Earlier this month, a comprehensive list of books every fella should read – “100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library” – was released by The Art of Manliness, a expert blog about all things, um, manly.
Many of the books are great works of fiction: The Great Gatsby, 1984, The Catcher in the Rye, which are all a bit obvious.
This Memorial Day weekend, whether you’re off the the beach or visiting with family, you’ve likely got a paperback tucked in your travel tote. So, tell us, what are you reading? And, more importantly, what’s a must-read for men?
In the meantime, we’ll – cough – see you next Tuesday
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Darth Paul
_Sandworms of Dune_. Yes, I’m a huge scifi geek.
CitizenGeek
I’m reading through The Catcher in the Rye for the first time. It’s ace!
Charley
A Beautiful Boy by David Sheff…….A father’s journey through his son’s meth addiction.
Dubwise
Darth Paul is a liar. With a name like that he is probably reading Little Woman, or some Jane Austin crap.
Dubwise
crap…Women not Woman
J-Boogie
And, Austen not Austin
Bitch Republic
I’m currently reading a biography of Audrey Hepburn titled “Enchantment” by Donald Spoto. It’s very interesting.
http://www.BitchRepublic.net
Bitch Republic
Jane Austen is not crap.
dubwise
J-Boogie: Thanks!
Bitch Republic: I know. I was joking.
hisurfer
Cool topic, but what an awful list they came up with! I don’t even believe they read most of the ones on the list.
I have two on my shelf (one at home, and one at work for lunch reading):
– The Beautiful and the Damned (F Scott Fitzgerald), and
-The Princess Bride (William Goldman). This predates the movie by twenty years & has twice the number of great lines.
Must-reads for men?
For recent “guy” books, how about The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon), the Sandman series (Neil Gaiman), Into the Wild & Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer), and Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides).
hisurfer
OK, two more for the canon, a bit older and more romantic than the above:
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, TE Lawrence. Idealism, revolt, betrayal, loss of innocence, and hot gay sex in the desert (seriously). And great poetry:
“We were fond together, because of the sweep of the open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The moral freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up in ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.”
and Wind, Sand Stars (or any of his work), Antoine St. Exupery. More adventure, and more poetry:
“I wonder whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each one of us may find his own again … the stars, the desert — what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible … It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
thatguyfromboston
The collected works of Tom of Finland. A seminal body of work.
chandler in lasvegas
The Politics of Stupid by Susan Powter.
Yes, really!
marco
The Pillars of The Earth
thanks Oprah!
Charley
I am taking two online writing classes at http://www.mediabistro.com starting in June, there goes my reading time. Writing my memoir before I kick the bucket.
l
I am reading My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru.
Kid A
I’m in the middle of Slaughterhouse-Five, but desperately want to re-read The Waves by Virginia Woolf. It’s absolutely beautiful.
And for men? E.M. Forster’s “Maurice” of course!
Kudzu Fire
some lovely writing quoted here. the last things I remember reading were fantasy and science fiction. not deep enough for this crowd I fear.
buildsthebone
Is it just me, or did that list seem too much like a ‘good ol’ (straight) boys’ club? Hemingway, Hemingway, Jones, Jones, Theodore, Theodore = MEN LIKE MEN WHO ARE SOLDIERS N WAR!.
Blah blah blah.
Notable left-offs:
The Line of Beauty – Alan Hollinghurst
My Antonia – Willa Cather
The Thief’s Journal – Jean Genet
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
Beloved – Toni Morrison
That’s enough. Before I get carried away.
hells kitchen guy
Paradise Lost by John MIlton. Seriously! It’s great – can’t believe Hollywood hasn’t made it into a stop-action epic. It’s got it all – sex, war, demons. Really fun, believe it or not (I know: I’m a nerd).
Chris
Pillars of the Earth is fabulous. I have the sequel to read soon… perhaps at the beach.
I’ve just finished Candy Everybody Wants and re-read I Am Not Myself These Days, both by Josh Kilmer-Purcell. I’m meeting him at a book signing in a couple weeks so I wanted to make sure I had them read.
