Future Selections for the Group:

Selection for April 2010

Maurice: A Novel
by E.M. Forster

Set in the elegant Edwardian world of Cambridge undergraduate life, this story by a master novelist introduces us to Maurice Hall when he is fourteen. We follow him through public school and Cambridge, and on into his father's firm, Hill and Hall, Stock Brokers. In a highly structured society, Maurice is a conventional young man in almost every way, "stepping into the niche that England had prepared for him": except that his is homosexual.

Written during 1913 and 1914, immediately after Howards End, and not published until 1971, Maurice was ahead of its time in its theme and in its affirmation that love between men can be happy. "Happiness," Forster wrote, "is its keynote....In Maurice I tried to create a character who was completely unlike myself or what I supposed myself to be: someone handsome, healthy, bodily attractive, mentally torpid, not a bad businessman and rather a snob. Into this mixture I dropped an ingredient that puzzles him, wakes him up, torments him and finally saves him."

Special event: A Book Group Gathering tied with a Book Group Viewing of the film. The book discussion will occur the second Wednesday of March 2010, with a viewing of the film to take place the second Saturday afternoon of March 2010, which discussion of the film to follow after viewing.

Selection for May 2010

My Pet Virus:
The True Story of a Rebel Without a Cure
by Shawn Decker

I was destined for a life of medical drama from day one," begins this comic memoir with a mission. "I was born in the month of July, and my horoscope sign is a disease (Cancer). The symbol for Cancer? A crab (the sexually transmitted critter). Not only that, my parents named me Shawn Timothy Decker, which makes my initials S.T.D.

Shawn Decker isn't quite the All-American boy. Sure, he gets caught shoplifting copies of "Penthouse"; is crazy about prowrestling, especially "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair; and never has a problem getting dates. But he's also a hemophiliac who discovers, at age eleven, that he has contracted HIV from tainted blood products.

Instead of becoming self-pitying and dying (as first predicted), Shawn develops a twisted sense of humor, meets Depeche Mode through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and writes on blogs and in Poz magazine about what it's like being hetero and HIV-positive in rural Virginia. He also turns to gay men for advice on dating women and, almost twenty years after getting HIV, marries Gwenn Barringer, who is HIV-negative and a former competitor for the title of Miss Virginia. Together Shawn and Gwenn travel the country, speaking to high school and college kids about how to live and love with HIV (and how to avoid getting it).

Please note: A limited number of copies of this Selection are available to Book Group members for $2.00 per copy. Obtain a copy from the Group Facilitator at any Book Group Gathering before the April Group Gathering.

Selection for June 2010

Mapping the Territory:
Selected Nonfiction
by Christopher Bram

Novelist Christopher Bram has been writing essays for twenty-five years. Mapping the Territory, his first collection of nonfiction, ranges through such topics as the power of gay fiction, coming out in the 1970s in Virginia, low-budget filmmaking with friends in New York, and the sexual imagination of Henry James. He describes the heady experience of seeing his novel Gods and Monsters (originally titled Father of Frankenstein) made into an Oscar-winning movie starring Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, and Lynn Redgrave; he discusses why he and his partner of thirty years don't want to get married. Bram looks both into and out of himself in these essays. He revisits the titles he read while finding himself as a gay man, but also shows us Greenwich Village as seen from his front stoop. The book is not simply a collection of short pieces, it's an autobiography of ideas from one of today’s most lively and popular novelists.

To make recommendations for future selections of Big Gay Book Group,
please send your suggestions and recommendations by email to
biggaybookgroup@hotmail.com
Any recommendations will be presented to and voted on by
members of the Group during our Group Gatherings.