Tag: AIDS

ARC, Books

Book 658: The Children of Harvey Milk – Andrew Reynolds

Geoff W

Cover art of "The Children of Harvey Milk"I’m not sure how I stumbled across this one, but when I did back in May I requested a copy from the publisher and they kindly obliged.* I was interested because of the subject matter, but also because Reynolds is based at UNC Chapel Hill (my undergrad) and his name rang a bell because he’d chaired the Sexuality Studies program there at some point in the recent past. And then with my master’s degree focusing on the Civil Partnership Act (2014) in the UK, of course I was going to want to read this book and see what he had to say.

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Books

Book 650: We Are Lost And Found – Helene Dunbar

Geoff W

book cover for "We are Lost and Found"This was an achingly beautiful book and I’m glad I stumbled across it after I saw someone else had read it. I can’t find the blog where I first read about it, but if it’s you let me know and I’ll add a link to your review! It took a while for my local library to get it, but because it’s a sleeper/quite book I was able to keep it for two check out periods and actually absorb it.

Set in NYC in the early-1980s We are Lost and Found takes a look at one teen’s coming out and coming of age (sort of – it’s only a year) as the AIDS crisis begins to unfold. There were some parts that I wasn’t a fan of (hello to my old nemesis, no quotation marks) and for some reason Part 2 really dragged for me—it took me two weeks to read that portion, but Parts 1 and 3 I read at a lightning pace.

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Books

Book 645: The Porcupine of Truth – Bill Konigsberg

Geoff W

The Porcupine of Truth book coverAnd, I’m back to playing catch up. The downside of all these teen/young adult rom-com books is that I read them so fast and I just want more that I end up going from being ahead on blogging to being two-to-three books behind in just days!

I got this this on Kindle download after reading The Music of What Happens and realizing I was only two books from finishing Konigsberg’s current works. It so happens I downloaded this the same day I went to the library too pick up two books and came back with six books, including the final Konigsberg I haven’t read, Honestly Ben, which I’ll get to probably in two-to-three days at the rate I’m reading these!

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Books

Book 614: Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower #5) – Stephen King

Geoff W

In general, I am LOATHE to enjoy a book as slow as this, let alone a 7(+) book series, but this one is good, really good.

I think the biggest issue I have with this book is how quickly it ended. Some of this is of course due to the Amazon Kindle flaw of telling you have 8-10% left in the book when really you have 1-2% and the other 8-9% of those pages are bonus content. But, the rest of it has to do with this having the first true cliffhanger in the series. [This might not be true as I can’t really remember the endings of the others, just they all blend together.]

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Books

Book 605: Almost Like Being in Love – Steve Kluger

Geoff W

I knew Tim didn’t read this blog, but I didn’t realize how little he paid attention to what I read. He recommended this after I basically forced him to read Check, Please! (#Hockey! #1) and the whole time I was reading this he was worried I would think it was too corny. And I kept telling him, PLEASE, you don’t even know how much I love this shit.

Almost Like Being in Love is the story of Travis and Craig told in a modern epistolary format, including internal memos, diaries, research requests, and eventually emails. From their budding love as seniors at a boarding school to 20 years later when Travis seeks Craig out after they grew apart when they went to separate colleges on opposite coasts in the US.

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