Do you find it easy to *find* gay books at your local library and/or book store?

Here in Birmingham (UK's second city, has a very large gay community) I struggle to find anything much. The Central Library has a reasonable section, although it got smaller last year when they moved it from one set of shelves to a smaller one. WHSmith and Borders have no gltb section and only stock the most mainstream of gay books (say, Brideshead Revisited, or something that's currently top of the charts) on the open shelves. Waterstones is slightly better - it has a tiny gltb section (usually one side of one stand of shelves... and that includes all the text books) plus a few mainstream-y ones.

My best bet is probably Prowler, the new city centre gay (sex) shop which has a more general section upstairs with quite alot of books.

Does anyone else fare better?

With respect ( ) I thought the selection of books in Prowler was rubbish...

Nice dog though...

I hardly ever buy books on the high street, always on the Internet, so no problem.

Me too. I'm an internet book buying junkie!

A
xxx

I'm heading that way.

It's annoying, though. And rather like the old Ford 'you can have any colour you like' thing. The bookstores whine regularly about how the internet is taking their trade away, but if they won't stock books people want to buy, you can hardly blame people for buying elsewhere.

I worked at a shopkeepers' federation (sort of like a union) for a while and one of their favourite quotes was 'You're the 30th person today I've told, we've got no call for that sort of thing'. Ha ha.

And yes, Ansley, Prowler's selection wasn't brilliant. But at least they *had* one....

Very true.

How are you getting on with 'Little Moscow'. I might make it my read-one-the-tube book next week.

I'd say it was a good 'travelling' book because the stories are quite short.

It's very good, but relentlessly unpleasant. But then a book about criminals, set in a seedy canalside bar, isn't exactly going to be about perfume and roses....

I buy online - it's cheaper, too! And you don't have to pay for a car park and stand around trying to read blurbs etc. without your glasses- which I can't wear for walking around the shelves...

I have to go to Border's soon - I got a couple of tokens last Christmas and it really is time I spent them - will probably end up with some non-fiction and a CD.

Amazon are brilliant at stocking gay titles and at recommending any you might have missed once they've noticed your interest!

Liz

Yes, I have a stockpile of vouchers as well, and can't find anything to spend them on. Although I will go and have a look for that new Louise Welsh - her last one was shelved as 'crime' rather than 'gay' so I'm hopeful they'll do the same with this one.

I've noticed Amazon's 'have you considered this book? or this? or this?' feature. It's great, but it can be too tempting at times. Get thee behind me Satan!

It's just occurred to me that I don't think I've ever bought a gay book from a store. Oh, no wait, just one, many years ago and it on the top shelf of James Thin (anyone remember them before they closed down?) with the Black Lace books but it was um... much more sexual than it seemed to imply and really was a piece of porn for men. I also found it to be quite, I wouldn't say violent, but defo aggressive in content. I don't recall seeing any in our nearest book store. I shall have to look next time.

I ended up with some gay porn when County Books were changing hands and selling stuff off. I felt quite sad about the standard of writing on offer in the imprints I bought - I accepted the more 'aggressive' and explicit sex as something men might like, but felt they also deserved reasonable plot, characterisation and language - though the grammar was OK and I didn't find any typos, which must tell you quite a lot about how I read books!!LOL!!

I ended up with a couple of the Master and Commander series from Borders. My sister-in-law, who lent me the first in the series (she's into sailing, not slash)was also responsible for one of the tokens. Patrick O'Brian's series is fantastic and the relationship between Aubrey and Maturin has so many lines to read between. Georgette Heyer goes to sea could be a subtitle...

Re gay porn - I think it is something gay men like, but you're right - not all of them like it and the ones that don't, deserve something else. (I hesitate to say 'better', but you know what I mean. ) We've had a lot of comments at FF from gay men along the lines of 'thank goodness, somewhere that does gay *romance* at last'.

It's a shame a few more of the serious gay publishers don't pick up on that trend.