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DNF at 30% (I have decided that I'm no longer going to star rate DNFs on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ)

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out is sold in the synopsis as a look at the gay bar phenomenon both throughout history and its place in modern queer culture, alongside the author's own personal experiences therein, however, several times while reading I found myself questioning whether I'd actually read the synopsis properly and that I wasn't thinking of a completely different book!

In all fairness, there are some very interesting historical facts in this book, and I liked that it was split into different cities and the culture in their gay bars. But I felt that the actual history of gay bars was pushed to the side in favour of telling the author's own personal experiences. This is, of course, fine - I love memoirs and have enjoyed similar books where facts and statistics are mixed with stories from the author's own encounters - however, what we saw in this book was really quite vulgar and over detailed descriptions of the author having all kinds of sex in gay bars with his partner, which was not at all what I was expecting going into this book, and a lot of these scenes felt rather gratuitous.

Furthermore, the author frequently came across as very pretentious (and at times a bit creepy, especially when he talks about not being able to follow the 'rules' of not being lecherous in a club), particularly when talking about young queer people today and their identities and safe spaces - it often sounded a lot like the right-wing 'snowflake' rhetoric that I'm sure we're all familiar with. There also was not a lot of nuance and the author rarely spoke about trans people and people of colour and their experiences with gay clubs, instead focussing on the white cis gay male experience. Overall, I just couldn't continue on with this one as it made me seriously uncomfortable, and I don't recommend it in lieu of other fantastic books on the subject.

Thanks to Netgalley and Granta Books for an eARC in return for an honest review!