of the City” series, just a beautiful piece of work. -Jim Arnold
48) Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin: Back in the late 1970s a friend gave me a copy of Armistead Maupin’s novel “Tales of the City”, which set me onto a course of coming out as a gay man and writing about gay lives. As I made my way through other gay books by other gay writers, I also made my way through Maupin’s thrilling six-volume odyssey of his family of queer characters at 28 Barbary Lane in San Francisco. These books were lent to friends and passed along to other friends, who lent them to other friends. There were phone calls and discussions at bars and dinner parties on which book we liked best and what character was our favorite. The series ended in 1989, with Michael “Mouse” Tolliver HIV-positive, and in 1989 many of us believed that this was not a good sign; within the eleven-year publishing period of “Tales of the City” and its sequels, life in the gay community had significantly changed because of the impact of AIDS. “Michael Tolliver Lives”, published in 2007, reunites us with Michael almost two decades later, now approaching 55, buoyed by a drug cocktail and “glad to belong to this sweet confederacy of survivors.” This book made me burst into tears of joy - a rare feat. Written in the first person - from Michael’s point of view - “Michael Tolliver Lives” at times feels more like a memoir than a novel to me, perhaps because I harbor the belief that Mouse is an old friend I haven’t heard from in a while (and delighted to find is still around). I could not put this book down, tugged by the glow and melodrama of memories - both Maupin’s and my own. -Jameson Currier
The Tales of the City books, like The Front Runner, were eye-openers and touchstones for me as a young gay man coming to grips with his own identity. Reading this last entry in the series really resonated with me and touched me, since I am not far behind Michael himself and have experienced many, if not most, of his same joys and sorrows. -Rick R. Reed
49) Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany
50) Luna by Julie Anne Peters
51) Smoke and Shadows by Tanya Huff
52) The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt
53) Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
54) China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh
55) Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez
56) Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger
57) Geography Club by Brent Hartinger
58) Troll by Johanna Sinisalo
59) Hero by Perry Moore
60) Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story by Paul Monette
61) The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant by Dan Savage
62) Trash by Dorothy Allison
63) As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann
64) Was by Geoff Ryman
65) The Beautiful Room Is Empty by Edmund White
66) Liquor by Poppy Z. Brite
67) Six of One by Rita Mae Brown
68) The Charioteer by Mary Renault
69) Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim
70) Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal
71) Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley
72) Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran
73) The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies by Vito Russo
74) Ash by Malinda Lo
75) Forbidden Colors by Yukio Mishima
76) Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chancey
77) The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp
78) The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren
79) Carnival by Elizabeth Bear
80) My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park by Steve Kluger
81) The Spell by Alan Hollinghurst: Hollinghurst is one of my favorite living writers. He seems to be incapable of composing a dull sentence, and his insights into the smallest details of his characters’ gestures and behavior are so precise and revealing, they’re truly exhilarating. Although this novel didn’t receive as much praise as his others--and is not “major” in the way of The Line of Beauty-it’s a charming, sexy, comedy of manners with something to admire on every page. Hollinghurst is a challenge for critics-an unquestionably brilliant novelist who writes about gay sex (among men) with unflinching, titillating honesty. Google John Updike’s review of this book for The New Yorker for an example of admiration mixed with extreme discomfort. -Stephen McCauley
82) The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara
83) The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal
84) All Through the Night: A Troubleshooter Christmas by Suzanne Brockmann
85) Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir by Paul Monette
86) The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer
87) Diving Into The Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 by Adrienne Rich
88) The Object of My Affection by Stephen McCauley
89) The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village by Samuel R. Delany
90) No Night Is Too Long by Ruth Rendell
91) Catch Trap by Marion Zimmer Bradley
92) Family Album by Danielle Steel
93) The Orton Diaries
94) SM 101: A Realistic Introduction by Jay Wiseman
95) Like People in History by Felice Picano
96) Arkansas: Three Novellas by David Leavitt
97) The Life to Come: And Other Stories by E.M. Forster: E.M. Forster is well-known for his seminal gay novel “Maurice”, as well as for mainstream classics like “A Passage to India” and “Howard's End.” The quality of writing in this short story collection, however, shows that Forster was equally adept at writing shorter pieces. Many of the stories were unpublished until 1970 due to gay themes, and include standouts like the humorous seaside vignette “The Obelisk” and “The Other Boat,” a tragic story of an interracial relationship during the days of the Empire. -G.S. Wiley
98) The Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram
99) Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea
100) Almost Like Being in Love by Steve Kluger