This newsletter is made possible by paid subscribers. Will you upgrade to a paid subscription to support the work I do here every week? Paid subscribers get full access to my weekend roundups, as well as a discount on Dire Straights, my new podcast with Amanda Montei. A hot summer reading list for feminist nerdsFrom a true-life story of a married couple shipwrecked at sea to a non-fiction look at the future of s--, these are the books that I’m taking to the beach.
I spend a lot of time researching upcoming books, looking far and wide, but skewing toward my areas of interest—sex, gender, feminism, love, desire. You know the deal. It helps me keep my finger on the pulse and generate story ideas, but it also means I have a good stack of books set aside at any given moment. This summer, I’m kinda overwhelmed by all the new and upcoming releases that I want to read, but these are the handful at the top of my stack right now. My summer reading list isn’t exactly escapist, but it’s full of what you might call a “beach read,” if you’re a feminist/sex/gender nerd like myself.
The Second Coming by Carter ShermanThe author interviewed over a hundred teenagers and young adults about their sex lives—or lack thereof—and the book promises to explain how “(mis)education, the internet, and politics have not only reshaped relationships but also unleashed a nationwide power struggle over the future of sex.” Based off Jia Tolentino’s review in The New Yorker I’m intrigued—she wrote that the book’s title is a reference to “the second coming of the sexual revolution” but that what it really catalogs is “a tortured dance between backlash and progress.” Sounds about right.
A Marriage at Sea by Sophie ElmhirstHoly moly. I’m several chapters into this true story about a married couple who in 1972 sold their house and set sail in a boat, hoping to escape conventional domestic life, and ended up shipwrecked together for months on a tiny raft. “Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests,” reads the book jacket description. “Although they could run away from the world, they can’t run away from themselves.” I mean, lol. Here we are post-divorce-memoir boom and one of the buzziest summer books is about a married couple fighting for survival in the middle of the Pacific. So far, I’ve got some quibbles with the pacing and character work, but I’m enjoying it. And, darkly, since I know that they survive in the end, I kind of can’t wait for the emotional journey of that raft? It sounds like couples therapy, only instead of a couch it’s the wild ocean, and instead of dabbing at your eyes with tissues, you’re subsisting off raw seabirds and wringing drinkable water from fish flesh, and instead of the survival of a marriage, it’s actual life-and-death. HOW WOULD YOUR RELATIONSHIP FARE.
Thank You, John by Michelle GuruleThis memoir about a young woman becoming a sugar baby in the 2010s is billed as a tragi-comedy and leads with the question, “Sex sells, but what can it buy?” Alright, I’m listening. I have yet to crack it open, but the book jacket explains:
She hatches “scheme after scheme” to try to “pull herself-and her entire family-out of poverty” and finds that “sugaring takes the role of any other exploitative job in America—the physical wear and tear, competition between colleagues, the crossed personal boundaries, dangerous power imbalances, and the reliance on hierarchy to keep only the rich and powerful rich and powerful.”
Aggregated Discontent by Harron WalkerI’ve loved Walker’s writing—and her podcast, Why Do I Like Men?—for a long time and I’ve been meaning to read her essay collection, which came out in May. The books looks at everything from “the irony of working in a transphobic workplace in order to cover gender-affirming surgery” to “the allure and violence of assimilating into white womanhood in all its hegemonic glory,” and she “considers how our agency is stripped from us—by governments, employers, partners, and ourselves—purely on account of our bodies.” Immediate click/buy/read.
What is Wrong with Men by Jessa CrispinWhat does it mean to be a man? This book sees that question as a “starting point for a crisis in masculinity that today manifests as misogyny, nativism, and corporate greed; gives rise to incels and mass shooters; and leads to panic over the rights of women and minorities,” according to the book jacket. Apparently, Crispin makes sense of the current so-called “masculinity crisis” through… Michael Douglas films? Sounds bizarre and intriguing. According to the New York Times review, the book is “all over the place, riffing bitterly on heteropessimism, consumerism, the military, parasocial paternity and paleo diets.” Crispin is a provocative feminist thinker and, though I have no idea where this book will go and whether I’ll agree with the destination, I know I want to see where she ends up.
Nothing Wanting by KJ CerankowskiHere’s a mind-bending and deeply philosophical book that “conceives asexuality as additive and expansive rather than lacking.” It “applies the aesthetics of asexuality to theorize silences, nothings, and emptiness,” and explored “new ways of making meaning out of the supposedly meaningless.” Clearly, this is a more academic read, but I’m a sucker for this kind of book, and I’m sensing a growing movement toward using asexuality as a tool for exploding normative ideas around love, sex, and desire.
|
četvrtak, 3. srpnja 2025.
A hot summer reading list for feminist nerds
Pretplati se na:
Objavi komentare (Atom)
Why We Anxiously Focus on What Others "Should" Be Doing
And how this can shut down progress. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ...
-
Also: 'Don’t think I’m touching a man anytime soon.’ Post-election, I asked where you're at when it comes to sex, desire, and your b...
-
Inside: Gift ideas that fill the world with some good this holiday season. ...
-
Parents face new rules on childhood shots, while COVID vaccine access becomes more limited. ...
Nema komentara:
Objavi komentar