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A holiday book for Christmas lovers and haters alike

‘The Jolliest Bunch’ chock full of relatable anecdotes

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(Book cover image courtesy of Sourcebooks)

‘The Jolliest Bunch: Unhinged Holiday Stories’
By Danny Pellegrino
c.2023, Sourcebooks
$27.99/239 pages

It’s a hard choice to make.

When someone asks you about your favorite holiday, you have to think. Do you pick a spring holiday with bunnies, hearts, or leprechauns? Or something grand with parades and flags? Then again, stuffing yourself with stuffing is pretty awesome and that whole Santa-reindeer-elf bit is pretty appealing. Do you have a favorite holiday or, as in “The Jolliest Bunch” by Danny Pellegrino, do you just pick them all?

We’ve all had ’em: legendary stories attached to holidays that are best forgotten – for at least a little while, until they become family lore. Take, for instance, the various stories Pellegrino tells, beginning with a shout-out to his mother, Linda.

Linda, controller of all holidays, who invites the family over for Christmas Eve at 6 o’clock and then, like clockwork, freaks out at 5:10 “for approximately forty-nine minutes.” Linda, who rents chairs for the holiday from a local funeral home. Linda, who once fashioned a passable angel costume from a woman’s white shirt.

For a holiday we love, we’ll do almost anything to be home with family, including taking a cross-country ride with a half-drunk driver who’s on her way to see a former lover with six kids. For a holiday we love, we hold onto Christmas Past by welcoming gay ghosts into our lives. We work retail and endure the same eight holiday songs on every store speaker, then go home and watch the same four holiday specials on TV. We hope we get the gift we didn’t ask for. We celebrate with family and friends “and sometimes we’re surrounded by people we don’t like all that much.”

And then there are the traditions and the things that make the holiday a holiday: a string of beloved lights that a childhood pet nearly destroyed. Cookie cutters in the shape of the south end of a cat. Enjoying “Midwest comfort foods… that are incredibly delectable and anything but healthy.” Knowing that you’ve wrapped the 100% exact right gift for someone you adore, but also knowing “that even the most special presents are not as important as how you make them feel.”

So, here’s the brilliance of “The Jolliest Bunch”: no matter who you are, man or woman, gay or straight, author Danny Pellegrino has a universal memory to share that’s hilariously close to something you’ve experienced. Awkward relatives, check. Meals gone wrong, check. The gift you wanted more than anything, check. Bad holidays at a stranger’s house, yep. Decorations that are older than you are, uh-huh. It’s like he was at that same get-together.

This may make you cringe, but you’ll also laugh because Pellegrino is a funny writer with a keen eye for a great (and relatable) story. Just beware, though: holidays also bring out nostalgia, longing, missing, and regrets, so watch your heart.

In his introduction, Pellegrino says this book is for holiday haters as well as for those who start singing Christmas carols in August. That means “The Jolliest Bunch” is for you, and reading it’s an easy choice to make.

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Books

New book follows 7 trans kids coping with modern political attacks

Author Nico Lang delivers fine work of journalism

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(Book cover image courtesy Abrams Press)

‘American Teenager’
By Nico Lang
c.2024, Abrams Press
$30/288 pages

In great-grandma’s day, they hooked.

They were high-topped and dainty, too, to show off a tiny, cheeky-but-demure ankle beneath long skirts. These days, though, they Velcro, tie, strap, or you just slip your toes into whatever you put on your feet. You gotta wear your shoes but, as in the new book “American Teenager” by Nico Lang, you wish someone would walk a mile in them first.

Seven-hundred-plus.

That’s how many anti-gay, anti-trans bills were presented to state legislatures around the country last year, many aimed at minors. As if being a teenager isn’t hard enough. With this in mind, Lang shadowed seven trans kids, to find out how they and their families cope with our current political landscape.

