I found this book very engaging and a fast read. Occasionally, one essay would hit me wrong in that it felt like a filler or something given more depth by inclusion than was warranted. For the most part, the essays were funny: sometimes just funny, sometimes tragically funny, sometimes funny in a revelatory way. Oliver is a witty writer, and I bet his plays are riots.

This book felt similar to Ocean Vuong's "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" in that it often hearkens back to a central framing device between slices of the story. While Vuong's is fiction and this is not, both play with themes of gender, race, and sexuality central to both author's identities. I found this somewhat less impactful than the former but no less engaging. It has clear throughlines and allows you to see the narrative and literal ark of someone growing into themself. I quite enjoyed it. 

This book is thorough and was engaging and entertaining. It sometimes felt like a long article and sometimes like a gossip column. Some of it had silly descriptions or turns of phrase, but that wasn't an incredible bother. There were quite a few sentences I had to read many times to understand what they meant, which interrupted the flow and lowered my opinion. I still enjoyed it for a deep dive into a very interesting tangled web.

I was originally annoyed at the lack of defined terms and felt that this self-admitted pseudo-academic book was leaning too pseudo, but I read on. It's a book with a bite, asking you to question things and the meager progress (or progress, then backslide) we've made in LGBTQ rights and thus gentrification, both mental and literal. It's a heartfelt book, not mushy but sincere. A solid tribute to the deceased and the victimized. It provides a new framework with which to look at intentional sociological and public health oversights. I was changed by it and am looking forward to reading all the works mentioned.

As an irritating young person, I tend to consider anything over 100 years ago boring by default, but I enjoyed this short story. It was amusing and the narrator had a solid, strong-headed and engaging voice. I think I missed the conclusion on first pass but on reflection, it felt relatively satisfying. Not my favorite short story, but thoroughly competent.

This is a very solid book. It is rather overwritten, enumerating every twist in tone of voice or facial expression, but that somewhat speaks to narrator Paul's neuroticism. The central themes I came to settle on are that of power and abuse. There is power in being more monied in a relationship, there is power in being the arbiter of someone else's fate. Another thought I had was the power in the setting of the book, that being the 70s. You might consider being gay 50 years ago to be a point of devaluation or oppression, but here it rings different. Is there power in eschewing social norms? Power in indulging in delights that disgust other people? Feeling mightier in something others consider dirt, be that murder or homosexuality. Is power abuse when both are complicit? I'd say yes, but this book asks you that again and again, to feel sorry for the victimized and the oppressor because they are often one in the same. It's a very cerebral book that sometimes takes itself too seriously, but it made me think and kept me rapt.

This is a good book, a very good book. It interweaves journalistic bent and personal history in a style emblematic of "This American Life". Foo has a great grasp in this memoir, straying into but never wallowing in both humor and horror. She's a great narrator in the audiobook version and I was very fond of the recordings of sessions with her therapist. This is a masterful book with someone with so much to say. She can read me the ingredients in cornflakes and I'd thank her. 

This book of poems felt cohesive and had several thematic motifs that appeared again in again, occasionally to their detriment but mostly to their benefit. It maintained a good balance between the accessible and the profound. If you pulled at the loose threads, double entendres would fall at your feet, gasping and pink in the face. It was very well done, but as with any anthology, some poems stuck with me longer than others. I will enjoy returning to this work and annotating up a storm.

My first conclusion from this book is that Lou was a very horny gent, and my second is that this is one of my favorite books of the year and should be a seminal book of queer literature. Lou has an lively, amusing voice and makes many quotidian scenarios little odysseys. Most of the book flows like enthusiastic water, winding and enjoyable. Still, there are moments of sobering honesty. Moments where Lou's confidence and swagger wain mean all the more in a story of a man who had such a clear idea of who he was. I can't quite state how important of a book this is. It is a moment in time, a righting of wrongs, an illumination of the brushed-under-rug. It is a life.

This is more an experiment than a book, a beaded bracelet strung with impressions and atmosphere. The characters were fairly interchangeable, but I can't say I didn't enjoy it. It was like floating.