I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley.

I've been wrong before is a collection of essays by Evan James.
I think "Lover's Theme - a story about a drag queen - was my favorite.
"One Hell Of A Homie" came in at a close second.
Most of the essays were well-written and interesting in some way or another. Some not-so-much. But that's fairly common with any collection of essays / stories.
I think more people should be talking about this book!
I'm hoping to read others by this author!

DNF @ 26%

The prose is a little too dry and humorless for me although I do recognize the author's talent. I found it hard to derive any greater meaning from the first few installments, and this seems more like a memoir in vignettes than essays.

I will say that I appreciated "Grotesk" as I was starting college in Columbus at the same time that James began his residency.

I’ve recently read a terrific book of essays by Jordan Kisner. The sort of thing that makes you reconsider your preprogrammed menu of reading likes and dislikes. One of those things where you go…ok, maybe essays can be of interest. Ok, let’s try another. So I did. This one showed up on Netgalley promising to be funny, smart and something to do with travel, so sure…I checked it out. And all I can say is…essays still might be a good addition to my reading, but this book wasn’t, really. The thing with essays…it’s essentially people telling you stories from their lives. It is such a personal genre, if you don’t like/relate to/ enjoy the author, their stories aren’t going to do much for you. And this was definitely the case here. Now, I am well aware that in the modern rabidly politically correct day and age saying something is too gay is an abominable faux pas. And yet…this book was just too gay for me. Male gay, for clarification purposes. And no, I’m not homophobic, I just don’t especially enjoy certain aspects of the culture…the commitmentphobic promiscuity, the vapidness and so on. Stereotypes, you’ll say. Well, maybe, but this book and its author check every single one of those boxes and then some. I’m not saying it isn’t a valid lifestyle, it is and at any rate it doesn’t need my validation, I’m just saying it isn’t that interesting to me. I didn’t care about the author’s bathhouse adventures or his flirtations with drag queening or his short lived affairs. The traveling aspects of it very somewhat interesting, but again not in ways I normally appreciate in travelogues, more like…went there, partied there, hooked up there, wanderlust heavy on lust. Actually, his tales of retail vagaries ended up being the more engaging ones. But in general, though mildly amusing at times and occasionally very nicely written with some genuinely clever observations along the way, this collection didn’t really work for me. I know I don’t have a lot to compare it with, being new to the world of essays, but seems to me they just have to really match the readers’ interests to work optimally. Especially since this book was such a personal one. It isn’t just random things of interest, these essays are profoundly autobiographical so you really need that author/reader connection that just wasn’t there. And again, because of the personal nature of essays, I’m sure these will just sing for the right audience. So to each their own. Peace, love and polyester and all that. Thanks Netgalley.