VICE VERSA: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life

This is a hefty tome, and it explores just about every nook and cranny in pursuit of a fuller understanding of the term "bisexuality." I wish it didn't assume that I knew so much about topics like Freud and the origins of modern thinking on sexual orientation, but it was already quite long, so I can see where I'll have to look that up on my own. What this book did quite nicely was examine bisexuality as seen from every angle. Of course it discussed the Greeks, where your partner's social status was perhaps more important than their gender, and the Kinsey report, where bisexuality was a non-mentioned statistical overlap, but it also discussed the tension between gay rights and bisexuality, why the term bisexuality is so hard to define in show more the first place, and the reluctance of people who identify as "straight" to come forward about their desires for people of all genders. As a English major, I found the section on literature to be especially interesting. In the end, with so much information, it became a bit of a jumble, but I certainly learned a lot. show less

Bisexuality in literature, history, boarding schools, psychology, biology... This book makes the invisible and marginialized visible. Every chapter added more to my list of books I need to read (and I've even gotten around to a few of them). It's definitely one I mean to re-read; I suffered informational overload the first time through.

This book starts out well enough. In the early chapters, Garber makes some points that I nodded along with. However, she runs out of anything interesting to say a few chapters in, and from that point draws on her experience as an English professor by going into mind-numbing literary analysis: this is what Tiresias did, this is what Freud said, this is what a novel no one's ever read talks about. It becomes excruciating to read, and it really makes no sense why it's there. The book would be a lot better, in my opinion, if it only comprised of the first quarter.

Sometimes hugely theoretical, but fascinating and entertaining nonetheles.