100 books like Acts of Service

As a writer, each time I read anything by James Baldwin, it´s like I´m getting a master class in how to capture a feeling and translate that into an articulate thought. When a friend told me to read this book over 30 years ago, shortly after I came out, they said this was “the best, and perhaps the most tragic novel about bisexuality ever written.”

Years later, it still kicks me in the gut each time I read it. Baldwin´s detailed examination of David´s desire for Giovanni while simultaneously being engaged to his fiancé, Hella, remains achingly beautiful.

Guy New York has had a huge influence on my own creative writing, and this book of his is definitely my favorite. A sprawling story set in New York City's East Village of the recent past, this erotic story is raw and raunchy and populated with characters that are absolutely flawed yet totally identifiable.

There are all kinds of sex and intimacy depicted here, but I appreciate how he keeps the focus on the experience of eroticism between all of these characters and genders, no matter how messy or contradictory, as that feels truer to life. Also, for me, it contains some of the most authentic portrayals of male bisexuality I have found in contemporary fiction. Definitely recommend!

This collection of essays about bisexuality came out earlier this year, and I already feel like I need to read it again. The book encompasses both ends of a philosophical spectrum, from recognizable authors who go deep into subjects I thought I was already familiar with to newer voices who open up my mind with their engaging questions surrounding bisexuality, gender-fluidity, polyamory, and more.

Some of these writers challenged my thinking, which I found rare and rewarding in a lot of contemporary writing on bisexual identity and experience. I want to re-read this book so I can process the ideas and questions Vaneet Mehta and Lois Shearing have assembled here and see how I can pour some of this into my life and fiction.

Dierdre Winter is one of my favorite independent writers of bisexual erotic literature. Like all of her novellas and short stories, this book takes its time introducing its characters, allowing the reader to get inside their heads.

For all of its highly charged erotic scenes, the book is about communication within a marriage, being honest with your partner about what you desire, and also about trust. Instead of just delivering some quick “word porn,” Winter takes her time to engage all of my senses, particularly my brain.

This one had my head spinning right round, baby! Happy marriage, babies, a nice home—what more could a young wife ask for?

How about someone she can trust, for starters, and how ’bout her husband’s ex-lover quits coming around all the time, tattling tales of his murky past? It reminded me of an old friend of mine who fell in love with a guy she’d met through an online dating site. He claimed he was long divorced, but—whoops—was actually still married, and living with his estranged wife in separate parts of their house.

You can probably guess how that ended, but not this book. With every wild plot turn, I was grabbing for the Oh sh*t handle and gasping for breath.

This was a book club choice, and as soon as I finished it, I bought the other two books in the trilogy. I literally couldn’t put them down! Another post-apocalypse for this list, this time, the story is told through the memories of Jimmy/Snowman. But make no mistake, the novel is about Crake, a brilliant, lonely, and terrifying young man.

As Jimmy tries to recover his past, shadowed by the gentle, green-skinned ‘children of Crake,’ he recalls the events leading up to the end of humanity. This is very much a mystery, so I must be careful what I reveal, but if you are all about misguided genius and hubris, you will adore this novel. Needless to say, with an author like Atwood, the writing is superb. 

Now we’re back in my most favorite place, San Francisco. Place is as much a character as the living, breathing people we meet in the pages of novels or non-fiction, and the author, Andrew Sean Greer, chose to tell a most curious tale in my hometown. We’re in San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century where we meet a strange gnome-like man who ages backwards. He’s in love with a young lady who is normal in every way. With a nod to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Curious Life of Benjamin Button, here time is the great force that shifts reality and asks the age-old question, what does it mean to be a human being?

The Blue Bistro is one of Hilderbrand’s earlier books, and like almost all of her work, it is set on the island of Nantucket. I thoroughly enjoy reading all of Hilderbrand’s novels because of the incredible imagery she uses to describe the settings. I feel like I know the beaches, restaurants, hotels, and streets of Nantucket from reading her books almost better than I could from vacationing there. The Blue Bistro is especially compelling because it is set in a unique upscale restaurant and weaves distressing personal drama with mouthwatering menu descriptions. If you like good food and good gossip, you’ll love The Blue Bistro.

I’ve always been deeply fascinated with any amnesia-related plot. A teenager who survives a near-death experience and cannot remember the last several years of her life? And, despite this being YA novel, as an older reader, I could not put this book down. It kept me guessing, constantly deducing as everything unfolded, and though the main characters are young, their emotional processes are so raw and beautiful. I’ve reread this one many a time. For any Nancy Drew gamers out there, The Secret History of Us is like a ND game/Nicholas Sparks’ novel hybrid.

Wild Africa is romantic and daring and I loved the danger and inspiration of 1920s Africa, when British born real life woman Beryl Markham becomes one of the first female pilots. It’s a bit of Out of Africa and riveting.

Markham encounters many obstacles and has several disastrous relationships but eventually she overcomes and succeeds. She becomes the first person (not woman) to fly solo from Britain to North America.