pbs The Great American Read

[Former Member]

PBS has a summer series running with an associated poll. They’re asking people to vote on their favorite novel. There are LGBT authors and stories included. I urge you to vote even if you don’t choose my favorite: Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin.

 

www.pbs.org/greatamericanread

 

San Francisco’s PBS station is KQED. KQED’s zip code is 94110. Just so you’ll know… [wink, wink] You can vote once a day.  ;–)

[Former Member]

If this was a Ranked Choice voting, I’d also vote for The Lord of the Rings, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dune, Harry Potter, and A Separate Peace.

 

I haven’t read all LGBTQ books. James Baldwin’s Another Country is one that I haven’t read. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is not one of my favorites. I’m sure I’ll be corrected if I missed any other LGBTQ books or authors.  ;–)

[Former Member]

As I watched the show, I realized you can vote for multiple books, the restriction is that you can only vote for a book once a day. So you can vote for the same book everyday if you want.  ;–)

 

If you’re not worried about the smirking weasel/thief giving away all your private information, you can also vote on his site.

[Former Member]

Final Results

1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. Outlander (Series)
3. Harry Potter (Series)
4. Pride and Prejudice
5. Lord of the Rings
6. Gone with the Wind
7. Charlotte's Web
8. Little Women
9. Chronicles of Narnia
10. Jane Eyre
11. Anne of Green Gables
12. Grapes of Wrath
13. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
14. Book Thief
15. Great Gatsby
16. The Help
17. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
18. 1984
19. And Then There Were None
20. Atlas Shrugged
21. Wuthering Heights
22. Lonesome Dove
23. Pillars of the Earth
24. Stand
25. Rebecca
26. A Prayer for Owen Meany
27. Color Purple
28. Alice in Wonderland
29. Great Expectations
30. Catcher in the Rye
31. Where the Red Fern Grows
32. Outsiders
33. The Da Vinci Code
34. The Handmaid's Tale
35. Dune
36. The Little Prince
37. Call of the Wild
38. The Clan of the Cave Bear
39. The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy
40. The Hunger Games
41. The Count of Monte Cristo
42. The Joy Luck Club
43. Frankenstein
44. The Giver
45. Memoirs of a Geisha
46. Moby Dick
47. Catch 22
48. Game of Thrones (series)
49. Foundation (series)
50. War and Peace
51. Their Eyes Were Watching God
52. Jurassic Park
53. The Godfather
54. One Hundred Years of Solitude
55. The Picture of Dorian Gray
56. The Notebook
57. The Shack
58. A Confederacy of Dunces
59. The Hunt for Red October
60. Beloved
61. The Martian
62. The Wheel of Time (series)
63. Siddhartha
64. Crime and Punishment
65. The Sun Also Rises
66. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
67. A Separate Peace
68. Don Quixote
69. The Lovely Bones
70. The Alchemist
71. Hatchet (series)
72. Invisible Man
73. The Twilight Saga (series)
74. Tales of the City (series)
75. Gulliver's Travels
76. Ready Player One
77. Left Behind (series)
78. Gone Girl
79. Watchers
80. The Pilgrim's Progress
81. Alex Cross Mysteries (series)
82. Things Fall Apart
83. Heart of Darkness
84. Gilead
85. Flowers in the Attic
86. Fifty Shades of Grey
87. The Sirens of Titan
88. This Present Darkness
89. Americanah
90. Another Country
91. Bless Me, Ultima
92. Looking for Alaska
93. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
94. Swan Song
95. Mind Invaders
96. White Teeth
97. Ghost
98. The Coldest Winter Ever
99. The Intuitionist
100. Doña Bárbára

I’ve probably missed a few LGBTQ books…

[Former Member]

Maybe I should include The Lord of the Rings among the LGBTQ books. Bilbo seemed to be grooming his young nephews. Neither he nor Frodo ever married. And Samwise was much more than the gardener or companion…  ;–)

 

The Dwarves preferred the company of other male Dwarves, but that was too threatening to movie viewers, so Kili flirts with Tauriel the (female) Elf (not something in the books).  ;–)

 

The Wizards (like Gandalf) were apparently life-long bachelors, but Gandalf was often shown surrounded by large groups of males.  ;–)

 

In fact the entire series is very male-centric!  ;–)

[Thorn Wilde]