Now I’m about to start A Wolf at the Table, by Augusten Burroughs, who I just saw at a book signing a few weeks ago. What an amazing author.
Alacer
To Buildsthebone:
the list also had Wilde, Hesse, Vonnegut, etc. These gentlemen certainly don’t fall under that category.
Right now I’m reading Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (amazing story of search) and The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse.
It’s my belief that everyone (man or woman) should read The Stranger by Camus and Demian by Hesse.
Dick Mills
I just reread “A Brief History of Time,” Stephen Hawking, and just picked up “The Universe in a Nutshell,” also by Hawking.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHD) is coming online at the end of the Summer, and it has me hyper-amped about physics again.
Rock
Godless, by Ann Coulter.
It’s science fiction, right?
Landon Bryce
Currently I’m listening to _A Brief History of Time_ in the car and reading Michael Cunningham’s _Specimen Days_. Hisurfer has great taste! Chabon’s first two novels (_The Mysteries of Pittsburgh_ and _Wonderboys_) are also fantastic.
Other essential reading for men:
_The Year of Ice_ by Brian Malloy
_The World of Normal Boys_ by K.M. Soehnlein
_A Prayer for Owen Meany_ by John Irving
_Angels in America_ by Tony Kushner
_The God Delusion_ by Richard Dawkins
_A Streetcar Named Desire_ by Tennessee Williams
Raf
Must-reads for men? hmmm…
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
damien
I just finished The Life of Pi (since my BFF recommended it so highly) and I am looking forward to the June 3 release of David Sedaris’ new book.
buildsthebone
To Alacer:
You’re very right, and I don’t mean to neglect the presence of Wilde, Hesse, and Vonnegut (the presence of especially the latter stands as an important counterargument). I’m just registering the general perception that the Manliness blog seems to have a perceptible disposition toward not only straight novelists (they left off Proust, too, and James, whom arguably had some pretty strange homo currencies running through their texts) – was Wilde the only ‘mo included (not including Kerouac, and maybe even Thoreau)?, but also toward novels bound up with war and the military (seriously, did they need BOTH AFTA and FWTBT?).
Not that there aren’t tremendous war novels, and definitely not to suggest that they should’ve been excluded, just noting that there’s a lot of other worthwhile stuff that would’ve lent that list a bit more diversity.
And while I’ll enjoy a sly, kinda cheeky inclusion as much as the next guy – the BFA handbook? Fer realz? Over, say, Mrs. Dalloway?
And seriously (srsly), four books either by or about Teddy Roosevelt? What kinda hard-on do those writers have for him?
-BtB
MJ
Ira Levin’s “lost” novel, THIS PERFECT DAY/////Necessary male reading: THE SEA WOLF, by Jack London////////Necessary reading for Queerty, GayProf, and that lisping southern weasel Allan Gurganus: UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT: POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND THE SHAMEFUL INJUSTICES OF THE DUKE LACROSSE RAPE CASE.
hisurfer
I’m with Buildsthebone – the list itself is silly, and leans too much towards rah-rah versions of manhood. But then again, I don’t believe for a second they’ve actually read many of those books. If they have, they got some horribly wrong (to start with, The Prince at No 2. It is NOT a “how-to” book on fascism. Machiavelli was a Republican, and wrote far more books on republican values. The Prince, if anything, is an expose of corruption. But I digress).
On the other hand, there are some suggestions in the forums that I need to look up & that sound interesting (at least, based upon the books that surround them).
CitizenGeek
I’m definitely going to try to read many books on that Art of Manliness list. Plato’s Republic is certainly on top of my ‘must read’ list right now.
RichardS
Two best gay-themed novels ever?
The Boys On The Rock by John Fox – About growing up.
Dancer From The Dance by Andrew Holleran. About going out dancing…
CitizenGeek
Speaking of gay books, I just ordered my copy of Perry Moore’s ‘Hero’ from Amazon. It’s gotten lots and lots of praise as a great story, but I’m especially interested in the fact that the superhero of the story, Thom Creed, is gay! 🙂
andrew
I’m reading Upton Sinclair’s Oil! But, as for essential reading, I can’t believe no one’s said The Outsiders! Stay golden, readers!
