Book picks similar to
The Second Shelf by A.N. Devers


non-fiction
books-about-books
brit
feminism-sexism

Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale


Catherine Orenstein - 2002
    Beginning with its first publication as a cautionary tale on the perils of seduction, written in reaction to the licentiousness of the court of Louis XIV, Orenstein traces the many lives the tale has lived since then, from its appearance in modern advertisements for cosmetics and automobiles, the inspiration it brought to poets such as Anne Sexton, and its starring role in pornographic films. In Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked, Red appears as seductress, hapless victim, riot grrrrl, femme fatale, and even she-wolf, as Orenstein shows how through centuries of different guises, the story has served as a barometer of social and sexual mores pertaining to women. Full of fascinating history, generous wit, and intelligent analysis, Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked proves that the story of one young girl's trip through the woods continues to be one of our most compelling modern myths.

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes


Janet Malcolm - 1993
    Janet Malcolm brings her shrewd intelligence to bear on the legend of Sylvia Plath and the wildly productive industry of Plath biographies. Features a new Afterword by Malcolm.

YOU! God's Brand New Idea: Made to Be Amazing


Max Lucado - 2006
    Each person is a brand new idea from God. The challenge is to live to the full potential of that idea! The life-directed content appeals to anyone wanting to live to their fullest potential, and the contemporary, retro design along with excerpts from Max Lucado's best-selling books combine to form an attractive and timeless gift.

Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers


Sady Doyle - 2019
    Men from Aristotle to Freud have insisted that women are freakish creatures, capable of immense destruction. Maybe they are. And maybe that’s a good thing.... Sady Doyle, hailed as “smart, funny and fearless” by the Boston Globe, takes readers on a tour of the female dark side, from the biblical Lilith to Dracula’s Lucy Westenra, from the T-Rex in Jurassic Park to the teen witches of The Craft. She illuminates the women who have shaped our nightmares: Serial killer Ed Gein’s “domineering” mother Augusta; exorcism casualty Anneliese Michel, starving herself to death to quell her demons; author Mary Shelley, dreaming her dead child back to life. These monsters embody patriarchal fear of women, and illustrate the violence with which men enforce traditionally feminine roles. They also speak to the primal threat of a woman who takes back her power. In a dark and dangerous world, Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers asks women to look to monsters for the ferocity we all need to survive. “Some people take a scalpel to the heart of media culture; Sady Doyle brings a bone saw, a melon baller, and a machete.”—Andi Zeisler, author of We Were Feminists Once

Blackpink: K-Pop's No.1 Girl Group


Adrian Besley - 2019
    The sassiest, most stylish girls around – BLACKPINK!‘Blackpink in Your Area!’ The K-pop girl group are taking their catchphrase literally; they have just finished a sell-out stadium world tour. Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé and Lisa, all beautiful and supremely talented women in their early 20s, are the hottest thing in pop right now – and they only have a dozen songs!If Blackpink were ever a secret, the secret was out by April 2019, when they headlined Coachella, and their fandom – known as Blinks – suddenly included Ariana Grande and Harry Styles. They are the first female K-pop group to have had four #1 singles on Billboard's World Digital chart, and their single ‘Ddu-Du Ddu-Du’ became the most viewed music video by a K-pop group on YouTube – take that, BTS!This book is the perfect unofficial guide to Blackpink. It relates their days as trainees, their debut, their hits and success in the US, examines the personalities of each of the members and details their choreography, fashion and style triumphs and reveals why they are ‘the only gang to run the game in high heels’.

Pocket Maya Angelou Wisdom: Inspirational Quotes and Wise Words from a Legendary Icon


Hardie Grant Books - 2019
    This is the ultimate keepsake for fans of Maya Angelou's beautiful poetry, as well as for anyone looking for a bit of in-the-moment inspiration to have in their back pocket.Some quotes from Maya Angelou:'If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.''You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.''Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.''History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.'

Reading Women: How the Great Books of Feminism Changed My Life


Stephanie Staal - 2011
    She set out on a quest: to reenroll at Barnard and re-read the great books she had first encountered as an undergrad. From the banishment of Eve to Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, Staal explores the significance of each of these classic tales by and of women, highlighting the relevance these ideas still have today. This process leads Staal to find the self she thought she had lost—curious and ambitious, zany and critical—and inspires new understandings of her relationships with her husband, her mother, and her daughter.

