• Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
  • Search Site

Polari Magazine

  • Home
  • Up Front
    • Editorial
    • Clementine: The Living Fashion Doll
    • Polari Safari
    • WTF? Friday
    • Bulletin Board
    • Polari Facts
  • Features
    • Interviews
    • Features
    • Gallery
    • Opinion
    • Heroes & Villains
  • Community
    • Oral Histories
    • Coming Out Stories
    • Relationships
    • IDAHO
    • LGBT History Month
    • Blogs
  • Reviews
    • Books
    • Film and Television
    • Music
    • Stage
    • Visual Arts
    • Classics: Books
    • Classics: Film and Television
    • Classics: Music
  • About
    • About Polari Magazine
    • Contributors
    • Contact

You are here: Polari Magazine / Polari HQ / Polari HQ • What are we reading?

Polari HQ • What are we reading?

18 Aug 2012 / Comments Off / in Polari HQ/by Editor

What books are we reading at Polari HQ this week?

 

 

Clayton Littlewood – How To Be Gay by David M. Halperin

Now you would have thought at my advanced age I’d know every trick in the book (and have booked every trick) but it appears not. Inspired by an undergraduate course of the same name, Halperin suggests that gayness is a specific way of being that gay men must learn from one another to become who they are. He concludes that, “the genius of gay culture resides in some of its most despised features: its aestheticism, snobbery, melodrama, adoration of glamour, caricatures of women and obsession with mothers”. Well I was raised on a diet of John Waters, Abigail’s Party, Wood and Walters, having sex in transit vans and hanging out in theatre bars – but I’m prepared to give it a go. I’ll let you know how I get on…

 

Christopher Bryant – A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin

I started reading George R.R. Martin’s gargantuan series A Song of Ice and Fire after watching season one of Game of Thrones. As soon as I finished the second book I went straight on to the third. Then the fourth. Then I waited a couple of days to start the fifth. I’d tried to read A Game of Thrones before I watched the HBO series, but I didn’t get past the first chapter. I have an in-built resistance to fantasy novels. I hate the sonorous language, the rigidly patriarchal power structures, the one-dimensional good vs. evil, and the general stiffness of it all. Martin’s Westeros is the complete opposite. And there is no tiresome speechifying.

There was a 6 year gap between books four and five, and so I am preparing myself for the hellish wait for book six … whenever that may be.

 

Michael Langan – Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel

I was worried that the follow-up to Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall wouldn’t match that book’s brilliance, but Mantel has once again taken a story that we all think we know and made it read as if it’s happening before your very eyes. This second volume of her trilogy exploring the life of Thomas Cromwell, one of the key players in the Tudor court, takes us up to the execution of Ann Boleyn and she may well do the Booker double. Mantel transcends the historical genre with her masterful story telling, while the depth and subtlety of characterisation are breathtaking and, line for line, her prose writing is peerless. I, for one, can’t wait for volume three – The Mirror and the Light – due out next year.

 

Bryon Fear – Revenant by Tristan Hughes

Curiosity will get the better of me I swear… I have always said, that if was a cat, I would be dead by now, my nine lives cashed-in long ago. So, when I spied this book on a shelf in Camden Lock Books, in Old Street Tube Station (one of the best independent bookshops in London by the way) I was compelled to purchase it immediately. You see, I went to school with the author, who even back then foretold that he would be a novelist after his schooling came to an end. I suspect not many of his fellow pupils believed such grandiose exclamations, but bugger me, he really did become a novelist and this book is one of four penned by him. I chose Revenant because it is a tale of four high school friends set at the time and place when I knew the author… if anything it will be interesting to see our school years through his eyes.

 

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
Tags: bring up the bodies, dance with dragons, david m halperin, george rr martin, hilary mantel, how to be gay, polari reading, revenant, tristan hughes

Related Posts

Did you like this entry?
Here are a few more posts that might be interesting for you.
Related Posts
Weekly Digest, September 9, 2012, Polari Magazine, gay online magazine Weekly Digest • Week of September 03
Bring Up The Bodies Audio
Polari HQ • What are we reading?
Polari HQ • What Did We Read in 2012?
What are we reading? September 8, 2012, Polari Magazine, gay online magazine Polari HQ • What are we reading?

Search Polari

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

About Polari Magazine

Polari Magazine is an LGBT arts and culture magazine that explores the subculture by looking at what is important to the people who are in it. It’s about the lives we lead, not the lifestyles we’re supposed to lead.

Its content is informed & insightful, and features a diverse range of writers from every section of the community. Its intent is to help LGBT readers learn about their own heritage and to sustain a link between the present and the past.

Polari is designed to nurture the idea of community, whether that be social and political, or artistic and creative. It is your magazine, whether you want to read it, or whether you want to get involved in it, if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer.

Polari Magazine is all these: it's a gay online magazine; it's a gay and lesbian online magazine; it's an LGBT arts and culture magazine. Ultimately, it is a queer magazine.

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

Twitter

Tweets by @PolariMagazine

Archive

  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • July 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
© Copyright - Polari Magazine - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at
  • scroll to top
  • Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Website Privacy & Cookies