Molly's Reads

Molly's Reads

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INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

SOCIAL SCIENCE
  • You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen.

    • Published by William Morrow, 2007

    Amazon Link

    For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships. Emphasis is placed on displaying similarities and matching experiences. For most men, talk is primarily a means to preserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order. This is done by exhibiting knowledge and skill, and by holding center stage through verbal performance such as storytelling, joking, or imparting information.

WOMANHOOD

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS
  • How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran.

    • Published by Harper Perennial, 2012

    Amazon Link

    So here is a quick way of working out if you’re a feminist. Put your hand in your underpants. a. Do you have a vagina? and b. Do you want to be in charge of it? If you said “yes” to both, then congratulations! You’re a feminist.

  • More Than a Woman by Caitlin Moran.

    • Published by Harper Perennial, 2020

    Amazon Link

    Heroes, and demons, and sex, and work, and doubt, and despair, and hope – storms whirling onto and through the house, over and over, even as you still get the washing done, and try to end every day having said, to those who inspire it, the only thing, ultimately, ever worth saying: “I’m glad you’re in my life. I love you.”

NOVELS
  • Breasts and Eggs: A Novel by Mieko Kawakami; Translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd.

    • Published by Europa Editions, 2020

    Amazon Link

    When people say they want kids, what is it they actually want? Lots of folks would say they want to have a baby with their partner, but what’s the difference between wanting that and wanting your own baby? It felt like people with kids knew something at the onset that I still couldn’t understand. It’s like they were all members of a club that I could never join.

POETRY
  • What Kind of Woman: Poems by Kate Baer.

    • Published by Harper, 2020

    Amazon Link

DATING/ROMANCE

SOCIAL SCIENCE
  • No More Silly Love Songs: A Realist’s Guide to Romance by Anouchka Grose.

    • Published by Portobello Books Ltd, 2010

    Amazon Link

    You have to talk openly and interestingly. You have to do funny stuff in bed, and out of it. You have to work out ways to resolve your conflicts without hating each other too much. In short, you have to be clever as hell. Monogamy, far from being the dreary choice, may be the ultimate arena for romantic and sexual innovation. Like poets who use strictly limiting mathematical forms, painters with a monochrome palette, or novelists who omit the letter E, serious monogamists – as opposed to those square serial types – may find themselves at the cutting edge of experimental romance. There is a case for real monogamy as the greatest human perversion.

  • Is Monogamy Dead?: Rethinking relationships in the 21st century by Rosie Wilby.

    • Published by Accent Press, 2017

    Amazon Link

    It struck me that love, when it’s as obsessive as my posthumous desire for Sarah was, really is a type of blindness. I was living in nostalgia. I was so seduced by what might have been that I couldn’t see what could still be. What could be with Jen.

  • Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating by Moira Weigel.

    • Published by FSG Adult, 2017

    Amazon Link

    In the early 1960s, a young entrepreneur named Alan Stillman moved to New York. He was full of high hopes but found it was a struggle to meet single women…. Countless other places allowed women only if they were “escorted.” Meaning, by a man. That meant, in effect, that single women could not go out to meet men. Being on a date with one already was the one way you could get in. Stillman wanted to change that. Walking through the West Village one night, he had a eureka moment: He would make a gay bar, but for straight people. It was a brilliant idea. Soon after, he opened the first T.G.I. Friday’s on the Upper East Side, First Avenue and Sixty-third Street. With it, the “singles bar” was born.

  • Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno by Nancy Jo Sales.

    • Published by Legacy Lit, 2021

    Amazon Link
ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS
  • Mr. Wrong: Real-Life Stories About the Men We Used to Love Edited by Harriet Brown.

    • Published by Ballantine Books, 2007

    Amazon Link

    He’ll understand that while we may like to watch Extreme Makeover, we have no desire to be with a guy who actually needs one. [From I’m Still Waiting… by Susan Jane Gilman]

  • Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by Lori Gottlieb.

    • Published by Berkley, 2011

    Amazon Link

    “Also,” she continued, “humility is key – the ability to say it doesn’t really matter who’s right or wrong, and it’s okay to have different opinions about things. So I ask people, where on your list do you rank selflessness and humility when you’re rejecting a guy based on his age or height?”

  • Sugar Daddy Diaries: When a Fantasy Became an Obsession by Helen Croydon.

