Hot Sheet: Studs and Pearls

4. BOOKS: Bleeder by Shelby Smoak
"I am Caucasian, five foot eleven, have sandy brown hair, blue eyes, and am a tender slip of bone. And I am at the hospital." That's how Bleeder begins. This memoir is about Smoak, a hemophiliac who, right at the beginning of his college career, learns that he was infected with HIV due to a blood transfusion in the 1990s in North Carolina. Smoak bravely documents his journey of rawness and uncertainty in a way that will have you thinking, feeling, and unexpectedly smiling.