Molly's Reads

Molly's Reads

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LUST/DESIRE

SOCIAL SCIENCE
  • Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee by Pamela Druckerman.

    • Published by Penguin Books, 2008

    Amazon Link

    The Puritans used the biblical definition of adultery, which includes only a married or betrothed woman and her lover. Straying husbands were charged with the lesser crime of “fornication” (sex between people who aren’t married).

  • Our Cheating Hearts: Love & Loyalty, Lust & Lies by Kate Figes.

    • Published by Virago UK, 2014

    Amazon Link

    Proving guilt or innocence may be an essential aspect of maintaining law and order and appropriate for the crimes of burglary and murder, but these are entirely inadequate concepts for the intricate and very delicate alchemy of relationships and family life.

  • It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History by Jennifer Wright.

    • Published by Henry Holt and Co., 2015

    Amazon Link

    When people say that they’re “just hanging out” or “keeping things real casual,” I always think, Oh, you coward. Of course, they’re right to be afraid because, as we have seen, love and loss can make people go insane. Still, if you don’t love, you condemn yourself to a safe but static life. And that’s not enough. On their deathbed, no one says, “Wow, what I regret most is making so many emotional connections with people.” We want to be moved. We crave it.

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS
  • The Other Woman: Twenty-One Wives, Lovers, and Others Talk Openly about Sex, Deception, Love, and Betrayal Edited by Victoria Zackheim.

    • Published by Grand Central Publishing, 2008

    Amazon Link

    The stats are in: Even if he does leave her, he’s not likely to end up with TOW [the other woman] because, once the marriage is over, TOW is no longer a fantasy (sex without ties); she’s a home wrecker. [The Uterine Blues: Why Some Women Can’t Stop Fucking Over Their Sisters by Connie May Fowler]

  • Roar Softly and Carry a Great Lipstick: 28 Women Writers on Life, Sex, and Survival Edited by Autumn Stephens.

    • Published by New World Library, 2004

    Amazon Link

    I’ve fretted over whether you can still call yourself a feminist if, most nights, you’re to be found in the kitchen making dinner, with a Sesame Street video braying in the background, while you wait for your hubby to come home from the office. I’ve watched with chagrin as the image I had of myself as an effortlessly patient and loving parent shattered into a million little pieces the moment I actually became a mother. [from story "One is Silver and the Other Gold" by Nancy Wartik]

NOVELS
  • The Photograph by Penelope Lively.

    • Published by Penguin Books, 2004

    Amazon Link

    She is past that pub now and the Nick of then is effaced by the Nick of today, who may or may not be at home, and if he is, she thinks irritably, you can take it as read that it will not have occurred to him that he might check the fridge and make a trip to the supermarket. Not a bit of it. He will have spent the day swanning around – reading the papers, playing with the Internet, conceivably writing a few words of a review or one of his hack travel pieces – that is, if he has any work at hand at the moment, which he probably has not. While Elaine has driven a hundred miles and spent four hours acting with constraint and civility in the face of a couple of morons.

  • After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

    • Published by Washington Square Press, 2014

    Amazon Link

    We were in love, high on the novelty of marriage. The words husband and wife felt as if they had a shine to them. They were simply more fun to say than all the other words we knew.

  • Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill.

    • Published by Vintage, 2014

    Amazon Link

    A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.

  • I’m Having So Much Fun Here Without You: A Novel by Courtney Maum.

    • Published by Touchstone, 2015

    Amazon Link

    “Oh, I’ve missed you, all right. I’ve missed you all the way into the ruin of my life. My wife isn’t speaking to me. I’m holed up at my parents…Missing you has potentially left me with a lot more to miss than you.”

  • Us by David Nicholls.

    • Published by Harper Paperbacks, 2015

    Amazon Link

    Though not my field, I was familiar with the notion of alternative realities, but was not used to occupying the one I liked the best

  • Willful Disregard: A Novel about Love by Lena Andersson; Translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death.

    • Published by Other Press, 2016

    Amazon Link

    The air did not lighten all day and he did not call. Nor did she, but when she did not call it mean something different from him not calling, because he decided, he had the power. There was no evidence and yet no doubt that this was the case. The one applying the brake is always the one who decides.

  • Acts of Infidelity by Lena Andersson; Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel.

    • Published by Other Press, 2019

    Amazon Link

    If only he could be less important to her, so everything else in her life could feel like more than mere filler.

DIVORCE

  • Secrets to Happiness by Sarah Dunn.

    • Published by Little, Brown and Company, 2009

    Amazon Link

    It’s not that Holly thought she’d never get divorced – she knew it was at least a possibility, if only based on statistics – it’s just, she always figures other things would happened first: they’d have a baby, buy an apartment, argue a bit about couches and in-laws and who forgot to put the recycling out, have another baby, make the reluctant move to Connecticut, start going to bed at different times and stop buying cards when they gave each other birthday presents and start scheduling sex and stop smiling when the other one walked through the front door, all the while tossing minor slights and disappointments and failures to communicated into what would become a well-stocked reservoir of resentment, take a stab at couples counseling, go on a grim beach vacation without the kids, trudge through a final year or two of loaded silences broken up by the occasional screaming fight and no sex whatsoever – and then they’d get a divorce. That’s how it was supposed to work.

  • Love or Something Like It: A Novel by Deirdre Shaw.

    • Published by Random House, 2009

    Amazon Link

    As I searched up and down the grocery aisles – for what, I did not know – I realized that being homesick was quite like being heartbroken. The difference, I thought, was that when one was homesick one held out hope of eventually seeing home again, while with heartbreak, no matter how the heart yearns to go back, it cannot.