10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives


Joe Kort - 2003
    Joe Kort explores as he guides readers through the complex journey of becoming a gay man. Dr. Kort points out that the beginning of this journey is about taking responsibility for your own life, and reading this book shows you exactly how to do this. Readers will learn how to identify their own internalized homophobia that is preventing many of gay men from leading satisfying lives and keeping them from having healthy relationships.Gay men often say that after coming out they feel better at first, but for many it doesn't last. 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives provides a thorough map for navigating through the difficult terrain of becoming the gay man you want to be in the context of your family, of your sexual health, and ultimately of a partnered relationship.* Discover how to find your authentic gay self* Learn the five biggest mistakes gay men make when seeking a relationship* Understand how to understand loved ones who disapprove of you being gay* Overcome damaging patterns that are holding you back from a healthy sex life

Something for the Weekend: Life in the Chemsex Underworld


James Wharton - 2018
    In his search for new friends and potential lovers, he becomes sucked into London’s gay drug culture, soon becoming addicted to partying and the phenomenon that is ‘chemsex’. Exploring his own journey through this dark but popular world, James looks at the motivating factors that led him to the culture, as well as examining the paths taken by others. He reveals the real goings-on at the weekends for thousands of people after most have gone to bed, and how modern technology allows them to arrange, congregate, furnish themselves with drugs and spend hours, often days, behind closed curtains, with strangers and in states of heightened sexual desire.Something for the Weekend looks compassionately at a growing culture that’s now moved beyond London and established itself as more than a short-term craze.

The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing About Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Question


David Levithan - 2006
    In order to help create that community, YA authors David Levithan and Billy Merrell have collected original poems, essays, and stories by young adults in their teens and early 20s. The Full Spectrum includes a variety of writers—gay, lesbian, bisexual, straight, transitioning, and questioning—on a variety of subjects: coming out, family, friendship, religion/faith, first kisses, break-ups, and many others. This one of a kind collection will, perhaps, help all readers see themselves and the world around them in ways they might never have imagined. We have partnered with the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and a portion of the proceeds from this book will be donated to them.

Changing Trains: One boy's journey of discovery across 1980s Europe


Mark Johnson - 2018
     Changing Trains is a fictionalised memoire that will transport you back to the glorious 1980s - that time just before mobile devices, the internet and social media changed the world - and one working class boy's journey of discovery and sexual self awareness.

Lord of the Butterflies


Andrea Gibson - 2018
    Each emotion here is deft and delicate, resting inside of imagery heavy enough to sink the heart, while giving the body wings to soar.

Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across


Mary Lambert - 2018
    In verse that deals with sexual assault, mental illness, and body acceptance, Ms. Lambert's Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across emerges as an important new voice in poetry, providing strength and resilience even in the darkest of times.

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me


Bill Hayes - 2017
    But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city's incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance--"I don't so much fear death as I do wasting life," he tells Hayes early on--is captured in vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015).

The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing & Coming Out


William Dameron - 2019
    On social networks and dating sites, his image and identity—a forty-year-old straight white male—had been used to hook countless women into believing in lies of love and romance. Was it all an ironic cosmic joke? Almost a decade prior, William himself had been living a lie that had lasted for more than twenty years. His secret? He was a gay man, a fact he hid from his wife and two daughters for almost as long as he had hidden it from himself.In this emotional and unflinchingly honest memoir of coming out of the closet late in life, owning up to the past, and facing the future, William Dameron confronts steroid addiction, the shame and homophobia of his childhood, the sledgehammer of secrets that slowly tore his marriage apart, and his love for a gay father of three that would once again challenge the boundaries of trust. At the true heart of The Lie is a universal story about turning self-doubt into self-acceptance and about pain, anger, and the long journey of both seeking and giving forgiveness.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous


Ocean Vuong - 2019
    Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies


Michael Ausiello - 2017
    From his time at Soaps in Depth and Entertainment Tonight to his influential stints at TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly to his current role as co-founder of the wildly popular website TVLine.com, Michael has established himself as the go-to expert when it comes to our most popular form of entertainment.What many of his fans don’t know, however, is that while his professional life was in full swing, Michael had to endure the greatest of personal tragedies: his longtime boyfriend, Kit Cowan, was diagnosed with a rare and very aggressive form of neuroendrocrine cancer. Over the course of eleven months, Kit and Michael did their best to combat the deadly disease, but Kit succumbed to his illness in February 2015.In this heartbreaking and darkly hilarious memoir, Michael tells the story of his harrowing and challenging last year with Kit while revisiting the thirteen years that preceded it, and how the undeniably powerful bond between him and Kit carried them through all manner of difficulty—always with laughter front and center in their relationship. Instead of a tale of sadness and loss, Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies is an unforgettable, inspiring, and beautiful testament to the resilience and strength of true love.

Diary of a Drag Queen


Crystal Rasmussen - 2019
    Tom Rasmussen's honesty, vulnerability, and fearlessness jump out of every page and every word. It is the queer bible I've always needed." --Sam Smith, singer and songwriter Tom covers the nuance, doubt, and uncertainty of being a drag queen. Crystal covers the transcendence . . . Charisma and quick intelligence--two qualities that have long been prerequisites for drag . . . Diary puts on technicolor display. --Katy Waldman, The New YorkerIn these pages, find glamour and gaffes on and off the stage, clarifying snippets of queer theory, terrifyingly selfish bosses, sex, quick sex, KFC binges, group sex, the kind of honesty that banishes shame, glimmers of hope, blazes of ambition, tender sex, mad dashes in last night's heels plus a full face of make-up, and a rom-com love story for the ages. This is where the unspeakable becomes the celebrated. This is the diary of a drag queen--one dazzling, hilarious, true performance of a real, flawed, extraordinary life.I hope people like me will read this and feel seen and loved by it. I hope people who aren't like me will enjoy it, laugh with it, learn from it. And I hope people who don't like me will file lawsuits just so I can wear my brand-new leopard-print skirt suit and bust their asses in court.--Crystal Rasmussen, in Refinery29

Straight People: A Spotter's Guide to the Fascinating World of Heterosexuals


Jeffery Self - 2013
    Modeled after popular bird spotters’ guides, Straight People is an affectionate and humorous guide to the varied species and subspecies of the sexual majority: the heterosexual. In this hilarious and easy-to-use field guide, actor and author Jeffery Self compiles everything you’ve ever wanted to know about heteros including their nesting behavior, feeding and mating habits, migration patterns, key identification features, and more. Complemented with fun two-color illustrations, interactive charts, graphs, and quizzes throughout, Straight People is sure entertain readers for all walks of life.

Girl Sex 101


Allison MoonTobi Hill-Meyer - 2015
    BUCKLE YOUR SEAT BELT AND GET READY TO RIDE!

The Gay Divorcee


Paul Burston - 2009
    He has a flourishing bar in the heart of Soho and in six months he will be marrying Ashley. There's just one problem. Phil has been married before, 20 years ago. To a woman. In fact, technically Phil and Hazel are still married. And what Phil doesn't know yet is that Hazel has a son - a 19-year-old son.

Study Guide for Book Clubs: A Gentleman in Moscow


Kathryn Cope - 2017
    A comprehensive guide to Amor Towles' acclaimed new novel 'A Gentleman in Moscow', this discussion aid includes a wealth of information and resources: useful literary and historical context; an author biography; a plot synopsis; analyses of themes & imagery; character analysis; twenty thought-provoking discussion questions; recommended further reading and even a quick quiz. For those in book clubs, this useful companion guide takes the hard work out of preparing for meetings and guarantees productive discussion. For solo readers, it encourages a deeper examination of a multi-layered text.