Tales of the City

What better gay book to start with than Tales of the City. Author Armistead Maupin has captured the charm of San Francisco in the 1980s in this series of books.

From the Wikipedia page on Tales of the City:

Because installments were published so soon after Maupin wrote them, he was able to incorporate many current events into the plot of the series, as well as gauge reader response and modify the story accordingly. At one point Maupin received a letter from a reader who pointed out that one of the characters' names was an anagram, providing Maupin with one of the more memorable and surprising plot twists in the book. Maupin's books are also some of the first to deal with the AIDS epidemic. 

Real life people such as Jim Jones and a thinly veiled Elizabeth Taylor are mentioned in the story lines. A prominent closeted gay celebrity is represented as "______ ______" throughout the third novel, with sufficient detail available to deduce that it could be Rock Hudson.

A great read, and be sure to watch the videos, too!