    • Published by Mainstream Publishing, 2013

    Amazon Link

    Sex is a mysterious and uncomfortable enough topic as it is, so most of us like to think that we’re doing it pretty much the way everyone else does (only slightly better).

  • The Between Boyfriends Book: A Collection of Cautiously Hopeful Essays by Cindy Chupack.

    • Published by St. Martin's Press, 2003

    Amazon Link

    The reality is that breakups (like swimsuit shopping) get harder as we get older, maybe because we’re not dating wildly inappropriate men…as often. Instead, we’re dating men we genuinely thought could be The One, and when they turn out to be just the twenty-fifth, it’s understandably depressing and annoying.

NOVELS
  • The Big Love: A Novel by Sarah Dunn.

    • Published by Little, Brown and Company, 2004

    Amazon Link

    Here’s the theory. Really great sex is like movie sex. If you watch people having sex in movies and you say to yourself, “Oh, nobody has sex like that except in movies,” then you should know that you’re not having great sex.

  • Questions to Ask Before Marrying by Melissa Senate.

    • Published by Red Dress Ink, 2008

    Amazon Link

    “How will I know when it’s the right guy?” “There won’t be a moment’s hesitation. You won’t have to think about it. Won’t be grossed out by the thought of it. Everything will feel right. That’s how you don’t end up regretting something, even if it ends up not working out.”

  • Match Made in Manhattan: A Novel by Amanda Stauffer.

    • Published by Skyhorse, 2018

    Amazon Link

    Ideally, I’d like to find someone who can bring out all of my best parts, or the parts – like humor and curiosity, and candor – that make my day-to-day life the most satisfying. And the years ahead the most satisfying. I’d like to find someone who makes me the me I’d most want to be around.

  • Playing with Matches by Hannah Orenstein.

    • Published by Atria Books, 2018

    Amazon Link

    In reality, her lengthy checklist covered it all, really, except for the messy, magical bits – the things that make you fall in love. People are more than the sum of their parts.

  • Kismet: A Novel by Luke Tredget.

    • Published by Little, Brown and Company, 2018

    Amazon Link

    Conversely, she thought of all the time she had allowed to slip through her fingers, as she agonized over what seemed like major decisions between various directions in life, when in fact there was nothing stopping her doing any of the things she might like to. She could still have fun and go out and do what she liked, while also slowing down and having a secure home life. She could work hard and be a successful professional while also making a go of her side projects. She could explore the world while also making a nest for herself. All these things were there for the taking, if only she made use of the ample time and benefits and privileges at her disposal. She resolved to start doing this, from that very moment.

SEX/LOVE

SOCIAL SCIENCE
  • Eve: A Biography by Pamela Norris.

    • Published by NYU Press, 1999

    Amazon Link

    In a community where women were expected to defer to masculine authority, it is probably significant that Eve appears to have been on her own when she encountered the serpent. Women who are left to wander alone will get into trouble is very much the theme of this section of the story.

  • Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying by Mark Regnerus & Jeremy Uecker.

    • Published by Oxford University Press, 2011

    Amazon Link

    Now young people face a social frontier of their own. They hit puberty around 13 and many don’t get married until they’re past 30. That’s two decades of coupling, uncoupling, hooking up, relationships and shopping around. This period isn’t a transition anymore. It’s a sprawling life stage, and nobody knows the rules.

  • Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan, PhD, and Cacilda Jetha, MD.

    • Published by Harper Perennial, 2011

    Amazon Link

    The vast majority of other female mammals advertise when they are fertile, and are decidedly not interested in sex at other times. Concealed ovulation is said to be a significant human exception. Among primates, the female capacity and willingness to have sex any time, any place is characteristic only of bonobos and humans.

  • Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski, PhD.

    • Published by Simon & Schuster, 2015

    Amazon Link
  • Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray by Helen Fisher.

    • Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2017

    Amazon Link

    The Plow. There is probably no single tool in human history that wreaked such havoc between women and men or stimulated so many changes in human patterns of sex and love as the plow. In cultures where people garden with a hoe, women do the bulk of the cultivating; in many of these societies women are relatively powerful as well. But with the introduction of the plow – which required much more strength – much of the essential farm labor became men’s work. Moreover, women lost their ancient honored roles as independent gatherers, providers of the evening meal. And soon after the plow became crucial to production, a sexual double standard emerged among farming folk. Women were judged inferior to men.

  • The Breakup Monologues: The Unexpected Joy of Heartbreak by Rosie Wilby.

