OK, so you need a book. Maybe you’re traveling – or not. Perhaps you’re looking for a little sofa-and-a-blanket time with something to take your mind off life in general. Maybe you just need something different and you think you’ve read it all. Maybe you need some suggestions …
It’s All Relative: By Wade Rouse. Wade Rouse,in his new memoir, writes about family, celebrations and fiercely loving both.
He writes of life with his eccentric family and his partner, Gary, who is deeply romantic and Rouse’s perfect opposite. Rouse isn’t afraid to be the bad guy in his books, and that self-depreciating honesty is hilarious.
But beware. Rouse is quick with his wit, but he has the amazing ability to turn tears of laughter into tears of emotion in the space of twenty words. He knows how to make a funnybone tingle, but he also knows well how to charge a moment with feeling.
The Choir Director: By Carl Weber. In this new novel, Bishop T.K. Wilson’s First Jamaica Church is hungry for a good music leader. After what happened with the last choir director, attendance was down on Sundays, which meant low donations. With bills to pay, Bishop T.K. Wilson knew he had to find a good musical director to renew his congregation.
Aaron Mackie was the best, and he always dreamed of leading a church choir in a place like Queens. It was also a chance to escape a past Mackie didn’t want made public.
The Choir Director is filled with cash, trash and flash. Most of the characters are awful, scheming people, most of whom you’d shun in real life. The situations are over-the-top shameful.
If you’re looking for something wild to read, grab this. A few hours with The Choir Director and you’ll be singing its praises, too.
Concierge Confidential: By Michael Fazio with Michael Malice. Is serving what you do best? Could you do it for a living? Read this book and you’ll think twice before answering.
After a brief assistant’s job and a gig playing piano on a cruise ship, Fazio and his partner, Jeffrey, moved to Manhattan. He quickly found a job at the Intercontinental Hotel on 48th Street, where he learned that his unique strengths would best be put to use as a concierge.
Fazio writes about finding yachts for his clients, as well as tickets to sold-out concerts, reservations to jam-packed restaurants and night clubs. Concierge Confidential includes the dishiest stories of wealth and celebrity, as well as a wealth of tips on star treatment and getting the best results from your hotel stay.
The Cruel Ever After: By Ellen Hart. If Chester “Chess” Garrity had his way, you’d invest in antiquities. He’s got valuable loot on his hands and he needs to get rid of it, pronto. But first, he needed to stop drinking.
Author Ellen Hart packs a good number of people in this Jane Lawless mystery, which could be discombobulating if some of them didn’t die off. Though there are times when overpopulation might tempt you to quit this book, the good news is that the remaining characters move this story along nicely. Just keep the cast list handy, that’s all.
Hidden: By Tomas Mournian. Hide and Seek is just a game. Staying concealed may be a life-or-death matter.
It’s only a book. It’s only a book. Those are the words you’ll want to remember while reading this pulse-racing novel.
Hidden is an easy book to get caught up in. The first half is pure classic chase-scene, complete with evil henchmen, vicious dogs and an Underground Railroad-like passage to safety. You almost want to look over the lead character’s shoulder for him, lest he get caught.
Perhaps meant for older teens, I think this book is an excellent read for any adult, too. If you’re looking for a book from which your attention may never escape, Hidden is one to seek.
It Gets Better: Edited by Dan Savage and Terry Miller. At high school Mean Girls, jocks, cheerleaders, nerdy kids, geeks and bullies generally cannot co-exist in peace.
Columnist Dan Savage, with his husband Terry Miller and a friend, decided to do something about that. They explain how their un-splashy video became a tidal wave of support.
It Gets Better is one of those books that slams you from emotion to emotion in six pages or less. Readers will get teary, they’ll laugh, nod their heads, gasp and want to scream.
The only caveat is that this book is (somewhat) targeted to middle-schoolers, but it may be too much for them to handle. What’s written here is often profane, in-your-face, and generally pretty grown-up, so caution should be used before giving this to a kid who isn’t ready for it yet.
The Bed Bug Survival Guide: By Jeff Eisenberg. Your last vacation was a memorable one. Yes, this was the vacation you’ll never forget, but not for the usual reasons: the souvenirs and sunburns weren’t the only things you brought home. Bed bugs!
Author and Pest Away Inc. founder Jeff Eisenberg knows how you feel. He sees these horrifying issues all the time, and in his new book The Bed Bug Survival Guide, he tells you what you can do next.
Without meaning to scare his readers, author Jeff Eisenberg scares his readers into being hyper-vigilant against what seems like an unavoidable problem. But Eisenberg, who uses a lighthearted, often humorous tone here, is matter-of-fact and sensible with solid advice to anyone who wants to avoid laying out the welcome mat for very unwelcome critters.
