Left Bank Books Lesbian Reading Group discussion

We need to pick the next books for the club. I've found some lists. Check them out and either respond to this message or post your selection on Goodreads.

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/45...

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Lesbian-No...

http://m.jezebel.com/5815289/the-top-...

http://www.autostraddle.com/100-best-...

So far, we've got votes for:

Annie on My Mind
Affinity
The Photographer (two votes)
Fingersmith
Written on the Body
Touchwood
The Passion
Curious Wine

Chime in and let us know what you'd like to read. I'll need to send the list to the LBB folks soon.

Danielle

I vote for (all from the Goodreads list Danielle sent out):

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
The World Unseen by Shamim Sarif
I Can't Think Straight by Shamim Sarif

Anne

Hi all,

Since we've gotten two votes for Annie on my Mind and The Photographer, I can let LBB know that we'll read those for February and March (so they can get the book order in) and then we can discuss the rest of the options at the January meeting.

If you have serious objections to this plan, let me know and we'll adjust.

Danielle

Very Cool!!! Thx!

We have suggested books to read on the "to-read" bookshelf here as well in case you didn't know.

Thanks, Michelle! I'll take a look at the "to-read" shelf and print out those recommendations (along with the other suggestions folks have posted here or via email) and we can discuss them at the January meeting.

See you all on January 17!

Danielle

Hi all,

We didn't discuss the next reads a whole lot at the last meeting, but we had a very lively discussion about the book. And cats.

Here are some recommendations from the group. Since The Photographer is only in e-book format, we'll need to decide if we want to stick with that book for February, switch it with another book, or move Annie on My Mind from March to February.

Let me know so I can let the Left Bank Book folks know.

High Risk by Jlee Meyer [2010]
Kate Hoffman, a famous actress, takes some time out from her flashy Hollywood lifestyle to help her queer sister launch a new hotel in San Francisco that caters exclusively to womyn. Enter Dasher, an out A-list Hollywood agent who coincidentally is also taking time out to help with the launch of this hotel.
Kate and Dasher do not get along, mostly because Kate is a straight lady with queer fear who gets flustered at the sight of Dasher in a power suit. But team work is dream work, and they need to get along for the sake of the hotel. This novel has some sort of secret society sub-plot but I can't tell you about it because curiosity got the best of me and I skipped ahead to all of the Kate/Dasher scenes.
If you want to know more about this womyn's hotel then you should read Hotel Liaison. It's not nearly as dull as the Amazon summary may lead you to believe.
Tags: work-related circumstance, lesbian power suits, confusing figure from the past
It Should be a Crime by Carson Taite [2009]
When celebrity defense attorney Morgan Bradley's long-term girlfriend strays, Morgan f*cks the pain away with the help of a smokin' hot bartender whom she meets in an alley behind a queer club.
Weeks later, Morgan starts her new job as a guest lecturer at the local university and discovers that the hot bartender is Parker Casy, one of her law students. Awkward. Morgan and Parker are forced to work closely together in order to get an innocent man freed from prison, and while neither lady can forget about their hot one night stand, they try really hard for at least 50 pages.
Tags: work-related circumstance, lesbian power suits, tragic accident, confusing figure from the past, hot girl has swagger
Wasted Heart by Lynn Galli [2010]
After spending years pining for her married best friend, Austy Nunziata decides that the best way to move on is to become the new Assistant US Attorney for Washington, which is 3,000 miles away. It's there that Austy meets Elise Bridie, an attractive FBI agent with whom she partners on a case that just so happens to also involve the woman that Austy moved interstate to avoid. It's complicated, okay?
Lynn Galli has written several novels focusing on a posse of Virginian lesbians and their love interests. If you like this you'll also like Imagining Reality, Blessed Twice, Finally, and Uncommon Emotions.
Tags: work-related circumstance, lesbian power suits, hot lady cop, confusing figure from the past

Death by the Riverside (Micky Night series) by J.M. Reddman [2001]
Micky Knight is a private detective who enjoys casual sex and drinking bourbon until she blacks out. It's the only way she can deal with the deep dark secret that haunts her from her childhood. Mickey is not a romantic or overly likable character; she's a hot mess on a good day and a bit of an asshole to the people in her life including Cordelia, a pretty lady doctor who Micky meets on a case.
Death By The Riverside isn't really a romance novel. It's more crime fiction featuring lots of lesbian sex. While there's a definite will-they-or-won't-they question hanging over Micky and Cordelia, most of the suspense in this novel stems from the question of whether Micky will get her shit together.
Fingersmith, Sarah Waters
Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

Written on the Body, Jeanette Winterson
The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. "At once a love story and a philosophical meditation."--New York Times Book Review.

