Readers Welcome! Bloor Gladstone’s LGBTQ Bookclub
One of the newest book clubs in the library system is the LGBTQ Book Club at the Bloor Gladstone Branch.
It was launched in September 2013 and is actively welcoming new members. Featured books are selected by participants with the member who suggested the chosen book taking an active role leading the discussion.
The club meets on the first Wednesday of the month; the next meeting is December 4 at 7 PM. This month's book is the National Book Award winning Just Kids by Patti Smith.
This description from Harper Collins Publishers illustrates why it is one of the most loved books of the past year:
It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.
Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max's Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous—the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.
Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.
To register for the club or to get more information, call Bloor Gladstone Branch at 416-393-7674.
3 thoughts on “Readers Welcome! Bloor Gladstone’s LGBTQ Bookclub”
Why does it have to be an LGBTQBLAHYUCK book club? Why ghettoize yourself? Books don’t have sexual orientations and political agendas, and people who want to endow them with those things are unimaginative idiots.
Thank you for your comment, Joe.
Unfortunately the LGBTQ community still faces discrimination. Individuals fearing homophobia or who experience social anxiety may be reluctant to join a general book club.
An LGBTQ book club provides a safe, welcoming space where members may speak freely without fear of judgement based upon sexual identity.
To clarify: everyone is welcome to attend this book club.
I find it contemptible Joe that you criticize the library for “marginilizing” but in your blog you yourself say hurtful and marginal comments about the LGBTQ community. Such as “Spokesgay” and “Gaysian”. Perhaps you should check your own hypocrisies before attempting to critique one avenue of a large organization that is here to help people.