The Pat Parker/Vito Russo Library book discussion group meets on the first Tuesday of the month at 8:00pm (except when noted). We meet at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Community Center, 208 West 13th Street (near Seventh Avenue) in NYC. Ask at the information desk for the room number.

We're a friendly group, always open to new members. If you'd like, you can just read the book and join us at the Community Center. We'd be pleased to meet you. If you have questions or want more information, you can send e-mail to Howard@HowardWill.com. (If you send an e-mail, make sure you include the words "book club" early in the subject line because if you just say "Hey" or "I've got a question" it'll just get deleted because it looks like spam.)

Upcoming books:

April 6: "Cakes and Ale" by W. Somerset Maugham

A 1930 roman-a-clef novel by a gay author, with subtle gay content if you know to look for it.

May 4: Selected Poems by Frank O'Hara

A new selection by Mark Ford from the poet who died on a Fire Island beach in 1966 -- but any edition of his works will do.

June, July, and August - no meetings

September 14 (the second Tuesday rather than the day after Labor Day)
"A Perfect Waiter" by Alain Claude Sulzer

An award-winning novel, set in a fancy Swiss restaurant, translated from German by John Brownjohn.

Here is the list of books we're considering reading.

The complete list of our discussion group appears below. The upcoming books also appear at the end of the list.

1994
"The Culture of Desire," Frank Browning
"The Well of Loneliness," Radically Hall
"Conduct Unbecoming," Randy Shilts
"A Place at the Table," Bruce Bawer
"Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold," E. Kennedy & M. Davis
"Dancing on Tisha B'av," Lev Raphael and "The Bar Stories," Nisa Donnelly
"A Smile in His Lifetime," Joseph Hansen
"Stone Butch Blues," Leslie Feinberg
"My Father and Myself," J. R. Ackerley
"Giovanni's Room," James Baldwin
"Cherry Grove, Fire Island," Esther Newton

1995
"The Motion of Light in Water," Samuel Delany
"Dancer From the Dance," Andrew Holleran
"Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," Gertrude Stein
"Swimming Pool Library," Alan Hollingshurst
"Jeb and Dash: A Diary of Gay Life, 1918-1945," Ina Russell," ed.
"Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," John Berendt
"Before Night Falls," Renaldo Arenas
"Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter," M. Nava and R. Dawidoff
"A Different Life," James Merrill
"Becoming a Man," Paul Monette
"Chamber Music," Doris Grumbach

1996
"Weekend," Peter Cameron
"New York Gay History: 1890-1940," George Chauncey
"Empathy," Sarah Schulman
"Maurice," E. M. Forester
"Martin and John," Dale Peck
"Closet Case," Robert Rodi
"Virtually Normal," Andrew Sullivan
"Flesh and Blood," Michael Cunningham
"The Folding Star," Alan Hollinghurst
"Virtual Equality," Urvashi Vaid
"Skinned Alive," Edmund White

1997
"Torsos," John Peyton Cooke
"Angels in America," Tony Kushner
"The Boys on the Rock," John Fox
"Stranger Among Friends," David Mixner
"User," Bruce Benderson and "City of Night," John Rechy
"Midlife Queer," Martin Duberman
"While England Sleeps," David Leavitt
"Eighty-sixed," David Feinberg
"Wonderbread and Ecstasy," Charles Isherwood and "Love Junky," Robert Plunket
"Rise and Fall of Gay Culture," Daniel Harris
"Gay Spirit," Mark Thompson," ed.
"Sea of Tranquility," Paul Russell

1998
"Stuck Rubber Baby," Howard Cruise
"Celluloid Closet," Vito Russo
"Movie Lover," Richard Friedel
"Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall," Neil Bartlett
"Life is Not a Dress Rehearsal," David Brodney
"American Studies," Mark Merlis
"Mysterious Skin," Scott Heim
"Easy Way Out," Stephen McCauley
"Sexual Ecology," Gabriel Rotello
"Funny Boy," Shyam Selvaduri
"Gossip," Christopher Bram
"Billy Budd," Herman Melville and "Frisk," Dennis Cooper

1999
"Palimpsest," Gore Vidal
"How Proust Can Change Your Life," Alain de Botton
"Querelle," Jean Genet
"Dreyfus Affair," Peter Lefcourt
"Berlin Stories," Christopher Isherwood
"Life Outside," Michaelangelo Signorelle
"To the Lighthouse," Virginia Woolf
"Don't Get Me Started," Kate Clinton
"The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up," Andrew Tobias
"Kiss of the Spider Woman," Manuel Puig
"The Other Side of Silence," John Loughery
"Confessions of a Mask," Yukio Mishima

2000
"The Hours," Michael Cunningham
"My Life with Noel Coward," Graham Payn
"Was," Geoff Ryman
"Sacred Lips of the Bronx," Douglas Sadownick
"Young Man from the Provinces," Alan Helms
"Farewell Symphony," Edmund White
"Cities of the Plain," Marcel Proust
"Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams," Lyle Leverich
"The Lost Language of Cranes," David Leavitt
"Brideshead Revisited," Evelyn Waugh

2001
"The Coming Storm," Paul Russell
"The Turn of the Screw," Henry James
"Allan Stein," Matthew Stadler
"The Spell," Alan Hollinghurst
"The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of ID," Daniel Mendelsohn
"Original Story by: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood," Arthur Laurents
"An Arrow's Flight," Mark Merlis
"The Sheltering Sky," Paul Bowles
"Endangered Species," Louis Bayard
"The Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes," Christopher Bram
"Love Speaks Its Name: Gay and Lesbian Love Poems," J.D. McClatchy (ed.)

