endless books to be read

Rip It Up and Start Again

Simon Reynolds · 2005

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

Mikki Kendall · 2021

<b>A <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER<br><br> “<b>The fights against hunger, homelessness, poverty, health disparities, poor schools, homophobia, transphobia, and domestic violence are feminist fights. Kendall offers a feminism rooted in the livelihood of everyday women.”</b> <b>—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 <i>New York Times-</i>bestselling author of  <i>How to Be an Antiracist</i>, in <i>The Atlantic</i></b><br><br>“One of the most important books of the current moment.”—<i>Time</i></b><br>  <br> <b>“A rousing call to action... It should be required reading for everyone.”—Gabrielle Union, author of</b> <i><b>We’re Going to Need More Wine</b></i><br> <br> <b><br> <b>A potent and electrifying critique of today’s feminist movement announcing a fresh new voice in black feminism</b></b><br><br>Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord and women who rebuff at carrying the title. Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others? <br><br>In her searing collection of essays, Mikki Kendall takes aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement, arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women. Drawing on her own experiences with hunger, violence, and hypersexualization, along with incisive commentary on reproductive rights, politics, pop culture, the stigma of mental health, and more, <i>Hood Feminism</i> delivers an irrefutable indictment of a movement in flux. An unforgettable debut, Kendall has written a ferocious clarion call to all would-be feminists to live out the true mandate of the movement in thought and in deed.

The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

Anna Malaika Tubbs · 2021

Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women

Victoria Smith · 2024

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (Emergent Strategy)

adrienne maree brown · 2019

Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

Rebecca Solnit · 2005

As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock

Dina Gilio-Whitaker · 2020

Black Feminist Thought

Patricia Hill Collins · 2002

Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook

Mark Bray · 2017

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights

Molly Smith, Juno Mac · 2018

Abolition. Feminism. Now.

Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, Beth E. Richie · 2022

Difficult Conversations

Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen · 2010

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk

Adele Faber, Elaine Mazlish · 1991

The Gift of Therapy

Irvin D. Yalom · 2003

Cults: Inside the World's Most Notorious Groups and Understanding the People Who Joined Them

Max Cutler · 2022

Want: Women’s Fantasies in the Twenty-First Century

Gillian Anderson · 2024

A collection of confessions from women around the world, Want is a revelatory, sensational and game-changing exploration of women’s sexuality that asks, and answers: How do women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally anonymous?<br/><br/>What do you want, when no one is watching?<br/>What do you want, when the lights are off?<br/>What do you want, when you are anonymous?<br/><br/>When we talk about sex, we talk about womanhood and motherhood, infidelity and exploitation, consent and respect, fairness and egalitarianism, love and hate, pleasure and pain. And yet for many reasons—some complicated, some not—so many of us don’t talk about it. Our deepest, most intimate fears and fantasies remain locked away inside of us, until someone comes along with the key.<br/><br/>Here’s the key.<br/><br/>In this generation-defining book, Gillian Anderson collects and introduces the anonymous letters of hundreds of self-identifying women from around the world (along with her own anonymous letter).<br/><br/>From a Sikh woman who writes about her secret lust for her brother-in-law, an Apache American woman who wants to be worshipped like a divine creature, a white British woman who just wants to be properly kissed one last time, another who likes to role play as a panther, or a Hispanic Jewish woman living in Bangladesh, for whom the pinnacle of sexual arousal is a doorknob, Want reveals how women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally anonymous.<br/><br/>What do you want?

Feeding the Monster

Anna Bogutskaya · 2024

A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery and Resistance

Stella Abasa Dadzie · 2020

Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, Nancy Fraser · 2019

<b>The organizers of the International Women’s Strike “cut through the corporate feminist ‘<i>Lean In</i>’ noise to offer a feminism rooted not just in intersectionality . . . but also in economic justice”—for readers of Roxane Gay and Rebecca Solnit (<i>Vogue</i>).</b><br> <b> </b><br> <b>Feminism shouldn’t start—or stop—with seeing women represented at the top of society. It should start with the 99%.</b><br><br> Unaffordable housing, poverty wages, inadequate healthcare, border policing, climate change—these are not what you ordinarily hear feminists talking about. But aren’t they the biggest issues for the vast majority of women around the globe?<br><br> Taking as its inspiration the new wave of feminist militancy that has erupted globally, this manifesto makes a simple but powerful case: feminism shouldn’t start—or stop—with the drive to have women represented at the top of their professions. It must focus on those at the bottom, and fight for the world they deserve. And that means targeting capitalism. Feminism must be anticapitalist, eco-socialist and antiracist.

Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV

Emily Nussbaum · 2024

The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports

Michael Waters · 2024

Everyone But Myself: A Memoir

Julie Chavez · 2024

While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

Meg Kissinger · 2023

Drinking Games: A Memoir

Sarah Levy · 2023

Strong Female Character

Fern Brady · 2023

Crying in the Bathroom: A Memoir

Erika L. Sánchez · 2022

A Matter of Death and Life

Irvin D. Yalom, Marilyn Yalom · 2021

<p><b>A year-long journey by the renowned psychiatrist and his writer wife after her terminal diagnosis, as they reflect on how to love and live without regret.</b></p> <p>Internationally acclaimed psychiatrist and author Irvin Yalom devoted his career to counseling those suffering from anxiety and grief. But never had he faced the need to counsel himself until his wife, esteemed feminist author Marilyn Yalom, was diagnosed with cancer. In <i>A Matter of Death and Life</i>, Marilyn and Irv share how they took on profound new struggles: Marilyn to die a good death, Irv to live on without her.</p> <p>In alternating accounts of their last months together and Irv's first months alone, they offer us a rare window into facing mortality and coping with the loss of one's beloved. The Yaloms had numerous blessings—a loving family, a Palo Alto home under a magnificent valley oak, a large circle of friends, avid readers around the world, and a long, fulfilling marriage—but they faced death as we all do. With the wisdom of those who have thought deeply, and the familiar warmth of teenage sweethearts who've grown up together, they investigate universal questions of intimacy, love, and grief.</p> <p>Informed by two lifetimes of experience, <i>A Matter of Death and Life</i> is an openhearted offering to anyone seeking support, solace, and a meaningful life.</p>

Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult

Faith Jones · 2021

Scandalous Women: A Novel of Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann

Gill Paul · 2024

Down the Drain

Julia Fox · 2023

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER<br/><br/>The hotly anticipated book from “one of the all-time pop-culture greats” (New York magazine) that chronicles her shocking life and unyielding determination to not only survive but achieve her dreams.<br/><br/>Julia Fox is famous for many things: her captivating acting, such as her breakout role in the film Uncut Gems; her trendsetting style, including bleached eyebrows, exaggerated eyeshadow, and cutout dresses; her mastery of social media, where she entertains and educates her millions of followers. But all these share the trait for which she is most famous: unabashedly and unapologetically being herself.<br/><br/>This commitment to authenticity has never been more on display than in Down the Drain. With writing that is both eloquent and accessible, Fox recounts her turbulent path to cultural supremacy: her parents’ volatile relationship that divided her childhood between Italy and New York City and left her largely raising herself; a possessive and abusive drug-dealing boyfriend whose torment continued even from within Rikers Island; her own trips to jail as well as to a psychiatric hospital; her work as a dominatrix that led to a complicated entanglement with a sugar daddy; a heroin habit that led to New Orleans trap houses and that she would kick only after the fatal overdose of her best friend; her own near-lethal overdoses and the deaths of still more friends from drugs and suicide; an emotionally explosive, tabloid-dominating romance with a figure she dubs “The Artist”; a whirlwind, short-lived marriage and her trials as a single parent striving to support her young son. Yet as extraordinary as her story is, its universality is what makes it so powerful. Fox doesn’t just capture her improbable evolution from grade-school outcast to fashion-world icon, she captures her transition from girlhood to womanhood to motherhood. Family and friendship, sex and death, violence and love, money and power, innocence and experience—it’s all here, in raw, remarkable, and riveting detail.<br/><br/>More than a year before the book’s publication, Fox’s description of it as “a masterpiece” in a red carpet interview went viral. As always, she was just being honest. Down the Drain is a true literary achievement, as one-of-a-kind as its author.

