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chloe44's review
i got what he was trying to say but all his notes fell flat with me. i also have an issue with a man saying three women (madonna, cher and Kylie) only having successful decade defying careers cause of the queer community not cause of their hard work.
kellynanne's review
informative
medium-paced
2.75
I’m glad this book was written because the stories of queer musicians deserves to be told but this book just wasn’t well written. It felt very unorganized and I couldn’t tell whether the author was trying to make it accessible or academic. Like I said, I’m glad I read it because it did introduce me to some awesome queer artists!
zephy55's review
It's great that this book exists. It is a wildly ambitious project to do justice to 100 years of LGBT music, so maybe this relatively short book was doomed to fail my expectations. I was hoping for a more focused review, perhaps on key artists the author felt were important and digging deep into their lives, time and place. However, this book jumps around way too much and makes confusing choices with no justification. Ex. Josephine Baker is only briefly mentioned in a mid length paragraph in a chapter allegedly about London but actually about LGBT artists in several major cities of Europe but after we've spent several pages bouncing back and forth between (to me) lesser known (to a modern audience) artists. Entire books could be written about any person mentioned in this book but the author fail to give any person or topic or time or place any breathing room to the point it reads like a well sourced listsicle. Anyway, not for me. Also, a published book shouldn't have this many noticeable typos. Also, also, sometimes on the same page the author will refer to someone as their first name, last name or nickname with no consistency which is annoying.
rpych2's review against another edition
3.0
I liked this book, but I can’t quite give it more than three stars. Because even though it was interesting to read about LGBTQ musicians, three of my all time favorites of all time (Elton John, Freddie Mercury, and David Bowie) were hardly mentioned.
watermelleon's review against another edition
I listened to the audiobook version of this book.
I decided to stop reading around halfway through, I have had this on my list for a while and was quite aware it is very academic in nature, which can often run a little dry.
I initially found the first part of the book to be quite interesting, as many things were touched upon including the pansy period which I myself had been researching recently. However the first issue I ran into was that people were beginning to be dead named. (x name, born as Y name). Pronouns also got messy when describing their stories.
This is an excellent academic record of queer history, and something that definitely should exist to prevent further loss of queer history, but I think there is probably a question here of "do we need to mention someone's birth name, in order to make sure we can continue to locate them in historical records?"
the beauty of queer history (to me at least) is the verbal stories passed between us, some outrageous tales that become Chinese whispers. Surely it's better to refer someone by the names they chose, and the stories they chose to tell?
On this note, there was a lot of myth busting, and lines like "many people thought x, but this wasn't true". Who has the right to expel queer myths? I feel a focus on the many stories, over the "actual facts" read into a far more interesting look at queer history (and feel way less mansplainy when listened to over audiobook)
After the initial excitement around this book, and pushing back these issues discussed, I began to feel the book itself was not well structured and at times felt very scattered, which was when I decided to dnf. Very sad, but I think the author did not have a relevant enough background to discuss all kinds of people and topics in a way that worked, and this would have worked better as a collaborative effort with other researchers from these backgrounds.
I decided to stop reading around halfway through, I have had this on my list for a while and was quite aware it is very academic in nature, which can often run a little dry.
I initially found the first part of the book to be quite interesting, as many things were touched upon including the pansy period which I myself had been researching recently. However the first issue I ran into was that people were beginning to be dead named. (x name, born as Y name). Pronouns also got messy when describing their stories.
This is an excellent academic record of queer history, and something that definitely should exist to prevent further loss of queer history, but I think there is probably a question here of "do we need to mention someone's birth name, in order to make sure we can continue to locate them in historical records?"
the beauty of queer history (to me at least) is the verbal stories passed between us, some outrageous tales that become Chinese whispers. Surely it's better to refer someone by the names they chose, and the stories they chose to tell?
On this note, there was a lot of myth busting, and lines like "many people thought x, but this wasn't true". Who has the right to expel queer myths? I feel a focus on the many stories, over the "actual facts" read into a far more interesting look at queer history (and feel way less mansplainy when listened to over audiobook)
After the initial excitement around this book, and pushing back these issues discussed, I began to feel the book itself was not well structured and at times felt very scattered, which was when I decided to dnf. Very sad, but I think the author did not have a relevant enough background to discuss all kinds of people and topics in a way that worked, and this would have worked better as a collaborative effort with other researchers from these backgrounds.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Deadnaming, Hate crime, Homophobia, and Transphobia
katie_esh's review against another edition
3.0
I found the 1900-1950 history more interesting than the more recent stories, but I’d love the author’s take on Lil Nas X.
susanbrooks's review against another edition
3.0
Not as light and fluffy as the title. A serious and informative read on the subject.