2002
"Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris," Edmund White
"Intimate Companions: George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, and Lincoln Kirstein," David Leddick
"The Night Listener," Armistead Maupin
"Autobiography of Red," Anne Carson
"The Golden Age," Gore Vidal
"The World of Normal Boys," K. M. Soehnlein
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," Michael Chabon
"Lies: A Diary (1986-1999)," Ned Rorem
"Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement," Clendinen and Nagourney
"Ravelstein," Saul Bellow
"Death in Venice," Thomas Mann

2003
"Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969," William Mann
"The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression," Andrew Solomon
"True Enough," Stephen McCauley
"Other Voices, Other Rooms," Truman Capote
"Edinburgh," Alexander Chee
"Price of Salt," Patricia Highsmith
"Fingersmith," Sarah Waters
"Running with Scissors," Augusten Burroughs
"The City of Your Final Destination," Peter Cameron
"The Long Firm," Jake Arnott

2004
"The Soul beneath the Skin: The Unseen Hearts and Habits of Gay Men," David Nimmons
"The Picture of Dorian Gray," Oscar Wilde
"The Danish Girl," David Ebershoff
"Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi," Salam Pax
"Leaves of Grass," Walt Whitman
"City of Night," John Rechy
"Middlesex," Jeffrey Eugenides
"Women in Love", D. H. Lawrence
"The Married Man," Edmund White
"The Book of Salt," Monique Truong

2005
"Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books," Azar Nafisi
"The Invention of Love," Tom Stoppard and "A Shropshire Lad," A. E. Housman
"Dorian: An Imitation," Will Self
"War Against the Animals," Paul Russell
"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "A Streetcar Named Desire," Tennessee Williams
"Lives of the Circus Animals," Christopher Bram
"The Master," Colm Toibin
"The Immoralist" and "Corydon," Andre Gide
"Three Junes," Julia Glass
"A Single Man" and "Prater Violet," Christopher Isherwood

2006
"The Line of Beauty," Alan Hollinghurst
"Less Than Zero," Bret Easton Ellis
"The Bostonians," Henry James
"Myra Breckinridge " by Gore Vidal
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain and the essay "Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!" by Leslie Fiedler
"Eustace Chisholm and the Works" by James Purdy
"Our Lady of the Flowers" by Jean Genet
"The Beauty of Men" by Andrew Holleran
"The Blackwater Lightship " by Colm Toibin
"Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" by Allison Bechdel

2007
"Speciman Days" by Michael Cunningham
"Pilgrim Hawk" and "A Visit to Priapus" by Glenway Wescott
"Acqua Calda" by Keith McDermott
"The Confusions of Young Torless" (or "Young Torless") by Robert Musil
"The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln" by C. A. Tripp
"Late and Soon" by Robert J. Hughes
"Moby Dick" by Herman Melville
"My Lives: A Memoir" by Edmund White
Poetry by C. P Cavafy
"The Member of the Wedding" and "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" by Carson McCullers

2008
"Christopher and His Kind" by Christopher Isherwood
"Stretching My Mind: Collected Essays of Edward Albee" by Edward Albee
"Nightwood" by Djuna Barnes
"Falconer" by John Cheever
"The Exquisite Corpse" by Alfred Chester
"Night Watch" by Sarah Waters
"Grief" by Andrew Holleran
"Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches" by Audre Lorde
"Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice" by Janet Malcolm

2009
"Hotel de Dream" by Edmund White
"Fellow Travelers" by Thomas Mallon
"Selected Poems" by W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson
"In the City of Shy Hunters" by Tom Spanbauer
"Call Me By Your Name" by Andre Aciman
"The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein" by Martin Duberman
"Exiles in America" by Christopher Bram
"The Indian Clerk" by David Leavitt
"Mothers and Sons" by Colm Toibin

2010
"The Carnivorous Lamb" by Agustin Gomez-Arcos
"Not Without Laughter" by Langston Hughes
"The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula Le Guin
April 6: "Cakes and Ale" by W. Somerset Maugham
May 4: Selected Poems by Frank O'Hara
June, July, and August - no meetings
September 14 (not the day after Labor Day): "A Perfect Waiter" by Alain Claude Sulzer