Books

I'm finally getting into reading again. A few months ago, I read Jamie O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boys, which I really liked. I expected it to be simply an Irish Catholic's book about coming-of-age as a young gay man, but it wasn't just that. It was a history lesson, a cultural lesson, and one of the more lyrical novels I've read.

Around that same time, I also read Sarah Vowell's hilarious The Partly Cloudy Patriot. It was extremely funny, and even had a chapter about Buffy, but was not nearly as funny as her book tour speech about the book, which aired on C-SPAN, a videotape of her appearance for Minnesota Public Radio. In that appearance, she said some really funny things about George Bush. She also said some funny things about Buffy fandom, and made a very, very funny comment about Buffy & Spike's sex scene at the end of "Smashed" being the most pornographic thing she'd every seen on network TV. "In a good way". (In the book, it is revealed that she is a personal friend of Doug Petrie, the Buffy writer.) Also, her speaking voice, her delivery, make her words much, much funnier than they seem when one just reads them off the page.

So anyway, during the last couple of weeks I've read the Weetzie Bat series (thanks to transpotr for pointing out that there were sequels), read some disappointingly badly illustrated Dark Horse comics Buffy stuff, and read an amazing amount of Buffy fanfic.

But now I've finally delved back into non-fiction as well. I've been on the waiting list at the public library for over three months for Dan Savage's Skipping Towards Gomorrah, and it seems I may break down and buy it soon, because the waiting will never end. In the mean time, I read his older book The Kid (What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant): an Adoption Story.

I never expected this book to be funny. I know his columns in queer mags and such are often funny, and his interview on NPR about Skipping Towards Gomorrah was funny, but adoption is a serious issue, especially since the fundies are making it as difficult as possible for gay people to adopt. I pictured this book being a heavy-handed political diatribe, which can be irritating even when one agrees with the writer's point of view. However, it was not heavy-handed at all. It was hilarious, touching, honest, and fascinating. I never expected to laugh so hard. He manages to poke fun at the Christian right, himself, his boyfriend, his friends, his family, and some oblivious straight people, all without sounding mean or vindictive. I also found myself crying more than once while reading it, and it was also extremely informative. And it's just fun to get inside someone else's life a little.

I also realize anew that if my love and I ever decide to have kids, we'll never be able to afford adoption. Expensive! The "find a gay male friend"/dixie cup option seems the easiest, least expensive option. I know that our eggs are probably getting close to their sell-by date, though.

Anyway, this book made me even more eager to get my hands on Skipping Towards Gomorrah. I really like Savage's writing. It's the kind that makes you stay up all night reading, and it's not even fiction!

Oh, if you are reading this, thanks to keever for your links (in your book-related journal entries) to Powell's. I decided to link to their site's books because of your links. This was nice because I'd never visited their site before, and so found it very nice, nicer than Amazon, and because the URLs are less annoying to paste into the editing window, and finally because of the nice coincidence: Dan Savage's books mentions Powell's more than once (they live in Seattle and their birth mother was living in Portland at the time of the adoption).