Casper Odschild
Any man or woman for that matter should read every Bret Easton Ellis book and every Jay McInerney. Gen X literature is amazing.
Rsquared
Chabon’s Mysteries of Pittsburgh; Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby is essential summer reading (with a gin and tonic in hand) – fun to reread every few years. Anything by Joan Didion. Gay writers? I’m currently reading Lunar Park by Brett Easton Ellis – good writer but I prefer Chabon’s story lines.
M Shane
“The Road” Cormac McCarthy ; 2006 Pulitzer prize.
Alacer
BTB:
I see. I took a closer look at the list and I understand what you mean.
Michael of Breton
The Master, by Colm Toibin.
This is a short, rather esoteric “take” on author Henry James. I read only one James novel in university, back in the stone age, early ’70s, but there were so many laudatory reviews of this book, that I thought I’d try it.
It is engaging, but not exactly a page-turner as in “what’s going to happen next”? Like James, it unwinds slowly rather than spitting out plot points in rapid succession. But the homoerotic subtext and sexual tension of the closeted life that James lived permeates this novel.
Durham Man
The Earth is Flat – Tom Friedman
It’s excellent.
nilla4me
Currently, I just started “His Dark Materials – Book 1: The Golden Compass”.
It’s interesting. Since I haven’t seen the movie I try to imagine how certain scenes were given that Hollywood magic touch. :/
BillieXX
Crabcakes- McPherson
On Revolution- Arendt
Todd Ellertson
‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel Garcia Márquez – an epic if there ever was one! One of the best books I’ve read in a while, too.
M Shane
“The Shock Doctrine” Naomi Klein 2007 best book ever about global exploitation today & disaster capitalism. Incredible journalism..
+++++
“Nemisis”: Chalmers Johnson
AE
Ooh, I love this thread.
Zami, by Audre Lord
Maurice, by EM Forster
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Orlando, Virginia Woolf
(And yes, I just finished a queer lit class. So sue me.)
aftereleanor.blogspot.com
megs
‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor Frankl and Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler
M Shane
Oh BTW gay Writers:
Jean Genet: Thief’s Journal.,, Our Lady of the Flowers
Wm. Burroughs: Red Dessert trilogy: Naked Lunch.
(not light but well worth the time& effort)
Marcel Proust; Rememberance of Things Past+ + + +
Thomas Pynchon: Gravety’s Rainbow; Mason&Dixon.
PJ
Lamb by Christopher Moore
RichardS
Hey, someone mentioned Chalmers Johnson!
Wooh etc.
I also love Wlliam Blum – same left field, but with arch/campy putdowns.
Ace!
tom
Listen, sisters! The best book i’ve read this year i am just 3/4 the way through right now:
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DÃaz
fantastic writing
funny
and you learn about dominican history
Dick Mills
“Maurice,” by EM Forster was a great read.
On a completely different track, “Misquoting Jesus,” by Bart Ehrman is very good.
gravy
I’ll be catching up with McSweeney.
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/
ousslander
Just Finished, The Outlaw Demon Wails
Jim
At Swim, Two Boys
The Fortress of Solitude
The Beauty of Men
M Shane
Richard: Chalmers Johnson, yes! ! amazing;
new CD that amplifies w/Sean Penn “War Made Easy” & “Speaking Up” series w/Chalmers Johnson
Rob Moore
It’s a good list, but it is impossible to come up with a list of just 100 books. Men should be both scholar and warrior and both nurturer and hunter. The only one that makes me wrinkle my nose is Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand wrote her books as self-justification for how she mistreated people in her real life and nothing she wrote should be considered as a serious blueprint for living one’s life. When I read Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead, I then read some biographical information on her because I like to know what individual authors bring to their books. It all fell into place as something only a self-centered cunt would write. She was pretty awful in real life.
I also don’t like most of Virginia Woolf. What a miserable person she was. Female authors often write male characters that are mostly caricutures. I find a similar problem with male authors writing female characters.
