Here are 100 books that All Fours fans have personally recommended if you like
All Fours.
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I am passionate about words and reading, and I love books that examine and record the chaos and mayhem of human existence. When I think about why I don’t want to die, it’s mainly because I can't bear the thought of missing out on what happens next. I feel privileged to be alive during this strange, fraught time of epochal change and to be able to use my skills as a writer to record not just the facts of what happens but how it feels to witness it all, the sensibility of our time, the recording of which is, I believe, the essence of great literature.
This is a book about the real-life effects of the work of the character in the first book I recommended.
I loved it because, as a journalist confronting for the first time in my career, large-scale distrust in agreed upon reality (“fake news”), the stories of societal crackup in post-Soviet, disinformation-addled Russia form the ultimate cautionary tale.
In the new Russia, even dictatorship is a reality show. Professional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, suicidal supermodels, Hell's Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors, and oligarch revolutionaries: welcome to the glittering, surreal heart of twenty-first-century Russia. It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship--far subtler than twentieth-century strains--that is rapidly rising to challenge the West. When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook…
From the brilliant Kate Christensen, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for The Great Man, comes a compelling, searing, funny novel about women, sex, power, and self-reckoning.
Ever since her father broke her heart when she was nine, Julia Heimdahl has tried to be good company for bad men: a…
I have always loved stories, and I love the clash of ideas – political and philosophical, religious and atheistic. And if you can put them together in a novel, so much the better. But I insist that it has to be a real story, with real characters, not ciphers. They must be inconsistent, their ideas half-formed and subject to change. And they must be allowed to put their point of view with their own voice, so I’m never entirely sure what the author thinks. The characters have to be people I can care about, people I can love or hate, people whose fate can cause me anxiety, sorrow, or joy.
I first read Orwell’s dystopian nightmare as a teenager and have gone back to it several times since.
Apparently, it is such a brilliant description of life under totalitarianism that, during the communist era, some Eastern Europeans refused to believe that an inhabitant of a democratic country could have written such a book.
Even today, I find the book very relevant, as Orwell develops themes of truth, propaganda, doublethink, and the misuse of language that you can find in Homage to Catalonia, written a decade earlier. And the ubiquitous and intrusive telescreen has a parallel in our age of surveillance capitalism and the way the Chinese authorities are using information technology to cement their rule.
62
authors picked
1984
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
9,
10,
11, and
12.
What is this book about?
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU . . .
1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words 'DOWN WITH BIG…
I’ve curated a list of music memoirs that resonate deeply with me, particularly because they strip away the polished veneer of fame and expose the raw, imperfect humanity of their subjects. My book, Asshole, explores similar territory, delving into the complexities and contradictions that make us who we are.
These memoirs, much like my book, aren't about celebrating flawless heroes. Instead, they offer unflinching accounts of individuals—whether artists, managers, or those behind the scenes—navigating the extraordinary and often turbulent landscape of the music industry. These stories delve into the imperfections, challenges, and moments of accountability— sometimes even outright acts that might be considered, well, asshole-ish—that shape these fascinating lives, leaving a lasting impression.
Patti Smith’s book beautifully chronicles her intense and formative friendship with the groundbreaking artist Robert Mapplethorpe as they navigated the vibrant and often gritty art scene of late 1960s and 1970s New York City.
Theirs wasn’t a fairytale romance, but a complex, evolving bond between two flawed yet undeniably brilliant creatives. Reading about their struggles, their artistic pursuits within the legendary Chelsea Hotel, and the wider New York City scene evoked a strong sense of nostalgia for me, a time and place I've always found artistically inspiring.
The exploration of their creative partnership, the push and pull between them as individuals finding their artistic voices, is something I’ve often yearned for but haven’t quite experienced in such a profound way.
“Reading rocker Smith’s account of her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, it’s hard not to believe in fate. How else to explain the chance encounter that threw them together, allowing both to blossom? Quirky and spellbinding.” -- People
It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.
Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence…
From the brilliant Kate Christensen, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for The Great Man, comes a compelling, searing, funny novel about women, sex, power, and self-reckoning.
Ever since her father broke her heart when she was nine, Julia Heimdahl has tried to be good company for bad men: a…
I have always tried to find books that explain and explore my life stage. When I was a young mother of little babies, I read many books about early motherhood. When I was studying and travelling and working as a waitress, those topics were represented in my reading too. Now that I’m a woman writer in midlife, with growing children and an art practice, I’m keen to read books by and about women writers who evoke the joys and struggles of this period: aging, the tensions between freedom and responsibility, marriage and separation, ambition and desire.
I was absolutely riveted by this huge doorstop of a biography exploring the life of Sylvia Plath. I’m not a diehard Plath fan per se, but I am always drawn to books about writers’ lives.
The intersection of Plath’s death with her experiences of motherhood, her writing life, and the failure of her marriage also brings this story firmly into my wheelhouse. (While Plath might not technically have been in midlife, I would argue that she was already precociously facing many of its common pitfalls when she died.)
This book is meticulously researched and includes new archival evidence. I loved it so much that after I finished its 600-something pages, I wanted to start over immediately.
The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and definitive life of Sylvia Plath.