If you’re going anywhere this year, don’t even consider boarding the plane or unpacking until you read The Bed Bug Survival Guide.
Palm Trees on the Hudson: By Elliot Tiber. As soon as he could escape his family, Elliot did that. He left home, changed his surname to Tiber, and rented a filthy “Artist Studio” in the Village. There, he hoped to find love, acceptance as a gay man, and a career as an artist.
A natural networker, Tiber maneuvered his way into better jobs with richer clients and branched out into party planning. It was at one of those parties that Tiber had his best / worst situation.
A prequel to a prior memoir, this book starts with author Elliot Tiber’s childhood and meanders forth to a highlight that’s funnier now than I’m sure it was forty-odd years ago. Tiber, who once dabbled in stand-up comedy, tells a good story and his recollections of Manhattan society and being gay in the 1960s are priceless.
Sheepish: Two Women, Fifty Sheep, and Enough Wool to Save the Planet: By Catherine Friend. Imagine a serene pasture filled with contented (nameless) sheep. Then imagine a reluctant shepherdess at the helm, add in llamas, cats and dogs, chickens and a peacock, frisky calves, knitters, and Elvis and you’ve got a good yarn called Sheepish.
Author Catherine Friend gives her readers a sense of the bucolic. She lulls us into total serenity with her poetic descriptions of her flock … and then she knocks us upside the funnybone with asides that are dyed-in-the-wool hilarious. In between, Friend has a way of bringing tears to our eyes before she pulls us back to the funny farm.
If a taste of the country is what you crave this summer, if you’re a farmer or a wanna-be, here’s a book you’ll enjoy. Sheepish is perfect for ewe.
Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man: By Chaz Bono with Billie Fitzpatrick. Read what it’s like to feel like you’re in the wrong body, and how a tiny Hollywood darling became a man. Author Chaz Bono says at one point that he was never very good at transitions. He did a pretty good job at this one, with a few minor bumps.
Transition is filled with angst, anger, sadness and pain, topped off with wonderment and joy. It’s also repetitious, contains a few delicately squirmy moments and its occasional bogginess is a challenge for wandering minds.
If you can face the slowness that crops up in Transition now and then, you’ll find it to be a pretty good memoir.
ALL-TIME FAVORITES
Best Novel with a Twist, 2010
Room: By Emma Donoghue. You’ve undoubtedly heard a lot about this book – all of it true. Room is a bit of a challenge at the outset, but the plotline will grab you, especially if you let your own imagination run wild. What would you do if you’d never seen the world from anywhere but TV?
Best Novel With a Twist, Ever
5 Minutes and 42 Seconds: By T.J. Williams. There are drugs in the house, and you’ve got to get rid of them. The Feds know about the drugs and they’re on their way. I added this oldie-but-a-goodie because it’s quick to read, it’s action-packed, it’s wildly fun, and because it’s my list, right?
Best Humor Author
Freeman Hall: As if Retail Hell wasn’t enough to make you laugh till you peed your pants, along comes Stuff That Makes a Gay Heart Weep. Hall’s books are the kind you read when you’re tired of wallowing in pity and need a snarky snicker. (Close runner up: Wade Rouse.)
Best Slam-Bang Didn’t-See-It-Coming Novel
So You Call Yourself a Man: By Carl Weber. I wish I could tell you why. I’d love to give you reasons, and you’d understand why I screamed and laughed like I needed a straitjacket. But if I told you, then you’d see it coming, wouldn’t you?
Camps Like Yosemite
Divas Las Vegas: By Rob Rosen. Fun, silly, rompish and vintage Vegas, this mystery-ish novel about two friends in Sin City needs to be read in a tent by flashlight while eating S’mores.
Best Book to Share with Mom
Where’s My Wand? By Eric Poole. A coming-of-age story with a bedspread, this book is cute, gentle and funny. My own mother loved it, and if you can’t believe a mom, who can you believe? (Close runner up, and share-able with your sister, too: Rhinestone Sisterhood by David Valdes Greenwood.
More books you can’t miss this summer
When young Jordy Valentine comes home from eight years at an elite boarding school, he has an impressive education … except for one thing: Jordy has no experience at finding love. When he falls for a fellow frat boy who spurns him, Jordy works hard to buff himself up because, as they say, success is the best revenge. But is revenge what he really wants? Find out in Games Frat Boys Play
A gentle mystery (or is it a hoax?) discovered by an octogenarian journalist in small town America is at the root of The Coffins of Little Hope
When seventeen-year-old Pierre Seel was summoned by the Gestapo on a May day sixty years ago, it was no innocent meeting. Seel, you see, was gay, a fact he hid for forty years. In his memoir, I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual
What is gender? In the new book Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender
