Boy Culture by Matthew Rettenmund
It's always an hard task to write a good novel from a very good movie, and I think that most of the time you like one of them, the novel or the movie, but not both. So I was hesitant to read "Boy Culture" since I think the movie is one of the most wonderful gay romance movie out there. But the book is even better! Maybe since it's not an adaptation, but it was a novel way before it was made into a movie? I think that the novel is better since the main hero, "X", has an innocence that was lost in the movie; the movie was also more "Hollywood" style, in the break and following declaration of forever love (wonderful scene with the two actors making out on the stairs), that X and Andrew actually don't have: their love story is more intimate, and it evolves nicely, there is no dramatic event that pushes X to take his decision to retire from being an hustler, he does it since he loves Andrew and I prefer this reason, for me it's a real proof that his love his sincere, he doesn't change who he is to "please" Andrew, he changes since he wants to be a better man "for" Andrew.
A thing I didn't like of the book is the output of X's relationship with Gregory, the octogenarian trick who tells X stories, and who helps him to realize he is in love with Andrew. Like in the movie, Gregory lies to X, but in the novel X is not able to forgive him... I feel sad for Gregory, I think it's not his fault if he was like that, it was a generation gap. But probably X has to break with Gregory since of all his tricks, he is the only one with whom X really betrays Andrew.
For being an hustler, X has a strange concept of betrayal and fidelity, something I'm not sure it came out from the movie. X's first love was a cousin of him, the boy who took his virginity when he was 13 years old and who broke his heart soon after. From this very bad first experience X learned two things: to associate true love with being a bottom, it's like you give yourself totally to another person, it's a so intimate act that it's scaring, and second that having sex without love is simple and better if done with an older man, less chance to fall in love. So X as an hustler tops only, and in a way, he remains pure and innocent, he is not selling love, he is selling something (being a bottom) that he will not share with his real lover, so it's not important. When X starts to think that it would be nice to have a boyfriend, to find Mr Right, he falls for his roommate Andrew, a man that in the book is stronger than X, both in body that in morality. It's so tender to hear X's thoughts when he said that he is no longer a virgin, he did everything with his body, but he is still virgin in one thing, no one ever really loved him. Only for this thoughts I think he is a lot stronger than what he thinks.
The book closes in a nice way, in a way that makes me think if there is not something of the author himself in X... All in all, thinking that this is a novel published in the '90, I'm surprise of how much a romance it's (there is even a reference to Fabio, the romance cover model...): I'm used to find gay romance good like this one now, but I didn't expect it in this one.
Amazon: Boy Culture: A Novel
Reading List:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bott
Cover Art (photography) by Brian
It's always an hard task to write a good novel from a very good movie, and I think that most of the time you like one of them, the novel or the movie, but not both. So I was hesitant to read "Boy Culture" since I think the movie is one of the most wonderful gay romance movie out there. But the book is even better! Maybe since it's not an adaptation, but it was a novel way before it was made into a movie? 
Two Games: A Matched Pair of Sports Stories by Julia Talbot and B,A, Tortuga 
Two Games: A Matched Pair of Sports Stories by Julia Talbot and B,A, Tortuga 
Full Moon Mating, Wolf Creek Pack 1, by Stormy Glenn 
Full Moon Mating, Wolf Creek Pack 1, by Stormy Glenn 
Tasty Treats, Volume 3, by Stormy Glenn, Jenny Penn, Tymber Dalton & Blaze Ballantine 
Tasty Treats, Volume 3, by Stormy Glenn, Jenny Penn, Tymber Dalton & Blaze Ballantine 
Cage Match by Bonnie Dee 
Cage Match by Bonnie Dee 
Cattle Valley: Fool's Gold by Jenna Byrnes 
Cattle Valley: Fool's Gold by Jenna Byrnes 
Good Company by JL Merrow 
Good Company by JL Merrow 
Sorcerer's Lover II by Shawn Lane 
Sorcerer's Lover II by Shawn Lane 
Going to the Chapel stories by Jenna Jones, JJ Massa, and Alexa Snow 
Going to the Chapel stories by Jenna Jones, JJ Massa, and Alexa Snow 
Hell Cop 2 by Astrid Amara, Nicole Kimberling & Ginn Hale 
Hell Cop 2 by Astrid Amara, Nicole Kimberling & Ginn Hale 
The Bones of Summer by Anne Brooke 
The Bones of Summer by Anne Brooke 
Written In Blood by Luisa Prieto 
Written In Blood by Luisa Prieto 
Picture This, The Heroes of Silver Springs # 5, by Tonya Ramagos 
Picture This, The Heroes of Silver Springs # 5, by Tonya Ramagos 
A Conspiracy of Ravens by William Maltese 
A Conspiracy of Ravens by William Maltese 
VGL Male Seeks Same by Rick R. Reed
NEG UB2 by Rick R. Reed
This is a novella that is really true, sincere and open, without loosing the romance; it's a light in the blackness that falls down upon whom discovers to be ill, and it gives hope. It doesn't give an answer, and I like that, even in the end, it doesn't explain who is wrong and who is right, the important thing is to cope and move on, always thinking positive to live positive.
VGL Male Seeks Same by Rick R. Reed
NEG UB2 by Rick R. Reed
This is a novella that is really true, sincere and open, without loosing the romance; it's a light in the blackness that falls down upon whom discovers to be ill, and it gives hope. It doesn't give an answer, and I like that, even in the end, it doesn't explain who is wrong and who is right, the important thing is to cope and move on, always thinking positive to live positive.
In the first book Adam, a former soldier who came back home from was was not able to return to his old life, found shelter in Calvin's hunting lodges in a small town in Texas. Someone could see Adam's decision as a run from reality, as if he wasn't faced the true. I see it instead as if Adam chose to go back the real meaning of life, and to find it, he had to go in a place where there wasn't superstructure, where he had only the essential, and so to see and find the real purpose of his life is simpler.
In the first book Adam, a former soldier who came back home from was was not able to return to his old life, found shelter in Calvin's hunting lodges in a small town in Texas. Someone could see Adam's decision as a run from reality, as if he wasn't faced the true. I see it instead as if Adam chose to go back the real meaning of life, and to find it, he had to go in a place where there wasn't superstructure, where he had only the essential, and so to see and find the real purpose of his life is simpler.
If not for the sex that is quite hot and explicit, this could have been a sweet romance, since the story and the turn of events are simple and nice, not at all dramatic, and even the evil of the moment, is so harmless that goes out of the scene without too much trouble.
If not for the sex that is quite hot and explicit, this could have been a sweet romance, since the story and the turn of events are simple and nice, not at all dramatic, and even the evil of the moment, is so harmless that goes out of the scene without too much trouble.