Fifteen-year-old South Dakotan Wyatt is in 10th grade. He knows that the lawmakers in his state “will just keep turning up the boil” on trans bills and it makes him physically sick. When Lang asked Wyatt to describe himself, Wyatt couldn’t do it, as if, says Lang, he was “still in transit, not yet arrived.”

Near Birmingham, Rhydian is a good student at the Magic City Acceptance Academy, the only school in the South that specifically welcomes LGBTQ students, and he enjoys the deep love and support of his parents and grandmother. But he’s frustrated: Rhydian’s been waiting for months for top surgery, which has been put on hold for reasons that are political.

Mykah identifies as gender-fluid, Black, and bi-racial and they desperately dream of a future performing career. In Houston, Ruby’s beloved church held a re-naming ceremony for her when she turned 18. Seventeen-year-old trans boy Clint is Muslim, and has managed to avoid scrutiny from his Chicago mosque.

Jack, along with her mother and nonbinary sibling, Augie, were homeless before their mother finally managed to find housing; in the meantime, Jack lost her health care. And in Los Angeles, Kylie has health care, support, friends, and an activist mother.

She has advantages that most trans kids can only wish for – and she knows it.

Acne. Peer pressure. Social media. Being a teen has always been difficult, even without anti-LGBTQ legislation. In this fine work of journalism, author Nico Lang shows how a handful of kids in one group are coping with governmental policies and life in general.

Hint: you can expect the unexpected.

“American Teenager” shows the highs and lows of being a teen with the added stress of politics included – and here, the individuality inside the ordinary is striking and wonderful. Lang is careful to show how these are just typical kids – good-hearted, smart, funny, sarcastic – and it rings throughout each profile how much the discrimination they endure affects their lives and relationships. That’s a clarion call, absolutely, but readers who can see between the lines will also enjoy this book’s humor, it’s compassion, and the sheer joy of meeting decent, thoughtful teens.

Parents will like this book for its candor, and that goes doubly for adults who love a trans kid. Start “American Teenager” and before long, you’ll be hooked.

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Books

Randy Rainbow doesn’t hold back in new book

Something snide and cynical that’ll make you laugh

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(Book cover image courtesy St. Martin's Press)

‘Low-Hanging Fruit’
By Randy Rainbow
c.2024, St. Martin’s Press
$28/224 pages

Whine, whine, whine.

You got something to say, say it. Got an opinion? The world is waiting. It doesn’t do any good to mutter, sputter, or whine when something’s bothering you. As in the new book, “Low-Hanging Fruit” by Randy Rainbow, take it to the complaint department.

Randy Rainbow has a lot to say, and he’s not afraid to say it.

For starters, he’s “resigning from trying to fix you, effective immediately.” Any boneheaded thing you want to do now, whatever. Nothing is his responsibility anymore. He has other issues to worry about.

“The truth is,” he says, “I have a lot of complaints about a lot of things.”

There are right ways of doing things, he says, and there are wrong ways and we just all really need to know the difference – especially if you’re a “Karen.” He’s compassionate if you were born with that name, but not too much.

“I’m a flamboyant homosexual who’s lived my entire life with the name Randy Rainbow, so you’ll get little sympathy from me in this department.”

Other than that, you may wonder what Rainbow’s (ahem) “position” is: he’s actually thinking about running for president as a member of “a Rainbow coalition…” He doesn’t have much experience but, he says, if there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past few years, that doesn’t matter at all. He stands on a green platform, but he can’t ban fluorocarbons because, you know, the hair thing and all.

Rainbow misses his 20s, old-school dating sites, hooking up, and his former attention span. He waxes nostalgic about the places he’s lived, including an apartment overlooking a “fruit market.” He wonders why teenagers are suddenly “successful lifestyle gurus.” He hates when “stars begin losing their luster” and he wishes again for actors like Hayworth and Garbo.

But, he says, “Diva-complaints aside… I really do thank God for all the opportunities I’m given.”