I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition

Lucy Sante · 2025

Named a Top 10 Book of the Year by The New York Times and The Washington Post<br/><br/>“Reading this book is a joy... much to say about the trans journey and will undoubtedly become a standard for those in need of guidance. ”<br/>— The Washington Post<br/><br/>"Sante’s bold devotion to complexity and clarity makes this an exemplary memoir. It is a clarion call to live one’s most authentic life.”<br/>— The Boston Globe<br/><br/>“Not to be missed, I Heard Her Call My Name is a powerful example of self-reflection and a vibrant exploration of the modern dynamics of gender and identity.” — Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024<br/><br/>An iconic writer’s lapidary memoir of a life spent pursuing a dream of artistic truth while evading the truth of her own gender identity, until, finally, she turned to face who she really was<br/><br/>For a long time, Lucy Sante felt unsure of her place. Born in Belgium, the only child of conservative working-class Catholic parents who transplanted their little family to the United States, she felt at home only when she moved to New York City in the early 1970s and found her people among a band of fellow bohemians. Some would die young, to drugs and AIDS, and some would become jarringly famous. Sante flirted with both fates, on her way to building an estimable career as a writer. But she still felt like her life a performance. She was presenting a façade, even to herself.<br/><br/>Sante’s memoir braids together two threads of personal narrative: the arc of her life, and her recent step-by-step transition to a place of inner and outer alignment. Sante brings a loving irony to her account of her unsteady first steps; there was much she found she still needed to learn about being a woman after some sixty years cloaked in a man’s identity, in a man’s world. A marvel of grace and empathy, I Heard Her Call My Name parses with great sensitivity many issues that touch our lives deeply, of gender identity and far beyond.

Sunbathing

Isobel Beech · 2022

A powerful debut that explores life, death and the restorative power of friendship under the warm summer sun of Abruzzo. 'Sweet and deep, sad and funny - like life.' Peggy Frew, award-winning author 'Isobel Beech writes like a skipping heartbeat; loss carves out her love language.' Mahmood Fazal, Walkley Award-winning writer Summertime in Italy, fresh vegetables from the garden, taking turns washing dishes, reading to each other, learning about cherry worms. Strange how badly I could punish myself for abandoning you once, then go and do it again. After weeks of grieving, a woman books a plane ticket, bound for an old villa in the mountains of Abruzzo. Invited to stay with her friends Giulia and Fab - in the weeks before they marry in a village orchard - she lives for a summer in the house's Birthing Room, where generations of women once had their babies. More often, though, she lives in her head: in the past, trying to make sense of her grief and wondering how to go on, or if she can. As her inner and outer worlds spar and converge, she passes the time helping with the household chores, walking in the sunshine and plucking fruit from the nearby orchards, all while dwelling on the moments with her father that might have warned her something was wrong. This spare, stunning novel explores the workings of the self in the wake of devastation and deep regret, and reveals the infinite ways that the everyday offers solace and hope.

Sunset

Jessie Cave · 2022

Starling Days

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan · 2021

Heat Wave

Penelope Lively · 1997

AS THE EAGLE FLIES

Nolwenn Le Blevennec · 2023

Small Pleasures

Clare Chambers · 2021

Talking at Night

Claire Daverley · 2024

Will and Rosie meet as teenagers.<br/><br/>They’re opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother’s wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer—destined to be one another’s great love story.<br/><br/>Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered.<br/><br/>But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie can’t help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been.<br/><br/>What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just can’t let go?

My Husband

Maud Ventura · 2023

The Lamb

Lucy Rose · 2025

I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman · 2019

<p><b>SISTERHOOD. SECRETS. SURVIVAL.</b><br> <br> <b>Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation.</b><br> <br> Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?<br> <br> Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner.<br> <br> Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men.<br> <br> <b>WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE <i>WATER CURE</i><br> <br> **<i>Orlanda</i>, the next sensation from Jacquline Harpman, is available now**</b></p>

Ripe: A Novel

Sarah Rose Etter · 2023

Blue Sisters: A Novel

Coco Mellors · 2024

Sandwich

Catherine Newman · 2024

If We Were Villains

M. L Rio (author) · 2017

Oliver Marks has just served ten years for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day of his release, he is greeted by the detective who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, and he wants to know what really happened a decade before.<br/><br/>As a young actor at an elite conservatory, Oliver noticed that his talented classmates seem to play the same characters onstage and off – villain, hero, temptress – though he was always a supporting role. But when the teachers change the casting, a good-natured rivalry turns ugly, and the plays spill dangerously over into real life.<br/><br/>When tragedy strikes, one of the seven friends is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless...

