Spring reading.

Name All the Animals 

By Alison Smith, Scribner, $24

"I had never wanted to wander from the Sisters of Mercy's placid blue walls, but something in Colette's face, something in her eyes, in the curve of her elegant nose and trim mouth caused me to long for the world."

Alison, an upstate New York teenager kept under the watchful eyes or the nuns at her Catholic high school in the early 1980s, is falling in love with slightly older (and slightly femme fatale) Terry--a young woman already conversant in the ambiguous language of love spoken so fluently by sexually provocative Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette and the dance-hall girls of turn-of-the century Paris. The wandering that Alison does in this fine memoir is not unlike the wandering that many young lesbians have done--with or without a longing for the world sparked by a certain woman's nose and mouth. Smith's prose is revealed in such a way that women (and men) will be touched by her poetic references to the endless and often perilous journeys undertaken by the human heart.

Wonderlands: Goad Gay Travel Writing

Edited by Raphael Kadushin, University of Wisconsin Press, $19.95

Ever wondered what traveling and returning home have in common? In his introduction to Wonderlands, Raphael Kadushin writes, "We're always leaving home because we're partly looking for something else. And usually what we find, in the end, is a gift, a small wonderland that we may only recognize years later; when we're back at home, safe again." Wonderlands is indeed a gift--and one that delivers delights of excursions. Slip into the pages of these exotic travel essays and Let this crew of talented gay writers lead you astray.

Roger Harris is a former university librarian who reads virtually every gay-related book (page 22). A Georgia native, he now lives in New York City.