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10-27-2003 - 11:03 a.m.
A Winter Reading List As you may have noticed, I am hopelessly middle-class and not the least bit intellectual. I like baseball. I know the cable channel conversions for FOX and ESPN but not A&E. I like cooking shows. I fall asleep during French movies. I don�t understand poetry, although I have tried. As Dante points out, I am no Steven Hawking. I do have that PhD, of course, but it�s from a State University in the Midwest. My advisers had to drag me kicking and screaming through the theoretical, cognitive parts of grad school. I�m a pragmatic guy with a nursing background who was always demanding to know the real world applications. So far it hasn�t come to NASCAR and poker playing dogs, but I want to change. I read books, of course, but I like medical thrillers, vampire stories and detective novels. Nothing better than a smart cop chasing down a psychotic killer. James Patterson,Jonathan Kellerman, Patricia Cornwell. I even like those Goldie the Caterer detective novels. My sister, the bookstore manager says I read �junk fiction� On my recent trip to San Francisco and more specifically The Different Light bookstore, I was brought face to face with my literary deficits. The only books in that famous gay bookstore that I had read were either the gay detective novels or the porn. Apparently there is more to gay culture than �Erasure:20 Pop Hits� And it�s not like I don�t have serious lesbigay literature right there on the bookshelves at home. Uncle John used to birthday gift me with Thomas Mann, Oscar Wilde and the works of the Lavender quill. Mom taught me well and I always wrote a �thank you� note, but I didn�t exactly get around to reading any of the books, except �Dancer From the Dance� by Andrew Holleran. I had heard there was a lot of sex therein. So, where to begin? What is on the list of 100 books every well-educated queer needs to read after he turns 30? Inquiring minds want to know�and improve. Baseball is over. Help me or I swear I will be watching �Skin� on Fox before the first frost.
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