reviews_and_ramblings | The Inside Readers: Top 100

I love my Top 100 Gay Novels List, but I know that it has a lot of limitations: it's limited to the XXI century (from January 1, 2000) since I can't possible include all the gay novels published in the world; it's "gay" and not LGBT since I have not the knowledge to include all the spectrum of the LGBT. On the other hand, I tried to be as impartial as possible, including not only romances, but also mainstream novels, and using LibraryThing as parameter for the range. Nevertheless, it lacks in "history", meaning that classic novels like Maurice or The Persian Boy are not included. So I decided to give an alternative to the book hunters who want to find more classic novels, and I will use the Inside Readers for that! I collected all their recommendations, put them together in a list, and again I used LibraryThing as parameter for the range. I then selected the first 100 books, and friends, if you think it lacks in something, and you are an author, contact me, draw up your Top 10, and next time the book maybe will be there ;-)

1) 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 Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: "Oh what sinister fun! A morality tale wrapped up in a story dripping with homoeroticism and hedonism. I can’t imagine how much pleasure Wilde had when he wrote this story and how much went on his head that never actually made it onto the page as a result of the laws of the time. This luscious, lusty Faustian tale is so dark and delicious; discreet when it has to be, suggestive when it wants to be. And the picture I have of Dorian Gray in my mind is that of the most beautiful man on earth—yes, we’re all suckers for a bad boy, aren’t we!" Geoffrey Knight
3) Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice: "The Vampire Chronicles are kind of like the first set of homoerotic novels that a queer kid can get away with reading while still closeted because they are not often seen as ‘gay’ books. Rice’s vampires crossed all boundaries – sexual, religious, political – and therefore opened up the eyes of any teenage kid who knew to seek them out." Sean Kennedy
"She who made vampires for me and then destroyed them…she and the Antia Blake series – there is a point where a series should just END. But Lestat and Louis were perfect. Jaw droppingly understated and beautiful. The love hate relationship between them electrified me. Sexual imagery and innuendo without consummation except in death. I may hate every book from The Body Thief forward, but I will always love Interview." James Buchanan
4) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay 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

5) Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil by John Berendt: "Despite not being fiction, I think one of the best lesson’s I learned as a writer from reading this book, was how important a colorful secondary cast of characters could be. I was so entertained by the southern charm of all the quirky characters that I continuously had to keep reminding myself that someone had been murdered! The movie version of course sucked-ass due to the Hollywood cliché of inserting a het-romance in some lame attempt to dial down the homosexuality, but the book is a gem and the cast of real-life characters, the envy of this writer. Who knew real people could be so interesting? : )" Ethan Day
6) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin: "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
"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

7) 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
8) 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
9) Swann's Way by Marcel Proust: "Proust himself, the narrator, experiences an attraction to the melancholy, unfortunate Swann, but the larger part of this work concerns the heterosexual loves of Swann himself. Besides Proust being gay, there is a lesbian couple mentioned in it, and the overall sensibility of the book is very much about the nature of love, so I declare that it qualifies. Besides, the prose is so beautiful (try the newer Penguin translations) that I'll take any flimsy excuse to recommend it. It's about as gay as a successful book could be in the 1800s." Kyell Gold

10) 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

11) Dry by Augusten Burroughs
12) Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey
13) Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins
14) Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs
15) Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
16) The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
17) Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
18) Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey
19) The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
20) The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
21) Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller
22) Cry to Heaven by Anne Rice
23) Maurice by E.M. Forster
24) Lord John and the Private Matter by Diana Gabaldon
25) Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
26) A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
27) Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
28) Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
29) Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling
30) Clive Barker's Books of Blood by Clive Barker
31) The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
32) At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill
33) Exit to Eden by Anne Rampling
34) Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
35) The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin
36) Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault
37) The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
38) The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
39) The City & The City by China Melville
40) Melusine by Sarah Monette
41) A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White
42) Angels in America by Tony Kushner
43) Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany
44) Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin
45) Luna by Julia Anne Peters
46) Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger
47) Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez
48) Troll by Johanna Sinisalo
49) Geography Club by Brent Hartinger
50) The Kid by Dan Savage
51) Hero by Perry Moore
52) As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann
53) Six of One by Rita Mae Brown
54) The Charioteer by Mary Renault
55) Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley
56) The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren
57) The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal
58) The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer
59) All Through the Night by Suzanne Brockmann
60) Ash by Malinda Lo
61) The Catch Trap by Marion Zimmer Bradley
62) The Orton Diaries by Joe Orton
63) The Best Little Boy in the World by John Reid
64) Almost Like Being in Love by Steve Kluger
65) The Pink Triangle by Richard Plant
66) Babyji by Abha Dawesar
67) Wicked Gentlemen by Ginn Hale
68) Boys Like Us by Patrick Merla
69) The Lord Won't Mind by Gordon Merrick
70) Hindoo Holiday by J.R. Ackerley
71) Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott
72) So Hard to Say by Alex Sanchez
73) Cup de Grace Marguerite Yourcenar
74) Comfort and Joy by Jim Grimsley
75) The Back Passage by James Lear
76) Buddies by Ethan Mordden
77) Nights in Aruba by Andrew Holleran
78) Lust by Geoff Ryman
79) Ring of Swords by Eleanor Arnason
80) Bending the Landscape by Nicola Griffith
81) Tim and Pete by James Robert Baker
82) The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd
83) Vintage by Steve Berman
84) Goldenboy by Michael Nava
85) Attack of the Theater People by Marc Acito
86) Spirit and the Flesh by Walter L. Williams
87) Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas
88) Gossip by Christopher Bram
89) Third Man Out by Richard Stevenson
90) The Sea of Light by Jenifer Levin
91) Glamourpuss by Christian McLaughlin
92) 7 Days at the Hot Corner by Terry Trueman
93) Holding the Man by Timothy Conigrave
94) The Hell You Say by Josh Lanyon
95) The Phoenix by Ruth Sims
96) Fatal Shadows by Josh Lanyon
97) Twins by Bari Wood
98) A Queer Kind of Death by George Baxt
99) Misadventures in the (213) by Dennis Hensley
100) Frontiers by Michael Jensen

reviews_and_ramblings