Lie With Me

Philippe Besson · 2020

“I remember the movement of his hips pressing against the pinball machine. This one sentence had me in its grip until the end. Two young men find each other, always fearing that life itself might be the villain standing in their way. A stunning and heart-gripping tale.” —André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name<br/><br/>A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice<br/><br/>The critically acclaimed, internationally beloved novel by Philippe Besson—“this year’s Call Me By Your Name” (Vulture) with raves in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal,NPR, Vanity Fair, Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Out—about an affair between two teenage boys in 1984 France, translated with subtle beauty and haunting lyricism by the iconic and internationally acclaimed actress and writer Molly Ringwald.<br/><br/>In this “sexy, pure, and radiant story” (Out), Philippe chances upon a young man outside a hotel in Bordeaux who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back at the relationship he’s never forgotten, a hidden affair with a boy named Thomas during their last year of high school. Thomas is the son of a farmer; Philippe the son of a school principal. At school, they don’t acknowledge each other. But they steal time to meet in secret, carrying on a passionate, world-altering affair.<br/><br/>Despite the intensity of their attraction, from the beginning Thomas knows how it will end: “Because you will leave and we will stay,” he says. Philippe becomes a writer and travels the world, though as this “tender, sensuous novel” (The New York Times Book Review) shows, he never lets go of the relationship that shaped him, and every story he’s ever told.<br/><br/>“Beautifully translated by Ringwald” (NPR), this is “Philippe Besson’s book of a lifetime...an elegiac tale of first, hidden love” (The New Yorker).

Hippie

Paulo Coelho · 2018

Now Is Not The Time To Panic

Kevin Wilson · 2023

The First Bad Man

Miranda July · 2015

None of This Is True

Lisa Jewell · 2023

First Lie Wins: A Novel

Ashley Elston · 2024

Wellness

Nathan Hill · 2023

Mother-Daughter Murder Night

Nina Simon · 2023

The Rachel Incident: A novel

Caroline O'Donoghue · 2023

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A USA TODAY BESTSELLER • A brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three • “O'Donoghue deepens the familiar coming-of-age premise with riveting moral complications." —People<br/><br/>"If you’ve ever been unsure what to do with your degree in English; if you’ve ever wondered when the rug-buying part of your life will start...if you’ve ever loved the wrong person, or the right person at the wrong time…In short, if you’ve ever been young, you will love The Rachel Incident like I did.” —Gabrielle Zevin, New York Times best-selling author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow<br/><br/>Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.<br/><br/>When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.

Little Birds

Anaïs Nin · 2004

The inspiration for the six-part series "Little Birds" from Sophia Al-Maria.<br> <br> <br> <br> These thirteen erotic short stories by the acclaimed author of Henry and June explore the nature of desire, taboo, and female sensuality.<br> <br> From the beach towns of Normandy to the streets of New Orleans, these thirteen vignettes introduce us to a covetous French painter, a sleepless wanderer of the night, a guitar-playing gypsy, and a host of others who yearn for and dive into the turbulent depths of romantic experience.<br> <br> <br> <br> "[It is] so distinct an advance in the depiction of female sensuality that I felt, on reading it, enormous gratitude."--Alice Walker<br> <br> <br> <br> "One of contemporary literature's most important writers.--Newsweek

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Anita Loos · 1998

Black Sheep

Rachel Harrison · 2023

A New York Times Best Horror Book of the Year<br/><br/>A cynical twentysomething must confront her unconventional family’s dark secrets in this fiery, irreverent horror novel from the author of Such Sharp Teeth and Cackle.<br/><br/>Nobody has a “normal” family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly...something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community she grew up in meant she couldn’t return. But then an envelope arrives on her doorstep.<br/><br/>Inside is an invitation to the wedding of Vesper’s beloved cousin Rosie. It’s to be hosted at the family farm. Have they made an exception to the rule? It wouldn’t be the first time Vesper’s been given special treatment. Is the invite a sweet gesture? An olive branch? A trap? Doesn’t matter. Something inside her insists she go to the wedding. Even if it means returning to the toxic environment she escaped. Even if it means reuniting with her mother, Constance, a former horror film star and forever ice queen.<br/><br/>When Vesper’s homecoming exhumes a terrifying secret, she’s forced to reckon with her family’s beliefs and her own crisis of faith in this deliciously sinister novel that explores the way family ties can bind us as we struggle to find our place in the world.

A Reason to See You Again

Jami Attenberg · 2024

From the New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg comes a dazzling novel of family, following a troubled mother and her two daughters over forty years through a swiftly changing American landscape as they seek lives they can fully claim as their own.  The women of the Cohen family are in crisis. After the death of their patriarch, Rudy, the glue that held them all together, everyone’s lives soon take a dramatic turn. Shelly, the younger of the two Cohen sisters, runs off to the West Coast to immerse herself in the emerging (and lucrative) world of technology. Her sister, Nancy, gets married at the age of twenty-one to a traveling salesman with a shadowy lifestyle, while their mother, Frieda, hurls herself into a boozy, troubled existence in Miami, trying to forget the past even as it haunts her. But each woman must learn in her own way that running from the past can’t save you—and they must make life-altering decisions about what they want their family to be and what they need for themselves to move forward. Beginning in the 1970s and spanning forty years, A Reason to See You Again takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic journey through motherhood, the American workforce, the tech industry, the self-help movement, inherited trauma, the ever-evolving ways we communicate with one another, and the many unexpected forms that love can take.

