10 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE December 12, 2003

eveningsout

These three coffee table books make excellent gifts

by Anthony Glassman

With the holiday season breathing its frosty breath down the backs of everyone's necks, a young man's or woman's mind implacably turns to thoughts of gifts to be purchased for friends, lovers, family members and other assorted hangers-on.

A perennial favorite for gift-giving occasions, of course, is a book. Regular novels or non-fiction titles run the risk of looking good on their faces but turning out to be horridly written pieces of tripe best used for lining bird cages.

Coffee-table books, on the other hand, are a much safer avenue down which one can tread, since it's so much easier to tailor the gift to the interests of the recipient.

Three noteworthy new titles should provide an easy escape should the need arise, catering to interests far greater than would be immediately apparent with a first glance.

P. Craig Russell's "comic book" adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute (NBM Publishing, $24.95, hardcover) is a prime example. While on its face, it might seem that a “graphic novel" would be a good gift for someone into superheroes, or a teenaged male who hates reading, Russell's work is a masterpiece of elegance.

A resident of Kent, Ohio, Russell received a degree in painting from the University of Cincinnati, giving his work an immediate appeal as a "hometown boy done good," much like author Michael Cunningham.

While doing art for various more mainstream efforts, Russell began adapting classical opera into graphic novel form. He has also done marvelous versions of Oscar

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all aspects of British life.

Even the South Indian LGBT community has become rather large, with a number of major clubs in big cities holding parties aimed at the Asian community.

Red Threads takes that community and presents it in all its myriad forms through the photography of two women, Poulomi Desai and Parminder Sekhon. Both women are also interviewed in the book, presenting their views of the culture in which they produce their work.

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Wilde's fairy tales, and an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book which keeps far closer to the original than the Disney cartoon could ever dream of doing.

Red Threads (Diva Books, $24.95, hardcover) is a remarkable trip through the South Asian Diaspora in Britain.

While Ohio does not have much of a South Asian (namely India, Pakistan and surrounding countries) community, Britain does, and it has firmly entrenched itself in

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The photographs range from almost anthropological to nearly pornographic, taking cues from National Geographic as readily as from Robert Mapplethorpe.

For a queer Bangladeshi in Cincinnati or a transgendered Kashmiri in Toledo, this book could be a vital lifeline to family they never knew they had.

Those who appreciate fine photography can enjoy the book on its basic merits, while those with a love of Asian culture will find plenty here to appeal. Also, there are slews of attractive men and women mixed in with political and sociological messages.

Finally, Andrew Bolton's Bravehearts: Men in Skirts (Abrams, $40, hardcover) pretty much is self-explanatory. It's a big book of guys in skirts. And kilts. And togas. And sarongs, saris and every other imaginable variation on the theme, contemporary, historical, Western and around the world.

On the one hand, this book is easy to like because so many of the photos feature attractive young men in Vivienne Westwood or Jean-Paul Gaultier boy-frocks. The appeal of the book, though, goes much deeper than that.

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Shepherd's Bush 1996, from Red Threads

It actually provides an historical and sociological look at what men wear on their lower halves. Why is it perfectly acceptable for a Scot to wear a skirt, call it a kilt, and nobody really looks twice, possibly for fear of finding out what he's wearing underneath should a sudden updraft occur?

Challenging "traditional" standards of what is masculine and what is feminine, this book can easily be read as a treatise calling for greater understanding of transgender issues. If what one defines as feminine can, in actuality, be masculine, why would it be. strange at all for someone who appears male to actually be female?

But, again, it has really fascinating pictures. Henry VIII wore something resembling a skirt, and he's in here. As did Kurt Cobain, also in here and looking hot. Perhaps, then, masculinity is in the eye of the beholder.

As is the appropriate reason for giving one of these books as a gift this holiday season. Such multifaceted works should not sit languishing on the shelves of the local bookseller, they should fill a coffee table with joy.

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