Edmonton Lesbian+ Book Club

Just tossing around some ideas for our reading list. We haven't read any classics lately - Radclyffe Hall's tragic novel of lesbian love called The Well of Loneliness was suggested. HD's HERmione might be another esoteric choice... In 2002, classicist and poet Anne Carson produced If Not, Winter, an exhaustive translation of Sappho's poetry fragments. Her line-by-line translations, complete with brackets where the ancient papyrus sources break off, are meant to capture both the original's lyricism and its present fragmentary nature. Biography/autobiography was also suggested - there are a few choices I've found. All You Get is Me, a bio of k.d. lang by Victoria Starr or k.d.lang Carrying The Torch by William Robertson. Eight Bullets: One Woman's Story of Surviving Anti-Gay Violence by Claudia Brenner. The End of Innocence by Chastity Bono. Love, Ellen by Betty Degeneres. Michelle Cliff might be a good choice with Claiming an Identity They Taught Me...

Ch-ch-ch-changes! We've made some adjustments to our reading list because of the availability of the books. So! Please take note - this months book is now Trumpet , by Jackie Kay. We pushed back Breathing Underwater and I Can't Think Straight. By the way, we may be watching the movie version of I Can't Think Straight if we can't get books! Yay - it's great. Discussion of The Slow Fix was good. Short stories are harder to discuss, but we managed. Everyone loves Ivan's conversational style and many of the stories. Our big question, though? The title. What is the slow fix? What's being fixed? Did it get fixed? Or is it like a drug fix, soothing? Lots of wonderings about how autobiographical these stories are, and some dissatisfaction with the relationship mentioned in many of the stories disappearing very suddenly. Although, relationships do that sometimes, don't they. Working on some further additions to the reading list asap! Love to have...