Sunburn

Chloe Michelle Howarth · 2023

** Shortlisted for the 2023 Nero Book Award for Debut Fiction **<br/>** An Evening Standard ‘One to Watch in 2023 **<br/>** An Independent ‘Best Romantic Summer Reads' **<br/>** A Book of the Month pick for Diva, Irish Examiner, Novellic & Sainsbury’s Magazine **<br/>** A Most Anticipated pick for PinkNews & Queer on the Street **<br/>It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.<br/>Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.<br/>Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.<br/>But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. Neither will be easy, but only one will offer her happiness.<br/>Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp. An atmospheric sapphic love story and coming-of-age novel with the intensity of Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation, the long hot summer of André Aciman's Call Me By Your Name and the female friendships of Anna Hope's Expectation.<br/>‘A tender and heartfelt coming-of-age tale’ – Heat<br/>‘A compassionate take on the push and pull between what's expected and what is felt’ – Herald<br/>‘A deeply moving, heartfelt love story’ – Daily Mail<br/>‘Lucy tells her story in a true, compelling voice, with an eye for minutiae, quaint apercus, and confidences that make her account moving and convincing’ – SAGA Magazine<br/>‘Tender and poignant... Ideal reading for the last month of summer’ – Diva<br/>'Intense and all-consuming - like the first love it describes - Sunburn transported me to the heart of summer and the heady days of late adolescence. I won't soon forget Chloe Michelle Howarth's addictive, lushly written debut' - Laura Sims<br/>'Capturing all the intensity of first love, blended with the claustrophobia of small-town life, this debut, inspired by real experience, is tender and raw' - The Bookseller<br/>'A beautiful coming of age love novel written with an insightful poetical prose, rich with religious allegory and texture which underscores the transformative, spiritual power of first love explored' - Scene Magazine

You're the Only One I've Told

Meera Shah · 2020

Creep: Accusations and Confessions

Myriam Gurba · 2023

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.

Samantha Irby · 2017

Too Fat Too Slutty Too Loud

Anne Helen Petersen · 2017

Let Me Tell You What I Mean

Joan Didion · 2021

Men Explain Things to Me

Rebecca Solnit · 2014

<ul> <li>Collection is based around an essay— Men Explain Things to Me —which was shared virally in 2008 </li></ul>

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

· 1983

Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

Catherine Gildiner · 2020

<p><b>As seen on <i>Good Morning America's </i>SEPTEMBER 2020 READING LIST and FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2020!</b><br><b><br>"We need to read stories about folks who have been through hell and kept going... Fascinating." </b>—<b>Glennon Doyle, A Favorite Book of 2020 on <i>Good Morning America</i><br><br>"Gildiner is nothing short of masterful</b>—<b>as both a therapist and writer. In these pages, she has gorgeously captured both the privilege of being given access to the inner chambers of people's lives, and the meaning that comes from watching them grow into the selves they were meant to be." </b>—<b>Lori Gottlieb, <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>Maybe You Should Talk to Someone</i></b><br><br>In this fascinating narrative, therapist Catherine Gildiner’s presents five of what she calls her most heroic and memorable patients. Among them: a successful, first generation Chinese immigrant musician suffering sexual dysfunction; a young woman whose father abandoned her at age nine with her younger siblings in an isolated cottage in the depth of winter; and a glamorous workaholic whose narcissistic, negligent mother greeted her each morning of her childhood with "Good morning, Monster." <br><br>Each patient presents a mystery, one that will only be unpacked over years. They seek Gildiner's help to overcome an immediate challenge in their lives, but discover that the source of their suffering has been long buried. <br><br>As in such recent classics as <i>The Glass Castle</i> and <i>Educated</i>, each patient embodies self-reflection, stoicism, perseverance, and forgiveness as they work unflinchingly to face the truth. Gildiner's account of her journeys with them is moving, insightful, and sometimes very funny. <i>Good Morning Monster</i> offers an almost novelistic, behind-the-scenes look into the therapist's office, illustrating how the process can heal even the most unimaginable wounds.</p>

You're Embarrassing Yourself

Desiree Akhavan · 2024