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Change Your Day

A revitalized blog with one mission: to present a moment that jolts your day, triggers new thinking, gets you through traffic tangles, and relieves job stress. Or, more prosaically, accompanies you through the early miles of bike touring through France and Italy. Wherever you are, I aim to change your day.

Credit to @illuminatethearts for lighting the skies from the Ferry Building down Market Street. 

BOOK BLOG New Books, June 22, 2024

6/24/2024

 
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Coming Soon! 
A new biography of gay journalist Randy Shilts.  A new gay sex memoir. And magic mushrooms, anyone?  I follow Publisher’s Weekly to track what’s new in the book publishing world. Last week, I noticed a tempting, teasing list of new books expected in the next few months. I haven’t read any of these as advance copies, and I’m not reviewing them here, but you might want to be among the first to take a look at these titles.

First, San Francisco’s gay journalist Randy Shilts will receive the biographical treatment with When the Band Played On: The Life of Randy Shilts, America’s Trailblazing Gay Journalist by Michael G. Lee, Chicago Review Press, 320 pages, hardcover. Available October 8, 2024.

Shilts has been profiled before and after his death from AIDS in 1994, mostly in magazines and journals, but this is the second book-length biography of the much-applauded but controversial writer. I’m curious to read how this new book treats Shilts’  reporting style, the controversy over the fabrication of Patient Zero, and whether the book provides a meaningful look at Shilts' inner life.

Esteemed Author Edmund White Makes Sense of 60-Plus Years of Sex.  Not many men can compile more than sixty years of their gay sex lives, much less with the literary and popular reputation of gay writer Edmund White who does so at age 85. Yet we can look forward to White’s accounts next January 2025 with the publication of The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir, Edmund White, Bloomsbury (publisher), 246 pages.

I was slow to become an eager fan of each of White’s books – novels, fictional memoirs, and sagas of travel. Now, I’m ready to delve into his work with anticipation, especially at my own advanced age as I prepare my own memoir for publication. I’ll be signing up for one of his pre-release copies. How about you?

Magic Mushrooms Are Everywhere, right? I’m told that Colorado and Oregon are the two places to be for everything magic mushrooms. As a native Oregonian, I hear intriguing stories about the legalized but facilitated trips with psilocybin mushrooms. A new report by Grant Singer, a reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting counts 3500 clients who have taken a guided trip with psilocybin in Oregon.  

In October this year, look for the new “Have A Good Trip: Exploring the Magic Mushroom Experience,” by Eugenia Bone, Published by Flatiron Books, 352 pages. Tell us what you think.

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    Michael Helquist

    Author Historian Activist 

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