You never! Did the Kenosha Kid?

Well it took a college course to explain it...

I just finished Of Human Bondage by Somerset Bondage, and it’s my favorite thing I’ve read in a while. I’ve also loved David Copperfield and to an extent Jane Eyre. You can probably see the common theme here; any suggestions for Bildungsroman type books, preferably older but not necessarily, maybe some with more female protagonists as well? (Although I don’t mind either way as long as it’s good). I love narratives that follow one character through their life and choices and some beautiful prose snuck in along the way.

That book was confusing as fuck. Was constantly just going like “uhhhh, k.”

Yeah that's because in those types of places, gay people hide their identities so no one thinks anything of two dudes holding hands or hugging. But as gay people get slightly more accepted and open with things people don't want to be labeled as gay.

>he's spending a year dead for tax purposes, like Hotblack

I dropped out of school for a year for major surgery, came back and this was the line I used with my friends who didn't bother to keep up with me while I was out of state

I think I missed homosexuality in War and Peace... where was it? Unless we are talking about Nicolai's 'love' for the emperor, which I thought was of platonic nature..

I agree with this too.. However in our country, if you don't play basketball,.people will think you're gay.

Libraries are great since a gamble is simply the time it takes to travel back and forth, thankfully for me I am within walking distance.

Thank you for the sub recommendations. Even searching for books I already like has yielded a ton of possibilities. Sometimes finding a book I want to read is more fun than actually reading it so I have a feeling I will lose some time on these subs.

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”

“If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”

“Did I do anything wrong today," he said, "or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?”

"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans."

"The chances of finding out what’s really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied."

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife."

"All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place."

I love it and always will. I love Holden, warts and all. He is delightfully human and most teens are every bit as annoying, self-pitying and self important as Holden is. But most teens are also just as sensitive, funny and capable of touching insight and tenderness.

Of course he’s an annoying little shit. I used to be one myself. Maybe I still am. My point is: Holden contains multitudes, just like all of us.

I have never seen the term "travelogues" and did not realize genres got so specific. Cool to look into.

I do know what you are saying about getting a craving for one style. I do not think I have enough fiction under my belt to really understand what I am looking for all the time.

For example, early on I was asking about books similar to "Children of Time" and I got tons of sci-fi set in space. But I don't really care about far future or space as a setting, it was the feeling of seeing the growth of characters and cultures throughout generations.

While I recognize the sports industry does create some jobs, I think the modern obsession with sports is really over-the-top. Colleges focus on it because they make a ton of money from it. The professional players get paid unreasonably huge amounts of money to play a game, and then the fans are obsessed with it like it's a religion.

Goodreads ratings were really helpful for me today as I was looking through the book haul and deciding what to do first. I am definitely a sucker for colors and cover marketing. There was a book called "Here I Am" that had a great cover and caught my eye from across the room. The description did not grip me but the cover was top notch.

That is how I started with library checkouts. But I have found that my list is only from one genre essentially so my list is a bit stale after 30 or so now. I am hoping that breaking out of the comfort zone will expand the list but there are a lot of choices and even more recommendations.

It's absolute insanity how that take is being accepted just because it was written in a lot of words, isn't it? It shows that society still has a long way to go for even gay people to be fully accepted, rather than their current state of only being vaguely tolerated.

I do not think I could handle several books at once. That being said, I tend to finish a book in 2 or 3 days anyway so I can shift from one to the next pretty quickly. I have a tough time remembering details from one story to the next, I do not think I could keep it straight over several!

Do you read from several different genres to help keep everything straight?

Buying fiction never made sense to me before as it can get so expensive. I have a home library of theology and philosophy that were useful for my studies and job but fiction seemed one use. But now that these used books are available all the time, it will take work to be selective.

I rarely buy books as well but so many for so cheap was impossible for me to turn down.

I think trying new genres sounds great, so far I have tried to branch out a couple times with mixed feelings on the result. I am hoping to find some other genres that may surprise me and become a favorite, I think your method of switching it up sounds great.

The one area I do struggle with is choosing to not finish a book. Right now, I am reading "Player of Games" as I have heard endless praise for the series. It really is not resonating with me after about 120 pages (which was just the first chapter) but I have a hard time quitting a book that people say is so well written. How long do you give it before quitting usually?

>Fear of being perceived as gay only became an issue with the increasing visibility of homosexuality & its gradual social acceptance. Normal affection between boys was sexualized. The visibility of homosexuality had a direct negative effect on the expression of intimacy & affection between heterosexual men, just as it also put a damper on things like girlfriends holding hands while they walk (something I remember being normal & common when I was a kid but which gradually ceased when girls started getting called lesbians for doing so).

>The sexualization of same-sex affection is what killed it.

This is literally a value judgement and saying that it's gay people's fault. That's homophobic, and if you look at their post history you'll see tons of bullshit "heteronormativity" being supported.

There's no shortage of easily digestible adult fiction out there. I'm not saying you have to only read Holocaust survivor biographies as soon as you reach adulthood. For example, I read a lot of WH40k fiction. My reddit username is a character from the Eisenhorn novels by Dan Abnett. They're not challenging to read in the slightest, yet they're still very clearly written with an adult audience in mind. I just don't really get why a well adjusted adult who can comprehend higher level reading would deliberately choose to limit themselves to YA.

I appreciate the solid input. I think part of my issue is simply owning them rather than renting them, so putting the rest away while focusing one at a time is a good idea.

I honestly didn’t know which brother to side with the whole book. Neither is bad. Isaac is over confident but not necessarily arrogant. He did seem to be the better weather observer overall, though Joseph was correct about the hurricane. Joseph, it was stated, wasn’t overly impressive in any manner, but seemed to be a diligent worker. Joseph was envious of Isaac’s success, and Isaac saw Joseph as almost a trigger as it pertains to his wife’s death. It was a really bizarre dynamic honestly. Sad they ended up never reconciling.

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> The solution to this is not that gay people should go back in the closet, it's that there should be a reduction in the stigma associated with being gay (though even without a stigma, most people don't want to be perceived as a sexuality they're not, so this might not work).

This is what all of my posts have been arguing, yes. That the taboo is what causes it. They were putting the blame on homosexuals, rather than putting the blame where it belongs on the people who still despise them. You wouldn't, or shouldn't, blame women in Saudi Arabia for getting beaten to death because they aren't wearing a burka so why should you blame gay people for why straight men can't hug each other?

Yes. The majority of people that have ready it like it.