The Science of Attraction: Flirting, Sex, and How to Engineer Chemistry and Love


Patrick King - 2017
     There is a definitive science to attraction, and it turns out we’ve been doing it wrong… or doing it right for all the wrong reasons. This book is your textbook and field manual for (1) how to flirt better, (2) have better sex, and (3) plant the seeds of romantic love in whomever you want. Understand the instinctual triggers of attraction. The Science of Attraction is an in-depth look at human attraction and what draws people together. It dives into peer-reviewed research, combined with the insightful and straightforward observations of a renowned dating coach - Patrick King is an internationally bestselling author and acclaimed speaker and coach. Together, this book is the ultimate guide to inform, diagnose, and recommend highly actionable steps to take your dating life to the next level. Find the shortcut to powerful chemistry. Too often, we rely on our own experiences with a sample size of one, or advice from friends that are perpetually single. There’s a better way – looking at the research and evidence about what we really want, not what we think we want. You’ll learn why we like who we like, and what to do about it. How will you learn to scientifically attract the opposite sex? • The three types of touching you should strategically use. • How four evolutionary types of attraction are still highly relevant. • What the chase is and how to win at it. • What your flirting style is and how to take advantage of it. Be prepared to charm every type of person. • Whether you should date someone similar or complementary to yourself. • How a focus on chemistry and love might be hurting you. • How to know exactly what you want in a partner. • The origins of kinky sex and how to have better sex. Become irresistible to the opposite sex without them understanding why they are so drawn to you. That’s the promise of The Science of Attraction because it’s an inevitable side effect of a deeper understanding of human beings as animals. It’s an introduction to how people think and what drives them, which makes this equally applicable to married and single people. This is how you transform your dating life and find satisfaction with yourself! Start planting the seeds of love now and scroll to the top of this page and click the BUY NOW BUTTON.

Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton


Gail Crowther - 2021
    Introduced at a workshop in Boston University led by the acclaimed and famous poet Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton formed a friendship that would soon evolve into a fierce rivalry, colored by jealousy and respect in equal terms. In the years that followed, these two women would not only become iconic figures in literature, but also lead curiously parallel lives haunted by mental illness, suicide attempts, self-doubt, and difficult personal relationships. With weekly martini meetings at the Ritz to discuss everything from sex to suicide, theirs was a relationship as complex and subversive as their poetry. Based on in-depth research and unprecedented archival access, Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz is a remarkable and unforgettable look at two legendary poets and how their work has turned them into lasting and beloved cultural figures.

Modestly


Dina Torkia - 2018
    It’s about me as a Muslim Brit embracing dual identities, surviving the turbulent teens and transitioning from self-doubt to self-belief. There is a little bit of drama, lots of laughs, plenty of practical advice and a shedload of bold statements. You can’t get a Muslim woman in a hijab with no opinion, am I right?!' Dina x Guys, get ready. YouTuber and social media sensation Dina Torkia is giving you a never-seen-before look into her world. From advice on fashion, beauty and style, to frank opinions on family, career and faith, this is everything that Dina has ever wanted to share with you. So let Dina tell you how it really is, living and loving life as a modern Muslim Brit. @dinatokio

The Heroine's Journey


Gail Carriger - 2020
    Read this book to learn all about it.From Harry Potter to Twilight, from Wonder Woman to Star Wars, you’ll never look at pop culture the same way again.With over a dozen NYT and USA Today bestsellers, and over a million books in print, popular genre author and former archaeologist Gail Carriger brings her cheeky comedic tone and over a decade of making her living as a fiction author to this fascinating look at one of the most popular yet neglected narratives of our time. The presentation she does on this subject sells for hundreds of dollars.“I’m not sure how you can just rewire my brain to see the heroine’s journey like this and then expect me to make coherent, thought-out comments about the text when all I want to do is hold it in my twisted little grip while I shove it at people screaming like a madman and pointing at passages.”~ Author Beta ReaderGail Carriger uses the heroine’s journey to produce bestselling, critically-acclaimed books that genre blend science fiction, cozy mystery, young adult, urban fantasy, romance, historical fiction, and alternate history. In this non-fiction book she uses her academic background and creative writing skills to bring to life the archetypes, tropes, story beats, themes, and messages inherent in the heroine’s journey. Part treatise on authorship, part feminist literary criticism, part how to write guide, Carriger uses mythology, legend, and Gothic victorian 19th century literature to explore movies, screenwriting, books, and audience desires.This is an excellent reference guide for genre fiction authors seeking to improve their craft or for readers and pop culture enthusiasts interested in understanding their own taste. It is the perfect counterpoint to The Hero with a Thousand Faces not to mention Save the Cat, Women Who Run With The Wolves, and The Breakout Novelist.

