LLF Online Book Club
Welcome to Lambda Literary’s online book club. This book club will highlight a different lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender book each month. The books selected will be a heady mix of LGBT classics, unheralded gems, and buzz-worthy new releases.
We hope you’ll read along with us each month and share your thoughts on the books in the comments section.
We’d also love to hear your suggestions for upcoming selections or comments on the club in general. E-mail William at wjohnson@lambdaliterary.org.
This month’s selection is Richard Mason’s History of a Pleasure Seeker :
The novel opens in Amsterdam at the turn of the last century. It moves to New York at the time of the 1907 financial crisis and proceeds onboard a luxury liner headed for Cape Town.
It is about a young man—Piet Barol—with an instinctive appreciation for pleasure and a gift for finding it. Piet’s father is an austere administrator at Holland’s oldest university. His mother, a singing teacher, has died—but not before giving him a thorough grounding in the arts of charm.
Piet applies for a job as tutor to the troubled son of Europe’s leading hotelier: a child who refuses to leave his family’s mansion on Amsterdam’s grandest canal. As the young man enters this glittering world, he learns its secrets—and soon, quietly, steadily, finds his life transformed as he in turn transforms the lives of those around him.
Below you’ll find links to reading guides and reviews.
Enjoy and remember: reading is fundamental
History of a Pleasure Seeker
By Richard Mason
Knopf
Paperback,9780307599476, 288pp.
February 2012
Buy Amazon | Publisher | Indiebound