Alacer
Rob, you bring up a GREAT point! I love your choice of the word caricature. I think a lot about this whenever I read Hesse’s works (I’ll use him as an example). His characters transcend such…superficial aspects. I think it has something to do with his philosophies on individualism. I can’t think of any others right off the top of my head, but that was a great point.
M Shane
Rob: I didn’t look at the list, however , in agreement, I find it ridiculous that they would include Ayn Rand in any list even of worthy authors at all: That inclusion, in itself, speaks poorly of the list. Her fiction is just a sounding board for a dreadful political outlook.
I’ve found Michael Cunningham’s book about Woolf more interesting than her writing. I think that which your hypothesis regarding persons writing about members of the opposite sex to be generally very true, although most people won’t admit it. I can’t imagine why!
Insideguy
I just finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Black Swan Green by David Morrow. For Gay books I still love A Boy’s Own Story and Dancer from the Dance. Hero, by Perry Moore, was a good Young Adult as Wsa Brent Hartinger’s The Geography Club.
Ewan McGregor’s Saturday was a Man’s Book as are various stoory collections by Robert Olen Butler and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and After Cacciato.
sunshine
Ian Banks: Crow Road
Really I though that this is genuine bore. It turned out in the end that it is not – and quite to the contrary!
buildsthebone
TO ALL THE AYN RAND HATERS OUT THERE: Read Tobias Wolff’s Old School. Not only worthy of inclusion on our little Manliness supplement here, it contains the most terrifically awesome and condemning characterization of Ayn Rand ever, aside from the film version played by Helen Mirren.
To Alacer: While I disagree with your and Rob’s sentiments about men writing female characters and women writing male characters (What, men are from mars and women are from venus, guys?), I was intrigued by yr citing Hesse as an exception. I wonder how much his characters can be said to transcend superficialities is based on the fact that they often seem to be less ‘personalities’ at all and more often thinly veiled representations of philosophical positions? (I’m thinking especially of the Glass Bead Game here).
To Rob Moore: “Men should be both scholar and warrior and both nurturer and hunter.” …? Funny, I’m a bitch and a lover and a child and a mother. Not to mention a sinner and a saint. You + Meredith Brooks must shop at the same store: Mythical Archetypes R’ Us.
RichardS
Ayn Rand is a far right fool.
And so are you, chum.
buildsthebone
Nah, Richard S., reread my post closely. I’m on your side.
Michael
I am reading two really good books at the moment:
“A Thousand Splendid Suns,” a novel by Khaled Hosseini, the author of “The Kite Runner”
“The Man Who Hated Work, and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi,” a biography by Les Leopold of the US labor leader whose activism sparked the movement for occupational health and safety and OSHA.
CitizenGeek
Where’s Queerty? Why did they decide to give themselves an extra day off? 🙁
Matt
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. One of the best, most profound, and most moving books of the past decade, I say, with a convincing and nuanced male narrator written by a female writer (I would contend, though, that the real difficulty of writing any character is just trying to capture the overwhelming complexity of a person’s inner life, of which gender is only a tiny part). Also, even though there’s basically no male characters, Robinson’s Housekeeping is equally brilliant.
Also, William Faulkner’s Light In August. Pretty manly, and incredible. I’m reading As I Lay Dying now, and it’s got some manliness as well, lots of coffin-building and river-fording. Great stuff.
Glad to know people still read.
James Bartlett
I am reading a new comic coming out novel called “My Summer With Eric,” written actualy by my brother, David Bartlett. Here’s an excerpt:
“I’ll never forget the day Eric Drysdale blew me. It was a lazy Thursday afternoon. I should have been doing some work, I know! But the sunny blue skies and warming temperatures — after a week of gloom and intermittent rain — had put me in a horny mood and I couldn’t resist putting an ad in the gay section of my local Craigslist for a little discreet man-to-man loving.
Imagine my surprise, then, to get a response from Eric Drysdale — using his Blackberry address of [email protected] — the “nerd you love to love” who had brightened so many of my seconds in his cameo appearances as Bobby the Stage Manager on “The Colbert Report.”