Incidental Inventions


Elena Ferrante - 2019
    For a full year she penned short pieces, the subjects of which were suggested by editors at the Guardian, turning the writing process into a kind of prolonged interlocution; the subjects ranged from first love to climate change, from enmity among women to the adaptation of her novels to film and TV. As she said in her final column: “I have written as an author of novels, taking on matters that are important to me and that—if I have the will and the time—I’d like to develop within real narrative mechanisms.”Here, then, are the seeds of possible future novels, the ruminations of an internationally beloved author, and the abiding preoccupations of a writer who has been called “one of the great novelists of our time” (the New York Times). Gathered together for the first time in a beautiful gift edition and accompanied by an entirely new introduction written by Elena Ferrante and Andrea Ucini’s intelligent, witty, and beautiful illustrations, this is a must for all Ferrante fans.

Can I Speak to Someone in Charge?


Emily Clarkson - 2017
    I hope this book will speak to a range of women, and men actually, I hope it will make people laugh, but more importantly I hope it will open people's eyes to the fact that we've got a lot to do if we want to make growing up in a good and kind world a possibility for our daughters.’In her series of open letters, Em Clarkson addresses all manner of subjects and absurdities that impact on our modern-day lives. She unpicks the validity of notions such as ‘the thigh gap’; writes a letter to the cellulite on her upper thigh; questions the merciless quotidian scrutiny of the Daily Mail; ponders the etymology of the term ‘plus size’; considers our unshakeable obsession with dieting and assesses why some of us are still crying in changing rooms. Writing with gumption, fearlessness and sharp wit, CAN I SPEAK TO SOMEONE IN CHARGE? is a window into the ridiculous ideologies and the remarkable expectations that shape women’s lives today.

Laboring: Stories of a New York City Hospital Midwife


Ellen Cohen - 2013
    In this compelling first-person narrative she transports you into her world at the bedside in the maternity wards where childbirth dramas take place. In the challenging environment of urban clinics and crowded labor rooms the midwife strives to bring personalized care, dignity and a sense of empowerment to every patient. Like an updated U.S. version of "Call the Midwife," the British best seller and television series, this book describes some of the most unforgettable births, the most heartwarming -- and the rare heartbreaking -- experiences of her career. Memorable patients include Mia, a mentally ill woman whose stomach ache turns out to be a baby; teenager Shaniqua who breezes through birth despite her youth; and Jeremiah, a little boy born HIV-infected who captures the love of the entire staff. Through these stories, readers will gain insight into many variations in pregnancy and birth, and learn what is special about the midwifery approach to care. You may be surprised to learn how similar Cohen's patients' childbirth experiences were to your own, and where they differed.

The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography


Angela Carter - 1978
    So says the Marquis de Sade, philosopher and pornographer. His virtuous Justine, who keeps to the rules, is rewarded with rape and humiliation; his Juliette, Justine's triumphantly monstrous antithesis, viciously exploits her sexuality.With brilliance and wit, Angela Carter takes on these outrageous figments of de Sade's extreme imagination and transforms them into symbols of our time: The Hollywood sex goddesses, mothers and daughters, pornography, even the sacred shrines of sex and marriage lie devastatingly exposed before our eyes.Author Bio: Angela Carter (1940-1992) was best known for her subversive short stories, including her most famous collection, The Bloody Chamber. Carter translated the fairy tales of Charles Perrault, and wrote the screenplay for Neil Jordan's 1984 film, The Company of Wolves, based on her short story.