So the elephant in the room right now might be one you’ll (never?) vote for, but you know that author Randy Rainbow will reliably skewer that political animal online, hilariously. The fun-poking continues in the most deliciously snarky way in “Low-Hanging Fruit.”

And yet, that’s not the only subject Rainbow tackles. Readers who love catching his posts and videos are treated here to a random string of observations, opinions, and rants-not-rants, with the signature sassy style they’ve come to expect. What you’ll read can be spit-out-your-wine funny sometimes, and other times it touches a nerve with nods toward culture, new and old, that’ll make you nod with recognition. Nothing in Rainbow’s path goes without sharp-edged comment, which is exactly what you want from his books. Unexpectedly, this one also includes a soft word or two and a few slight confessions that are gentle and that might even make you say, “Awwwwww.”

If you’re ready for something snide and cynical that’ll make you laugh, something that you’ll want to read aloud to a companion, “Low-Hanging Fruit” is what you need. Look for this book now and you’ll have no complaints.

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Books

‘The Loves of My Life’ is not for prudes

Edmund White’s thoughtful read about pursuing pleasure

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on

(Book cover image courtesy of Bloomsbury)

‘The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir’
By Edmund White
c.2025, Bloomsbury Publishing
$27.99/256 pages

Celebrated author Edmund White is just as prolific with men as he is with books. “The Loves of My Life” is a steamy memoir about his decades-long sex life. Now in his 80s, he’s had, in his own words, “thousands of sex partners” and this book recounts many of them, including some many amusing, some poignant, stories.

A warning: this book is not for prudish readers. White describes his encounters in lovingly explicit detail, fondly recalling his partners’ equipment and their skills. Some were shockingly creative: one partner belonged to a “fisting colony” where another member once inserted a football into a man, requiring surgery.

White began early, as a teenager sleeping with other boys at his boarding school, neighbors, and the son of his mother’s lover. Later, working for his father’s business, he picked up male hustlers. He would take these predominately “straight” men to cheap hotels for one-sided, quick affairs; many kept their socks on during. Some threatened violence afterwards, demanding more money or that White spend more time with them. 

As an adult, a sex worker he took to a country home to help get clean spent nearly all his time alone in the bedroom, leaving only to pick up meals.

White lingers on his experience with Stan, “my first husband.” They met in college, at a play Stan starred in. Moving to New York, they lived together off and on as Stan found acting work. He became involved with a group led by a former Marine, who kept the party going with drugs and orgies. Thankfully, he would later leave and get clean.

White had many memorable adventures abroad. Visiting Puerto Rico, he and his partner went home with two men they met on the beach; the natives laughed during, speaking mostly Spanish. In a park in Spain, he encountered a man who robbed him after propositioning him. Because homosexuality was illegal, he couldn’t go to the authorities, although they had a quickie afterwards. Years later, he rented a house in Madrid with a younger, Spanish lover, who took him to “geezer” clubs, but who threw tantrums if White spoke to any men there. He felt like a housewife, keeping the home spotless and prepared to satisfy his partner anytime, only once visiting a museum.

The book’s tone is generally humorous, although White recounts how, when he was a young man, many gay men saw themselves. Most only wanted to sleep with straight “trade,” which carried the threat of violence. Even successful professionals thought they were “sick.” White saw a therapist hoping to become straight. While the community’s self-image has improved considerably, there are still plenty of hang-ups. White’s younger friend Rory, for instance, Asian, athletic, and intelligent, only loves white men and feels depressed if one doesn’t return his affections.

He surprisingly doesn’t talk much about his husband, Michael, apart from him walking in on White with a lover and an airplane encounter. It might be useful to hear how they met, and their arrangements with other partners. Perhaps their relationship was off limits.

Mixing self-deprecating anecdotes with insights into writing and literature, “The Loves of My Life” makes for a fun, yet thoughtful read about pursuing pleasure.

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