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Vote For Your Favourite Gay Book!
Win a €50 book voucher by voting for your favourite LGBT book of all time.
As part of the Dublin Pride celebrations, GCN and The Gutter Bookshop are inviting you to vote for your favourite lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans themed book of all time and we're giving a €50 book voucher to one lucky voter.
All you have to do is email books@gcn.ie telling us your book choice and giving us your name and address. Mark the subject box: Reading.
We'll be posting your ultimate top ten on line next month, and to spur you along, here, in alphabetical order, are Bob Johnson, owner of The Gutter Bookshop's top 30 queer reads:
A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham (1990)
The nature of friendship and family, as well as the nature of home and love are explored in this novel about two best friends - one gay, one bisexual - who grow up in stifling suburbia and then embark on a ménage a trios relationship with a woman, defying all conventions.
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (1964)
With precision and unsentimentality, A Single Man follows a day of George Falconer's life as he mourns the death of his lover of 16 years. Although his homosexuality is never overtly referred to, it underpins every word of this painful and ultimately uplifting masterpiece.
Affinity by Sarah Waters (1999)
All is not what it seems in Waters' second novel, a Dickensian chiller set in Millbank women's prison, where petty criminal and spiritualist, Selina Dawes weaves an erotic spell over sheltered prison visitor, Margaret Dawes.
At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill (2001)
Set in Dublin before and during the 1916 Easter Rising, this epic novel tells the love story of two young Irish men: Jim Mack and Doyler Doyle. Written in a stream-of-consciousness style, it was what one critic called the gay Ulysees.
Breakfast on Pluto by Patrick McCabe (1998)
McCabe's queer //tour de force// follows transgendered Patrick 'Pussy' Braden from small Irish town life to the dirty streets of London, circa 1970 as he searches for the mother who abandoned him.
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)
Oxford student, Charles Ryder falls head over heels in love with aristorcratic Sebastian Flyte, and then becomes embroiled in Sebastian's dysfunctional Catholic family, eventually marrying his sister. Bisexuality and religion never clashed so lavishly.
Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx (1999)
Star-crossed lovers Ennis Del Marr and Jack Twist first appeared in this lean, beautifully crafted novella before they became screen legends. Maybe the best gay book by a straight woman ever written.
Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman (2007)
The story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' house, Aciman's powerful debut novel is a psychololgical passion play beneath the hot summer sun.
Carol by Patricia Highsmith (1952)
An impressionable shop girl falls for a married woman in this adventure of the heart in which the object of affection is forced to choose between her lover and her daughter by a jealous, homophobic husband.
Even Cowgirls Get The Blues by Tom Robbins (1976)
The sexually ambiguous adventures of Sissky Hankshaw, a girl with unfeasibly large thumbs, who hooks up with lesbian cowgirl Bonanaza Jellybean among other philosophers, hippies and queer fashion tycoons.
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (1956)
David, a young American whose girlfriend has gone off to Spain to contemplate marriage, is left alone in Paris and begins an affair with an Italian barman, Giovanni. It's a gay dark night of the soul told in lyrically beautiful prose.
Hero by Perry Moore (2007)
In this cult gay coming of age novel with a difference, the central teen character not only struggles with his sexual orientation, he grapples with the emergence of superpowers.
Like People in History by Felice Picano (1995)
Known as 'the gay epic', Picano's novel charts the lives of cousins Roger and Alisdair, who meet in 1954 and whose lives intersect at key times in the history of the gay rights movement. The film is begging to be made.
Maurice by EM Forster (1971)
Published after Forster's death, Maurice was actually begun in 1913 and semi-autobiographically charts the author's struggles with his own homosexuality. Remarkably this page-turner has a hugely romantic happy end.
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (2000)
A laugh-out-loud, already classic collection of essays from the life of the American gay humourist, taking in his childhood, his struggles to find a career and his eventual move to France with his boyfriend.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
The painful coming of age of Cal Stephanides (initially called "Callie"), is an intersexed who has a 5-alpha-reductase deficiency which causes him to appear female, this doubles up as a riveting Greek family saga.
Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal (1968)
Set in Hollywood of the 1960s, Vidal's sweeping transsexual satire explores the homophobic machinations of the film industry, subverting the traditional sex and gender roles along the way. It's uproarious.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (1985)
An autobiographical coming of age novel in which Jeanette, brought up by a strict Pentecostal mother, discovers she's a lesbian. All hell and exorcisms break loose.
Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928)
The story man who falls asleep one day and awakes in a woman's body, Woolf's most accessible novel is epic in its 19th Century scope, but it's underbelly explores preconceptions about gender.
Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote (1948)
Written when Capte was just 28, this Southern gothic novel focuses on lonely, effeiminate teenager, Joel Knox who, after the death of his mother, is sent to live with a mysterious father and transvestite step-uncle.
Tales Of The City by Armistead Maupin (1978)
The first of seven novels following the adventures of a group of friends all linked to a house in San Francisco, this is the first episode of a queer soap opera that never goes out of fashion.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)
The story of two friends who set up a comics company in 1940s New York, this is a rare hybrid of holocaust survivor novel and gay journey of self-discovery set against the Golden Age of Comics.
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940)
At the heart of the McCullers' masterpiece is a deaf, mute gay man who looses the love of his life when he is incarcerated in a mental asylum. Although there is little in the way of overtly gay content, it is in the coded detail of this book that it's enormous impact lies.
The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1998)
Through the prism of three female protagonists (one lesbian) in three different times, Cunningham attempts to show the beauty and profundity of every day - even the most ordinary - in every person's life and conversely how a person's whole life can be examined through the prism of one single day. Stunning.
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (1998)
It's the 1980s, Margaret Tatcher is in power and young, gay, Nick Guest moves into the house of the rich Fedden family. This novel uses sexual difference to expose the selfish heart of Tatcherism.
The Persian Boy by Mary Renault (1972)
A 15 year-old Persian who becomes the lover and confidante of 26 year-old Alexander The Great in this historical novel exploring the emotional life of the conqueror.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)
A young man sells his soul in order that he may stay beautiful forever and plunges into a hedonistic life. A painting of him in the attic becomes aged and scarred with every sin against others he commits. Wilde's only published novel is a Faustian classic.
The Story of the Night by Colm Toibin (1996)
The personal clashes with the political in this tale of a repressed gay man who falls in love with the son of an Argentinian Presidential candidate. As much a story of Argentina in the wake of the Falklands war, it's a novel about people and place, as much as it's a book about love and loss.
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (1928)
The live and loves of Stephen Gordon, a lesbian from birth whose happiness is hampered by social rejection, for decades this novel was the only gay fiction available to present homosexuality as normal and cry out against prejudice.
Trumpet by Jackie Kay (1998)
Inspired by the life of Billy Tipton, an American jazz musician, who lived with the secret of being a woman for fifty years in pursuit of his musical career in the 1930s, this riveting and moving novel explores complex themes of identity, race, sexuality and gender with a deft hand.
All of these titles are available from The Gutter Bookshop, Cow's Lane, Temple Bar, which will host a special Reading with Pride event on June 21 at 6pm