Books For TV Lovers: 'Girls'

Only two weeks in to Season 4 of HBO's 'Girls' and you already can't get enough right? JK. Sometimes (often) it feels like I'm the only person rooting for this show anymore, but if you, like me, still care and think 'Girls' is great, then enjoy the following reading list:

Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham -- Perhaps a bit on the nose, but if this is what you like, then you will like it.

How Should a Person Be by Sheila Heti -- A really great novel about friendship between creative women in Toronto. Also some truly unfortunate sex scenes that share a sensibility with 'Girls.'

Anything by the lovely Jane Smiley, director of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where our intrepid heroine is enrolling this season. A Thousand Acres is terrific and I've heard great things about her latest novel as well.

Little Women by Louis May Alcott -- Everyone cites 'Sex and the City' as the natural predecessor but any group of four women coming-of-age and having mostly shitty stuff happen to them owes everything to Little Women. This viewpoint is clearly shared by Lena Dunham who included a really funny and sweet allusion to the novel in Season 2. FYI - Hanna is Jo, Marnie is Meg, Shoshanna is Amy, Ray/Adam are very likely Marmee, and Jessa is no one because the March sisters don't have a really useless, annoying, selfish sister....maybe Beth?

Books For TV Lovers is a recurring post that rounds up a reading list of titles inspired by my favorite TV shows.

#Readwomen2014 Non-Fiction: 'Not That Kind of Girl' by Lena Dunham

Do you really need me to tell you that this book drops today? You shouldn't. It's arguably the biggest book release of the year, and quite famously, resulted in one of the biggest book advances on record. It's crass to talk about money, but it bothered me enormously when so many people made a stink about it; why does anyone begrudge a talented young woman for her successes? This seems to be a recurring theme for Dunham, who so many people hate for really unfair or arbitrary reasons. Her publisher gave her a huge advance because she is a proven, critically-acclaimed writer, a very hard worker, and worth every damn cent of it.

Moving on, excerpts and previews from this collection of essays have been circulating for a few weeks now, along with plenty of positive reviews. There is now a well-formed genre of smart, funny women writing memoir/essay collections (more on that tomorrow), and this will certainly take its place in that pantheon. Particular kudos to Dunham, however, for earning the coveted text-only cover; this might have something to do with the constant public debate over Dunham's physical appearance, but I choose to take it as a sign that famous women won't always have to splash their faces on their covers. I've enjoyed Dunham's contributions to the New Yorker for quite awhile now, and I'm a devotee of Girls, frustrating as it can be at times, so I'm really looking forward to digging in to this. If you live in a major city, look up her book touring schedule, because she's doing really major events at huge venues with other funny, talented women, and they look awesome. I was so disappointed that she was making so few stops in the Midwest.

#ReadWomen2014 Non-Fiction: 'Bad Feminist' by Roxane Gay

Bad Feminist: Essays

By Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay's book of hilarious and incredible essays drops TODAY so get thee to the bookstore! Some of it has been previously published and circulated on the Internet, so if you're unsure about committing to the whole book, you can dip you your toes in the free content. However, I advocate strongly for just purchasing and reading the whole damn book because there is plenty of new stuff and it's just good.

While she touches on feminism and politics, most of the essays are her pop culture writing, which is some of her absolute best stuff, imho. I am not ashamed to admit that I got into Roxane Gay's writing via her live-tweeting of The Bachelor ( a surprising number of very respected literary authors engage in this), and I'm most looking forward to reading her essay on HBO's Girls, which I somehow missed the first time around.

If you happen to be in the Detroit area, Gay is doing a reading from Bad Feminist  at Literati in Ann Arbor on Thursday, August 7, so you can get a signed copy and support a local independent bookstore.