Books Don't Suck! The world has changed a lot in the last few years. Has anyone noticed? It’s a cliché, but there are so many more choices, so many more things to do and see. In fact, at the same time that we’re writing this column, Brent is IMing two people and answering email, while Michael is making notes for an upcoming book and talking on the phone. Kinda makes you suspect that both Michael’s upcoming book and this column are really going to suck, doesn’t it? But don’t worry. Like the rest of the world, we’ve gotten good at multi-tasking.

Oh, right. Books. Does anyone still read those old things anymore?

Not much, according to recent surveys. One recent study found that 58 percent of the US population never reads another book after high school. Seventy percent of Americans have not visited a bookstore in the last five years. Even more alarmingly, the amount of time Americans spend reading has fallen 11 percent in just those last five years.

And it’s no wonder: it’s impossible to multi-task while reading a book.

Our informal survey of gay booksellers and editors suggests these trends are true for gay Americans as well. We’ve certainly found it’s true for the two of us: we read less fiction.

The thing is, books still offer the gay person something that no other entertainment media does – namely, complicated, flesh-and-blood gay characters that are like the people you really know.

Sure, there are more gay movies these days, but even now, most of them completely suck.

And TV? Well, this is complicated, because there have been some great gay portrayals in the past few years, like Willow and Tara on Buffy, and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon on Project Greenlight. But so many of the gays on television are still tired stereotypes, noble novelties, or comic relief.

And when was the last time you saw a gay character in a computer game? (Luigi, the less butch of the Nintendo Mario Brothers, still swears he thought he was a she!)

All these other forms of entertainment are mass entertainment. If they deal with gay themes at all, it has to be done in such a way that it will theoretically appeal to virtually all gays, and also appeal – or at least titillate – heterosexuals. Hence, The L Word.

Meanwhile, books don’t need to appeal to every single person in existence, so there is so much more diversity. They can be rich and satisfying, like Brian Malloy’s touching The Year of Ice, or sweetly romantic, like Steve Kluger’s Almost Like Being in Love. They can even bitchy and unapologetically queer, like Dennis Hensley’s hilarious Screening Party.

Want gay historical fiction? Try Gods in Flight by Laura Argiri, a heartbreaking tale of love and loss in Victorian New England. Critics made much of the fact that Oliver Stone had Collin Farrell glance lasciviously at his male confidante in Alexander. But in Mary Renaults’ The Persian Boy, Alexander does a lot more than just glance.

It’s refreshing that the success of The Lord of the Rings has made it okay for cinema to explore the fantasy and science fiction genres again. But don’t count on seeing anything as provocative as Robert Sawyer’s Hominids, about an alternate dimension of intelligent Neanderthals where all the males have a female and a male partner. And fans of the Harry Potter movies would probably fuse their cerebellums if they ever tried to read Jacqueline Carey’s eyebrow-raising Kushiel’s Dart, a deliciously campy pan-sexual fantasy about a plucky concubine who definitely puts the “M” into S&M.

A lot of people say you should read because it will make you a “better person,” and “it’s good for you.”

To which we say, “Bullshit!” You don’t eat to get your vitamins; you eat because you're hungry and it tastes good.

To us, books still taste pretty damn good.

And that is another part of the Big Gay Picture.

Two Cheap Bastards are Brent Hartinger and Michael Jensen, partners since 1992. Brent is the author of the gay teen novel, Geography Club, and its sequel, The Order of the Poison Oak (brenthartinger.com). Michael Jensen is the author of the gay historical novels Frontiers and Firelands (michaeljensen.com).

Read past editions of The Big Gay Picture