Challenge Completed - GLBT

I completed The Challenge That Dare Not Speak It’s Name quite a while ago, but I keep forgetting to make a post about it. I’m being terrible at keeping track of my challenges this year but I think this is the second one I’ve completed (the first being Carl’s Once Upon a Time challenge). Amanda made me want to reach the top level on this challenge, by calling it The Rainbow Level – the only way she could have made it more attractive would have been to call it the Unicorn level and that would not have made a whole lot of sense. I read 13 (my lucky number) books featuring GLBT issues, or by GLBT authors for the challenge:

‘The Happy Island’ – Dawn Powell
‘Masks, Rise of Heroes’ – Hayden Thorne
‘Down to the Bone’ – Mayra Lazra Dole
‘Rules for Hearts’ – Sara Ryan
‘False Colors’ – Alex Beecroft
‘The Lacuna’ – Barbara Kingsolver
‘Cycler’ – Lauren McLaughlin
‘Out of the Pocket’ – Bill Konigsberg (related sidenote: the Stonewall newsletter tells me Gareth Thomas is the first openly gay rugby player still playing professionally in the UK (came out publically in 2009) and Bill Konigsberg has written articles about how he hopes gay sportsmen will begin to come out in the US while they're still playing professionally)
‘Boy Meets Boy’ – David Leviathan
‘The Little Stranger’ – Sarah Waters
‘The God Box’ – Alex Sanchez
‘The Mariposa Club’ – Rigoberto Gonzalez
'The Vast Fields of Ordinary' - Nick Burd

I think I read two more books that would have fitted the challenge, but didn't link them up in the reviews bit ('Leviathan' and 'Walk to the End of the World'). So hard to decide on favourites, but I think 'Out of the Pocket' is pretty stand out, I defy anyone to finish 'Boy Meets Boy' without a smile on thier face and 'The Little Stranger' makes me want all of Sarah Waters previous books.


It’s not an especially diverse list – only two books with lesbian main characters, one book with a transgender main character, three books with latino main characters and two books with bisexual secondary characters out of the eleven books that feature GLBT characters (as Sarah Water’s enters the list because she’s a GLBT author, not because The Little Stranger contains GLBT characters). A lot of male main characters on this list. I’m gathering recommendations for books with transsexual characters and books written by transsexual authors for next year’s reading, but I’d love more. In fact I'd love any recommendations for great GLBTQ novels in general. I’m also really interested in finding more books with characters who are a different race from me and are part of the GLBTQ community. Zetta Elliott wrote a post about how few books there are with gay main characters for African American teenagers, so any recommendations you can think of would be great.

Some exciting news for next year is that I’ll be a panelist for the Independent Literary Awards, the GLBTQ category so I should be exposed to five new, great books with GLBTQ characters in 2011. I'm hoping people nominate a really interesting load of submissions, pop over an nominate if you can think of a book that fits the category.

I have a few other books waiting to be read that would fit with the challenge and Rainbow level is for 13+ books, but if I don’t write this post now I’ll forget to do it. So this is where my official challenge reading ends for the year, but at home I have:

'At Swim, Two Boys' - Jamie ONeill: Everyone keep telling me I have to read this book and then see the play. Maybe this would make a good Christmas break chunkster.

'The Bermudez Triangle' – Maureen Johnson: One more author whose blog I love, but whose books I haven’t read. What happens when your two best female friends become a couple and you feel squeezed out?

‘London Triptych’ - Jonathan Kemp: Green Carnation prize book that I talked about here. I really wanted to read ‘Man’s World’ by Rupert Smith off the prize list too, but it is proving frustratingly hard to get hold of.

‘Hero’ – Perry Moore: I put this in a storage box and now keep forgetting to read it. I really want to read it, why aren’t I reading it now? Gay superhero!

‘Notes from an Exhibition’ – Patrick Gale: An author who I think was a litlove suggestion. I love books about artists and don’t think I read enough of them.

‘Gentleman Jigger’ - Richard Bruce Nugent : The classic I should have read for the Harlem Renaissance Classics Circuit, but did not get to. A young man from a wealthy black family moves to Greenwich village.

85A - Kyle Thomas Smith: Sent to me from the author for review (thanks again). It's set in 1989 and it looks like the main character is a teenage, gay, punk hoping to escape to London.

Thanks so much to Amanda for hosting this challenge and to all the people who guest posted on the challenge blog.