Touchwood, Karin Kallmaker
Twenty-nine-year-old Rayann Germaine, betrayed by her lover, flees in grief and rage. She meets book store owner Louisa Thatcher, a woman many years her senior, who offers shelter and work... and soon, passion, and a loving place in her life.

But Rayann encounters challenges to this new love—from friends who question its wisdom, from her mother who disapproves of this liaison with a woman her own contemporary, from Louisa's son who learns for the first time his mother's true sexuality.

And there are profound differences between Rayann and Louisa themselves, two women who come from dramatically different places in the spectrum of age and life experience. Their only common ground seems to be the searing attraction that they both try to deny...

The Passion, Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson’s novels have established her as one of the most important young writers in world literature. The Passion is perhaps her most highly acclaimed work, a modern classic that confirms her special claim on the novel. Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice’s compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meet their singular destiny.

In her unique and mesmerizing voice, Winterson blends reality with fantasy, dream, and imagination to weave a hypnotic tale with stunning effects.

Curious Wine, Katherine V. Forrest
The intimacy of a cabin at Lake Tahoe provides the combustible setting that brings Diana Holland and Lane Christianson together in this passionate novel of first discovery.


Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
"Lavishly crammed with the songs, smells, and costumes of late Victorian England" (The Daily Telegraph), this delicious, steamy debut novel chronicles the adventures of Nan King, who begins life as an oyster girl in the provincial seaside town of Whitstable and whose fortunes are forever changed when she falls in love with a cross-dressing music-hall singer named Miss Kitty Butler.

When Kitty is called up to London for an engagement on "Grease Paint Avenue," Nan follows as her dresser and secret lover, and, soon after, dons trousers herself and joins the act. In time, Kitty breaks her heart, and Nan assumes the guise of butch roue to commence her own thrilling and varied sexual education - a sort of Moll Flanders in drag - finally finding friendship and true love in the most unexpected places.

Drawing comparison to the work of Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Waters' novel is a feast for the senses - an erotic, lushly detailed historical novel that bursts with life and dazzlingly casts the turn of the century in a different light.

The World Unseen by Shamim Sarif
In 1950s South Africa, apartheid is just becoming institutionalised. Free-spirited Amina has broken all the rules of her own conventional Indian community, and the new apartheid-led government, by running a café with Jacob her ‘coloured’ business partner. When she meets Miriam, a young traditional wife and mother, their unexpected attraction pushes Miriam to question the rules that bind her. When Amina helps Miriam's sister-in-law to hide from the police, a chain of events is set in motion that changes both women forever.

In a system that divides white from black and women from men, what chance is there for an unexpected love to survive?

I Can't Think Straight by Shamim Sarif
Tala, a London-based Palestinian, is preparing for her elaborate Middle Eastern wedding when she meets Leyla, a young British Indian woman who is dating her best friend.

Spirited Christian Tala and shy Muslim Leyla could not be more different from each other, but the attraction is immediate and goes deeper than friendship. As Tala’s wedding day approaches, simmering tensions come to boiling point and the pressure mounts for Tala to be true to herself.

Moving between the vast enclaves of Middle Eastern high society and the stunning backdrop of London’s West End, I Can’t Think Straight explores the clashes between East and West, love and marriage, conventions and individuality, creating a humorous and tender story of unexpected love and unusual freedoms.

I'm okay with whatever it is you choose for next month. Thanks for the selection list -- I wouldn't mind reading something else by Jeanette Winterson in the future. Death by the Riverside also sounds good.