Best Gift Books for 2020 | Holiday Gift Guide PASSPORT

LEATHER AND TINSEL
All dressed up in their holiday best
Confess: The Autobiography (Hachette Books. $26. www.hachettebookgroup.com). In the 1970s and ‘80s, many self-acknowledged gay men remained closeted in their worklife, thinking that coming out might destroy careers in law, medicine, government and, of course, Heavy Metal. Whether or not you’re a headbanger, this candid bio from Rob Halford, celebrated lead singer of Judas Priest, is worth cracking open. You may find you have more in common with the strutting, studded rocker than you’d expect. Halford, who grew up in blue collar British steel town, was a bookish literature major who fashioned early lyrics on William Blake, and a theater lover since boyhood. He has also chronicled gay life in Priest lyrics for many decades, but record labels, rock radio, and most fans were willfully oblivious to the likes of Halford’s 1973 description of Fire Island in “Raw Deal”: “Them steely leather guys were fooling with the denim dudes” and taken by surprise when the singer formally came out in a 1991 interview. Now, Halford cheerfully tells tales featuring everyone from Tom of Finland to Marie Osmond. His star-struck first trip to New York at 26 finds Halford covering the pop-cultural waterfront, from a screening of “Deep Throat” to a night at Studio 54. And he writes with great wry humor, exemplified by the story of his father discovering the dildo that 15-year-old Halford had stashed in his bedroom: “Without even looking up from his paper, he addressed a comment toward me: ‘You might want to get rid of that object, Rob.”

BUY BOOK When you purchase a book from our curated Bookshop.org shop we earn an affiliate commission. The books are independently reviewed by our book editor and the potential commission does not influence the review in any way.

The Candy Book of Transversal Creativity (Rizzoli. $60. www.byluisvenegas.com). Luis Venegas, the Madrid-based publisher and impresario behind a series of independent limited circulation magazines, coined the word transversal to express a hybrid notion of transition, transformation, transgression, and here’s the welcome surprise, universality. Then he created Candy, named for Warhol star Candy Darling, as a visual showcase for the concept. Beginning in 2009, twelve issues of this fat, sassy celebration of selfhood have been printed, each in runs of 1,500 and less (single back issues currently sell for $275 and more). This new hardback volume compiles the periodical’s snazziest spreads, with eyepopping photography of gender-queer and androgynous subjects from Tilda Swinton to Amanda Lepore to Aquaria to Janet Mock. It’s a smashingly designed tome that’s as much a tribute to magazine making as it is to the spirit of its subjects.

GOOD TIDINGS TO ALL
Thoughtful takes on our shared humanity
The Freezer Door (Semiotexte. $17.95. www.mattildabernsteinsycamore.com). Almost indescribably eclectic in both prose style and cornucopic social content, the sometimes dizzying, frequently devastating memoirs and autobiographical novels of Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (Sketchtasy, The End of San Francisco, Pulling Taffy) prickle and tickle all at once. None more so than his latest, in which the genderqueer logonaut takes his pen to the gentrification and whitewashing of our cities and our bodies. What at first may feel like an unedited stream of consciousness, turns out to shrewdly loop back on itself as the author exposes harsh ironies of contemporary American LGBTQ life. On post- PrEP urbanity: “We live in a far different world than the one where an HIV diagnosis meant imminent death, but we also live in a world where public demand for a cure is nearly nonexistent.” On internet hook-ups: “The best way to avoid bad sex is to search for good sex online, until you can’t find anything but the searching.”
Mixing horror with humor, this is a book in which the author’s painful memories of being raped by his father jostle up against his hoariest of dad jokes. Experimental, yes; and the test tubes get thrillingly fizzy.

The Groom Will Keep His Name (Bold Type Books. $16.99. www.boldtypebooks.com). Matt Ortile’s bracing, compulsively readable essays explore his experiences in intersectionality: He’s a gay man, a Filipino immigrant, a brown-skinned person. While sometimes lighthearted, and always infused with a cheeky sense of humor, Ortile is not another “new Sedaris”; he’s a serious writer, directly taking on major cultural issues. He’s at his best when keeps things personal and grounds his bigger ideas in little details. The book’s first piece, an examination of how Ortile has used fashion choices to express, assert, deny, and celebrate his identity is generally terrific, only faltering when he occasionally leans into more academic prose stylings. His look at the functions of casual sex in his early years in New York is fresh, in-sightful, and told with an honest and much appreciated lack of shame or regret. Another essay, in which he considers and reconsiders his under-graduate years at Vassar finds Ortile purposefully twisting in self-contradiction; its as if we’re with him, watching him think, live on the page.

Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs (Celadon Books. $26.99. www.jenniferboylan.net). Jennifer Finney Boylan is always good company. In her affable, shaggily constructed latest memoir, the transgender author, activist and New York Times columnist retells the story of her life, much of which will be familiar to readers of her earlier books, including the sublime She’s Not There, using a canine framework. Boylan reminisces about the solace and often unconditional affection that a series of dogs have given her through even the unsteadiest passages of her own life. Among her fourlegged friends are childhood pet Playboy, an ungainly Dalmatian who elicited open affection from Boylan’s generally inexpressive father; Matt the Mutt, whose prescription for female hormones was strangely tempting to the author at the age of 21; and Ranger, a black Labrador puppy, who served as a precious emotional common denominator linking Boylan, her wife and sons in the immediate wake of transition. The dog stories here are well-told and familiar, themselves perhaps the sort of common denominator that could make Boylan’s gender journey more accessible to otherwise reluctant readers. And the final chapter’s revelation that, to Boylan’s utter surprise, one of her own grown children is trans, will leave the author’s loyal longtime readership panting for a further volume.