INTRODUCTIONThe quote embedded in the title of this paper, "People aren't afraid anymore, but it's hard to find books," comes from one the participants in my dissertation study which was designed to explore the practices associated with voluntary reading in the lives of young women who claimed alternative sexual identities and sexual orientations. Nicky was 18 years old and self-identified as lesbian and queer. She was in her final year at a Catholic secondary school in southern Ontario where she proudly and openly declared her alternative sexuality, despite incidences of harassment and ridicule. Like the other young women who participated in this research, Nicky talked about reading as an everyday activity that encompassed both an escape from and an engagement with the world that was very much bound by the specific context of her public and personal expressions of sexual identity. The central theme of my study comprises finding, borrowing, buying, reading, sharing and talking about texts, especially those that fall into the genre of lesbian and literature. I sought to explore the place of reading in the lives of lesbian or queer young women, not as an examination of the construction or composition of postmodern lesbian, queer or bisexual identities or subjectivities, but rather, as an investigation into the power of reading, the act of reading itself, to change lives. However, underlying assumptions about sexuality in this study are defined by an indeterminate view of identity drawn from

Older adults who identify as readers and choose to read for pleasure in their everyday lives are understudied despite the persistence and pervasiveness of this kind of reading. The phenomenology of reading and critical age studies inform this pilot project that uses in-depth interviews conducted with five readers who are between the ages of 75-90 years and who live in Canada. Data analysis followed principles of close reading and thematic analysis. Findings privilege the voices of the older readers and show how their experiences of reading can be analyzed using the metaphor of reading as a lifeline that, in turn, bridges with notions of resilience and embodied information practices. Reading for pleasure supports resilience and a reflective stance on life among older adults. The findings call for other researchers to engage more readily with older adults and will be of use to librarians and others who provide services, programs, and resources to older adult readers.

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The purpose of this study was to determine if young adults, or others interested in literature for teens, have access through public libraries to novels with homosexual content. A random sample of 40 English language young adult novels with gay/lesbian content was checked against the holdings of 40 medium and large Canadian public libraries having remotely accessible catalogs. The average number of titles held by all libraries was 16.2 (40.4 percent). There was no significant relationship found between library size and number of titles held (r = 0.302; CV0.05 (38) = 0.311). The results of this study suggest that, while some libraries seem to be doing a good job of providing these potentially controversial titles, others are not. Suggestions for further research are included.

Content analysis was used to determine how a sample of 32 gay and lesbian novels for young adults were treated in 158 reviews from five prominent reviewing journals. Findings indicate that most reviews (84.8 percent) were favourable, many (79.7 percent) contained clear reference to the homosexual content, and there were few differences between the individual reviewing journals. Some reviews contained cautions and warnings about the gay and lesbian content, some denied or downplayed it, some justified the content if it was used to teach a lesson, and most described these stories as “problem” novels. Analysis also showed that gay and lesbian fiction is now regarded as a distinct genre of young adult literature. While librarians wishing to identify gay and lesbian fiction for collection development will be able to do so through the reviewing media, ambivalence about this literature and the young adults it represents was also evident in the reviews.