On 11/1/2018 at 5:19 AM, droughtquake said:

Maybe I should include The Lord of the Rings among the LGBTQ books. Bilbo seemed to be grooming his young nephews. Neither he nor Frodo ever married. And Samwise was much more than the gardener or companion…  ;–)

 

The Dwarves preferred the company of other male Dwarves, but that was too threatening to movie viewers, so Kili flirts with Tauriel the (female) Elf (not something in the books).  ;–)

 

The Wizards (like Gandalf) were apparently life-long bachelors, but Gandalf was often shown surrounded by large groups of males.  ;–)

 

In fact the entire series is very male-centric!  ;–)

 

Yeah, LotR and The Hobbit are basically one big sausage fest. I approved of Tauriel being added for diversity, but then they ruined it by making her just another romantic interest...

 

Harry Potter, though. I mean, Dumbledore is gay.

[Thorn Wilde]

Little Women, though. Jo is clearly genderqueer.

[Solivagant]

On 5/27/2018 at 1:44 AM, droughtquake said:

PBS has a summer series running with an associated poll. They’re asking people to vote on their favorite novel. There are LGBT authors and stories included. I urge you to vote even if you don’t choose my favorite: Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin.

 

www.pbs.org/greatamericanread

 

San Francisco’s PBS station is KQED. KQED’s zip code is 94110. Just so you’ll know… [wink, wink] You can vote once a day.  ;–)

I watched the series "Tales of the City" (1993), "More Tales of the City" (1998), and "Further Tales of the City" (2001) last year. I especially loved the performances by Olympia Dukakis (Mrs. Anna Madrigal), Laura Linney (Mary Ann Singleton), Paul Hopkins (Michael Tolliver in seasons 1 and 2) and Billy Campbell (Dr. Jon Fielding). 

In my opinion, season 1 was the best, and I disliked immensely when they replaced four major characters for season 2.

Michael and Jon are my favorite couple from the show, but Anna Madrigal was the most interesting and fascinating character by far; I love her relationship with Edgar Halcyon.

I enjoyed the show so much that I watched it in one sitting.

I did purchase the whole book series, but I have not read it yet; I still have tons of books that I "should" read first before starting with the "Tales of the City" series. 

I hope the Netflix revival is as good as the original SHOWTIME series.

Thank you for posting!

[Former Member]

6 minutes ago, Solivagant said:

In my opinion, season 1 was the best, and I disliked immensely when they replaced four major characters for season 2.

The miniseries was a huge ratings success for PBS, but Congress got involved and threatened to pull all funding from PBS is they produced another season of Tales. Of course, you may be aware that Congress has threatened to pull all funding from PBS several times since then and hopefully that will continue to be an empty threat. Oddly enough, pulling funding from PBS hasn’t been a priority recently.  ;–)

 

Because of the turmoil over the PBS broadcast, it took 5 years to create the sequel and many of the original actors were no longer available for the series. Production was also moved for the second and third series. It’s kind of amazing that they all work together so well anyway.  ;–)

 

 

When you read the books, keep in mind that the first four books were originally serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle and the SF Examiner for the fifth book. Naturally, they were edited before being published as books, but the first five were originally written one chapter (or so) at a time, the day before publication. This means that real life events were incorporated into the story as they happened. It also means that Armistead Maupin originally thought he needed to have cliffhangers to retain his readers who might otherwise be distracted by other parts of the newspaper. As he began to realize his readers were invested in the characters, the situations became more realistic and less frenzied.

 

There was also an 18 year gap between the sixth and the seventh books. When first published, Armistead claimed that Michael Tolliver Lives was not a sequel to the Tales of the City series. Stylistically, it is very unlike the other books.

 

 

The unrelated Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener both have a tiny thread of a connection to the Tales books, having a different minor character from the series appearing in each them. Robin Williams starred in the movie adaptation of The Night Listener. That was one of at least three Gay roles for Robin along with The Birdcage and Boulevard.  ;–)

[Former Member]

42 minutes ago, Solivagant said:

Michael and Jon are my favorite couple from the show, but Anna Madrigal was the most interesting and fascinating character by far; I love her relationship with Edgar Halcyon.

Michael and Brian are my favorite pairing even though they aren’t a romantic couple.  ;–)

 

There are so many fun things that I wish I could mention, but would be spoilers (I feel like River Song)!