“I’m just 10 minutes away,” wrote Eric to me. “Can I come over now?” Of course I said yes immediately. I mean, who wouldn’t have?
And I didn’t regret it as — exactly 10 minutes later — Eric and his tousled locks strode through the door of my discreet Greenwich Village studio apartment. But the biggest surprise lay ahead — because Eric didn’t just want me to blow him, he wanted to blow me in return!
“If you saw me on the street, you’d never believe I was into this,” said Eric with a wink. “Straight on the streets, gay between the sheets,” he smirked as he unzipped the fly to my Levi 401 bootcut jeans and started to work.
His tongue was like a cat’s, all rough and soft and sandpapery. He did this little twisty thing with it — “the Eric twist,” he said, looking up with an impish grin. He made it last and last, edging me until I was on the brink of cumming, only to pull his tongue back with a sly smile, as if to say, “Oh, you’re not quite ready yet, big boy. Give me a chance to show me what I can really do!” Playing with his nipples, which grew rigid after only a few hard tweaks, I lay back in contentment and let Eric do his “thing.”
Afterwards we cuddled manfully, lying spent and sweaty on my 400-thread count, masculinely-striped Ralph Lauren down comforter. Eric confessed that it was only the 17th blowjob he had ever given. “I give them all names,” Eric revealed shyly. “Since yours was my 17th, I am naming it the Gemini 3, after the world’s 17th manned space flight. And besides, you remind me a little of Gus Grissom, especially right around lift-off.”
Then he paused, reflectively. “There’s just something about the male penis,” he confessed, “that I find to be compelling. Oh sure, I love pussy, and my wife has a great one. But a man’s penis — so soft, so silky — and yet so strong! Like a giant Jello Pudding Pop just waiting to be engulfed by Eric.”
Later on, we exchanged phone numbers, although I doubted he would be back. But a memory, of two ships, one from Huron, one from another place, passing in a warm sultry afternoon, giving comfort to another human being by means of the mouth, brought to mind the famous quote from Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”
Lear: Thou wert better in a grave than to answer with thy uncover’d body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou ow’st the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here’s three on ’s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! come, unbutton here. [Tearing off his clothes.]”
Charley
Listening to Augusten Burroghs read his bestseller, “Dry”, 7 CD’s. He has a great young gay masculine voice and good study in Memoir writing and what “they” are looking to publish. Wisecracking and black humor. The real world, although how he can write descriptively in detail about chewed swizzle sticks behind his friends ear, while smashed out of his mind on martini’s is a mystery.
matt123
the last things I remember reading were fantasy and science fiction. not deep enough for this crowd I fear.
a bi
hot photo ** Bisexualcenter.com **
hisurfer
Shane – you actually finished Proust??? Is it worthwhile? I read the first couple chapters of Recherche & thought that I would never make it through seven whole volumes of that.
Genet I need to add to my list. I tried him in French, but, again, it was too much work reading an a foreign language. Any good translations you can recommend?
shaun
Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk
Rikard
On the Road; Kerouac
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon; Spanbauer
The Monkeywench Gang; Abbey
The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, Adams (the first “Dirk Gently” book too)
anything by Wm Gibson, Tom Robbins, T.C. Boyle, Neal Stephenson, Rudy Rucker,
conrad
The Conversion – Joseph Olshan
It was a quick read – wonderful Tuscan imagery…
eliel
Inside Guy: Black Swan Green is by David Mitchell.
Tom: reading Oscar Wao now, it’s great so far.
Mike Burns
Currently reading Crime & Punishment, In Search of Lost Time (glacial pacing, but pretty as hell, with something to savor on every page), The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine (absolutely magical novel about a son’s return home to Lebanon to spend time with his dying father, interwoven with tales told by the son’s gay grandfather, the storyteller of the title. This year’s best book.) And a couple of westerns by Loren Estleman. Hard-boiled, two-fisted action. Manly yes, but I like it too. Also working my way through 50 Best American Short Stories, because my knowledge of many of the writers included is lacking.
Anarchos
Just finished The Road.
a couple of must reads:
To the Lighthouse by Woolf
The Trial by Kafka