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Alvin’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Alvin’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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Alvin Orloff
Goodreads Author
Born
in Los Angeles, The United States
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April 2007
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Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997
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published
2019
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2 editions
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Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person
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published
2004
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3 editions
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Vulgarian Rhapsody
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The Unsinkable Bambi Lake
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published
1996
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3 editions
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Gutterboys
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published
2004
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2 editions
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I Married An Earthling: A Novel
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published
2000
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2 editions
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Why Aren't You Smiling?
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published
2011
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6 editions
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![[Why Aren't You Smiling?] [...](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/nophoto/book/111x148._SX50_.png)
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[Why Aren't You Smiling?] [By: Orloff, Alvin] [October, 2011]
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I was not prepared for the weirdness!
The English eccentric, Quentin Crisp, once said that, "Only a lie is boring," and I believe that truer words were ne'er spoke. I wanted my memoir, "Disasterama!" to be exciting, so I told the truth about my louche and feckless youth as a club kid, hustler, and somewhat delusional cultural activist. When, after 56 rejections, it was accepted by Three Rooms Press for publication in the fall of '19,
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Alvin’s Recent Updates
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Alvin
rated a book it was amazing
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| This smorgasbord of flapper fiction is a delight. A few stories are just plain terrific (Dawn Powell and Anita Loos, you go girls!), but even the lesser selections are full of atmosphere, bringing to life one of the 20th century's most fun and cheeri ...more | |
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Alvin
rated a book really liked it
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| This zippy little read offers a garbage collector's view of urban waste management. Paré-Poupart writes with clarity and economy about the history, politics, and sociology of his subject. Nothing I learned was too surprising, but reading this was a g ...more | |
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Alvin
rated a book liked it
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| There's no protagonist in this book, but rather an ensemble of quirky characters- some of whom really came to life and popped off the page, some of who remained rather vague, and a few I couldn't quite believe in. The dialogue was sharp and the pecul ...more | |
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Alvin
rated a book it was amazing
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| Anecdotes, analysis, and fun trivia abound in this encyclopedic survey of queer music - and music that isn't actually queer but could have a potentially queer subtext. The wide range of genres included means that a lot of the book will invariably be ...more | |
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Alvin
and
1 other person
liked
Glen Helfand's review
of
Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music, 1969-2000:
"Reading Mighty Real you get the sense that ALL pop music of the late 20th century was queer. There is so much, and Walters treats it encyclopedically, with entries on so many artists-- gay and otherwise. It's very much my own coming of age era, so th"
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Alvin
rated a book liked it
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| This wildly weird and original novel utilizes the elements of Southern Gothic literature - remote and claustrophobic locale, grotesque characters, melodramatic plot - and twists them into a queer (but not particularly homoerotic) story of thwarted pa ...more | |
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"If you prefer normalcy, of any semblance, straight forward story telling, familiar use of the English language, or characters you can quickly identify with, well, we’re done here. For those who breathe less easily, keeping an eye out for strange shad"
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Alvin
rated a book it was amazing
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| Crazy, weird, hilarious, and occasionally touching. | |
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Alvin
rated a book liked it
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| The subject matter could not be more fascinating, but this rather turgid hagiography could use some serious editing. The progressive political rhetoric was simply too repetitious and pat for me... and I'm from Berkeley! The book could also use some h ...more | |
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Alvin
rated a book did not like it
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| I rarely give up on books halfway through, but I had to for this one. The protagonist narrator just didn't come alive for me. She seemed like a one dimensional tough broad from an old movie. I'd picked up the book hoping to get a glimpse of another c ...more | |
“Reagan's going to mess everything up, cutting taxes for the wealthy and getting rid of the safety net and all that. The rich and the poor won't be able to mix socially. The rich will be afraid of getting ripped off or asked for money and the poor won't be able to afford to hang out in the same places anyway. Society's going to be divided by class and instead of expressing themselves, people are going to spend all their time advertising their status. It'll be shallow, like the Eisenhower era. Parties will suck.”
― Gutterboys
― Gutterboys
“Unlike prostitution or promiscuity, stripping was entirely public. One foot on the state would forever mark me as a disreputable character, the sort respectable people called a sleaze. On the other hand ... I didn't know any respectable people and my workday would be a mere thirty minutes long. And, I had to face it, some quirk of my psychic constitution rendered the strictures of ordinary jobs insufferable to me. Restaurant work felt like a cross between the treadmill at the gym and one of those Japanese game shows on which contestants are abused and humiliated in front of a sadistic audience. Office work was even worse, calling to mind those B movies in which some poor soul--bound and gagged, but eyes wide with terror--is slowly walled up brick-by-brick in the dungeon of some damp, rat-infested Transylvanian castle.”
― Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997
― Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997
“I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.”
― Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt
― Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt
“It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.”
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“As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'...) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.”
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“As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.
But the frogs die in earnest.”
― The Female Man
But the frogs die in earnest.”
― The Female Man
“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
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Hi Alvin, thanks for the add. I had no idea you wrote "Why Aren't You Smiling?," it's already on my TBR list!
Wow, great to meet you!
Alvin