Reading list ideas extravaganza.

Hey everybody.
I have been working on adding titles to our reading list for the rest of the year. We came up with some great ideas and I'm excited about (almost) all of them!
April was already set with Yo-Yo Boing! May we're reading Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea. For June, we've added The Group by Mary McCarthy - a story about a bunch of "Vassar girls." July we'll try The Bermudez Triangle, thanks for the idea, Jenn. August we're reading Jeanette Winterson's newest - a memoir called Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal. For September, we've selected The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson. October's title will be Nina Revoyr's award-winner Wingshooters. (I love loved loved Southland so I'm excited about that.) November we've chosen an Edmonton author, Candas Jane Dorsey; we're reading Black Wine. Finally, in December we'll read Ellis Avery's new one, The Last Nude (reviewed by Lindy here)!
Okay! So that was a lot of choosing and we have many more titles we will likely add as the months go by. Like Shamin Sarif's The World Unseen; Jane Rule's Taking My Life; Elana Dykewomon's Risk and Alison Bechdel's newest.
So. Another project. I am trying to recommend to a local bookstore that we love (Audrey's) some authors they ought to keep in stock to have a real, useful lesbian fiction section. Here's my opinion: you need to have one or two titles from the following authors: Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Waters, Michelle Tea, Elana Dykewomon, Nicola Griffiths, Ivan Coyote, Helen Humphreys, Emma Donoghue, Camilla Gibb, Farzana Doctor, Dionne Brand, Shani Mootoo,  and maybe Alberta authors Suzette Mayr and Larissa Lai. I'd love to hear what you all think makes a reasonable lesbian fiction section? I'm trying to think of what is actually popular and would sell for them, but also have interesting options. And contain some quality reading instead of just lesbian mysteries and romances (which have their place). Send me your ideas!

Yo-yo!

Thanks for the discussion last night, book clubbers. We read Malinda Lo's Ash, and while it was a nice light read, we got quite involved in discussion of young adult fiction and gender roles. We were looking forward to a different spin on Cinderella, and this was a different spin in that Ash (aka Cinderella) ended up with a woman instead of a prince, it still felt like the same old story of poor, poor girl with no options is rescued by a man, or lesbian in this case. Where are the stories where women/girls rescue themselves?
Next we head into Giannina Braschi's Yo-Yo Boing! Brace yourselves, readers, this one seems a little odd so far!

Cinderella and unicorns.

Who knew the book club was becoming so froofy - we're reading musings on Cinderella and books centred around unicorns! Our March title is Ash by Chinese American author Malinda Lo. It's been described as a lesbian twist on Cinderella. Check out the book's trailer here!
Our February title was Suzette Mayr's Monoceros - monoceros is Greek for unicorn. We enjoyed a terrific phone meeting with Suzette where she gamely answered all of our questions. We quizzed her about whether the unicorns in the book were supposed to be interpreted literally, why one character came out (and outed his partner at the same time) and broke up with his partner all at the same time, how she managed to write characters mostly peripheral to a young boy's life and have them all make sense together. Very enjoyable! Thanks again, Suzette. And thanks to Coach House books for their discussion questions - they helped us look at the book from different angles!