Books like Disgusting, Beautiful, Immoral — picked by fans

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.

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.

I read this book in a feverishly short period of time, largely because Fishman´s writing never stopped surprising me. Her erotic story about Eve and her affairs with both men and women is complicated, messy, and real. I love how this book puts me into close identification with Eve, the contradictions in what she wants and what repels her, the tension between what she truly desires versus what she believes she “should” want.

I can't think of many novels that articulate the experience of bisexuals so accurately and with so much compassion, balancing social pressures and personal needs. It's a great book.

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.

I’ve heard people say this book is “magical,” and that description is spot on.

I cannot get over how cute this book was! A sprinkle of magic, found family, finding yourself, and amazing descriptions of the city. This book gave me so many sparkly feels. I begged for the two characters to get together and rooted for the MC from page one. The plot was phenomenally creative, genuinely like nothing I had ever read within contemporary romance.

I finished this book faster than any other book of the year. 

Thirty-five years after this book was published, I still smile thinking of it and the first time I read it in 1991.

It was/is a laugh-out-loud farce and was an inspiration to me to read gay and straight comic characters written so effortlessly.

Every so often, I check to see if Joe Keenan has another novel in the works, as he has written only three. I’ll be the first in line to buy a copy. 

If it’s personal accounts and many different voices you are looking for, The Bi-ble: Vol. 2 is perfect. It includes essays by various bisexual people, giving brief and poignant insights into their lives. 

This easy-to-read collection is a good example of the long tradition of anthologies in bi+ literature. Some stories are deeply relatable, others challenge you to look beyond your own experiences. It helped me to realise that while there is a commonality between the experiences of bisexual people, there are important individual differences that we need to keep in mind. No one person can speak for the entire bi community, so this book lets many people have their own voice.

While I’m not normally a consumer of short stories, I greatly admire authors who have mastered the craft, including the late Ethel Wilson and Alice Munro, two fellow Canadian writers.

My favourite story from Wilson is "A Drink with Adolphus," as it was written using opposite points of view from two characters at the same party.

I love fiction in which I can be immersed, while learning from the writing style of other authors.

If you’re a bi history nerd like me, you’re going to love this insight into some of the early thoughts on bisexuality by sex researcher Havelock Ellis. Already in the late 1800s, Ellis - who was in an open relationship, and whose wife was bisexual - did research with bisexual people. 

His writing shows us that bisexuality isn’t trendy or new, that the stereotypes we battle today were already being criticised over a century ago, and that some people had positive ideas about bisexuality. For example, Ellis attributed the success of great leaders and artists to their bisexuality. He credits this to the “innately democratic attitude” of bisexual people to see beyond social class. Ellis a key figure in bi history who often gets missed, but his work can give a real sense of connectedness with our past. 

His books can be hard to find in print, but Project Gutenberg… show more.

This book is probably the single most praised underground gay novel of my generation, and deservedly so. It’s so many things—beautiful writing, an old west setting in all its ugliness and adventure and hope, and a highly original narrative voice in the bisexual native orphan, Shed, who is being raised in a bordello. All the characters are well-drawn and as odd as the narrator, and the erotic journey, if I can call it that, is one of the most original, thought-provoking, and beautiful expressions of the possibilities of queer I’ve ever encountered. Spanbauer has helped me to write more skillfully about class and race and sexuality and how they are everywhere and how they can warp—and sometimes, oftentimes—set people free.