The Queer Reading Project
Like many readers, I tend to have a huge stack of books in my to read pile. For a really long time I was "off" reading: I was tired, I was distracted, and I had forgotten how to be in the habit of reading. One thing I've gotten back over the pandemic is being back in the habit of reading--partly because I moved and wanted to make a committment to actually read all the books I took and partly to help myself establish a routine.
I tend to read non-fiction and because I'm a gay history nerd, I have a lot of queer-related histories (although not my only area of interest). Over the last few months I've been going through my (large) collection of unread queer books and trying to get them all read. I wanted to keep track of them somehow and I hate the UI of Good Reads, so I decided to make a master post of what I've read and what's unread and also do a quick log of each book here for future reference.
I imagine nearly everything there is to be said about Samuel Delany's Times Square Red, Times Square Blue has probably been said. It manages to be a beautiful and also filthy portrayal of a city and a culture in shift. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue is about the decimation of a certain type of queer life, mirrored in the way a city changes. It seamlessly an era of New York City to the type of queer sex that was available, forcing the reader to connect the construct of a city to the people that actually inhabit it.