    • Published by Green Tree, 2021

    Amazon Link

    Perhaps it is because breakups facilitate, or maybe even necessitate, transformation. In the wake of a separation, our peers allow us to reinvent ourselves. The rest of the time, they like us to stay fixed so that they can move around, and ahead of, us.

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS
  • The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom Edited by Daniel Jones.

    • Published by William Morrow Paperbacks, 2005

    Amazon Link

    She [my dog] died old and fat and happy and was buried under the mock-orange bush where she used to shade herself against the summer heat. Near two decades since she is still remembered with reverence; her exploits and loyalties are legendary. Which is all I ever wanted out of love and husbanding, family and parenting – to be fondly regarded by the ones I loved; to be known for how I came home at night, minded the borders, kept an eye out for impending dangers, paid the piper, did my job, loved them all fiercely to the end. [The Dog’s Life by Thomas Lynch]

  • Behind the Bedroom Door: Getting It, Giving It, Loving It, Missing It Edited by Paula Derrow.

    • Published by Delacorte Press, 2008

    Amazon Link

    I immediately felt defensive: “This isn’t the honeymoon phase. This is real.” Everyone’s had that feeling, right? Watching new lovers claw at each other while you sit mired in the domestic dreck of your own relationship. “We could be making out right now if we wanted. We’re choosing to argue over who bought the wrong-sized bags for the vacuum cleaner.” [In the Beginning by Ali Liebegott]

  • Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex Edited by Erica Jong.

    • Published by Ecco, 2012

    Amazon Link

    We would sleep together once in a while, if we both happened to be single, and sometimes even if we didn’t, until eventually we both grew up and reached the age when you stop wishing you were older and more worldly and start wishing you could be young again. [My First Time, Twice by Ariel Levy]

  • The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love, and Psychotherapy by Dr. Brandy Engler with David Resin.

    • Published by Berkley, 2012

    Amazon Link

    He told me he would sit at parties observing this crowd and wondering how these “poor and unattractive” people could seem so happy and full of life. I tried to withhold my distaste for that sentiment, but that question contained a profound realization for him: The answer was that they lived authentically, and he was inspired by a vitality that he had never felt

  • Love Illuminated: Exploring Life’s Most Mystifying Subject (with the Help of 50,000 Strangers) by Daniel Jones.

    • Published by William Morrow Paperbacks, 2015

    Amazon Link

    The stories I receive often ask questions – not directly but implicitly – and two questions dominate. First, from the young: “How do I find love?” And second, from those struggling through the martial malaise of midlife: “How do I get it back?”

  • Screw the Fairytale: A Modern Girl’s Guide to Sex and Love by Helen Croydon.

    • Published by Thistle Publishing, 2015

    Amazon Link

    But it’s amazing how many people think that they know better than me about what I like. I must want children really, I just don’t know it yet. Of course I’ll want them ‘one day’. Or perhaps I just ‘haven’t met the right person yet’. (This right person, by the way, has a lot to live up to – I’ve heard so much about him!)

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS – GRAPHIC
  • I’m More Dateable Than a Plate of Refried Beans: And Other Romantic Observations by Ginny Hogan.

    • Published by Chronicle Books, 2022

    Amazon Link

    Sometimes, I feel like I’ll do anything to meet a nice person. Except use dating apps, be friendly IRL, or leave my house.

NOVELS
  • My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro Edited by Jeffrey Eugenides.

    • Published by Harper Perennial, 2009

    Amazon Link

    We were excited about getting jobs; we hardly went anywhere without filling out an application. But once we were hired-as furniture sanders-we could not believe this was really what people did all day. Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone’s job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine. Everyone had rotting carpet and a door to pay for. Aghast, we quit. There had to be a more dignified way to live. We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music. [Something that Needs Nothing by Miranda July]

SEX/LOVE – POLYAMORY

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS – GRAPHIC
  • Many Love: A Memoir of Polyamory and Finding Love(s) by Sophie Lucido Johnson.

    • Published by Gallery Books, 2018

    Amazon Link

    I went on the date anyway, and we had a fun make-out. Afterward, Jaedon and I conversationally processed the whole ordeal for at least three hours. “Processing” is probably the most important word in most early polyamorous relationships. It’s a euphemism that refers to what people do when they know they shouldn’t be mad, but everything in their body is telling them to be mad…. As I listened to Jaedon and argued with Jaedon, I thought, “I have never loved someone as much as I do this person right now.”