'Surely the final, the definitive, biography of Sylvia Plath' Ali Smith
*WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED PRIZE 2021* *A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH AND THE TIMES* *FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN BIOGRAPHY 2021*
Drawing on a wealth of new material, Heather Clark brings to life the great and tragic poet, Sylvia Plath. Refusing to read Plath's work as if her every act was a…
I’m Gen X, through and through. And because I grew up in that (glorious?) time before social media, I didn’t have the worry that my messy-woman missteps would be exposed online. But the trade-off to keeping my mistakes as private as possible was that I often felt like I couldn’t live boldly. So now I’m fascinated by the ways other women handle the messier aspects of their lives: the obsessions and frustrations, the secrets we all keep, the duality we choke down. I want to know what we’re each quietly starving for, what’s driving us when we strip away social expectation and are left to sit with our gnawing hungers.
I’ve got two kiddos, and between the bodily, emotional, and lifestyle changes alone, I’ve found motherhood to be a WILD ride. And I’ve never felt more seen as a mom than in this book.
From the heartbreaking joy to the numbing boredom to the rage and the shocking invisibility that can come with motherhood, particularly during those early days, it made perfect sense to me that the main character turns into a dog. Because motherhood does shape you into something else.
This book captures that loss, that feral transformation, perfectly. Also, I wish I’d come up with the title.
In this blazingly smart and voracious debut novel, an artist turned stay-at-home mom becomes convinced she's turning into a dog. • "A must-read for anyone who can’t get enough of the ever-blurring line between the psychological and supernatural that Yellowjackets exemplifies." —Vulture
One day, the mother was a mother, but then one night, she was quite suddenly something else...
An ambitious mother puts her art career on hold to stay at home with her newborn son, but the experience does not match her imagination. Two years later, she steps into the bathroom for a break from her toddler's demands, only…
As a writer, wife, and mom, I love reading novels and memoirs about women who are navigating parenting, relationships, and careers simultaneously. My favorites are those that make me laugh out loud while presenting a relatable picture of all this juggling act entails. Smart and witty heroines who approach life with a can-do spirit and the ability to laugh at themselves as the world tosses one curveball after another their way capture my heart every time.
It’s hard to match Nora Ephron’s wit and wisdom. In this novel, which mirrors events from the novelist and screenwriter’s real life, cookbook writer Rachel Samstat learns that her husband is cheating on her while she’s pregnant. Even as her life is falling apart, Rachel maintains her sense of humor while dropping the “everything is perfect” routine and speaking her mind.
In this tale of love and loss, Ephron serves up hilarious and heartbreaking moments in equal portions alongside mouthwatering recipes.
If I had to do it over again, I would have made a different kind of pie. The pie I threw at Mark made a terrific mess, but a blueberry pie would have been even better, since it would have permanently ruined his new blazer, the one he bought with Thelma ... I picked up the pie, thanked God for linoleum floor, and threw it' Rachel Samstat is smart, successful, married to a high-flying Washington journalist... and devastated. She has discovered that her husband is having an affair with Thelma Rice, 'a fairly tall person with a neck as long…
I’ve always been sensitive to my material environment, discerning the spiritual and emotional effects of light, color, and sound in everyday life, like our clothes and homes and also in nature. However, for years, I lived in my head. I’d relegated my body and intuition to the sidelines. For two decades, I built a career in visual art, but it took the mid-life collapse of everything I’d wanted to find my way back to the authenticity of those early sensibilities, charting an artist’s way home. The creative life is not just for artists. It sustains our humanity in times of darkness and is the source of our brightest future.
This story of individuation shines as a beacon. The juxtaposition of identity, ancestral stories, and creativity told distinctly in an artist’s voice cracked open for me a world that is at once relatable and completely, necessarily idiosyncratic.
I felt the world of the book color my everyday experiences as this story weaves together life and art, as well as extends the honest relationship an artist must have with the material world into the most intimate of material relationships: the one we have with our own body. These most mundane relationships are shown as inseparable from our humanity as creative beings. This book inspired me to look at my relationships as a mirror for self-discovery.
FEATURED ON THE COVER OF TIME MAGAZINE AS A 2021 NEXT GENERATION LEADER
“A once-in-a-generation voice.” – Vulture
“One of our greatest living writers.” – Shondaland
A full-throated and provocative memoir in letters from the New York Times bestselling author, “a dazzling literary talent whose works cut to the quick of the spiritual self” (Esquire)
In three critically acclaimed novels, Akwaeke Emezi has introduced readers to a landscape marked by familial tensions, Igbo belief systems, and a boundless search for what it means to be free. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, the bestselling author of The Death of Vivek…
I'm addicted to memoirs. I love to peek inside another person's life, especially when the author embraces radical transparency, and I can’t resist being swept into the heart and mind of a courageous midlife woman. I admire writers who take risks, who remind me that sometimes our decisions, our humanness, take us down difficult roads. I'm a Professor of Communication Studies, and I author a Substack called Life Talk, which explores human connection—with others and with ourselves. The books on this list reflect both personal and professional passion: I'm endlessly drawn to self-reflexive inquiry, to stories that help me understand identity, resilience, and the courage it takes to transform.
I adore writers willing to show me their soft underbelly, who make themselves truly vulnerable, and Frangello does this with intensity.
Reading this memoir made me want to strive for deeper honesty in my own writing. It made me feel less alone with secrets from my past, the experiences and youthful decisions that caused me shame in adulthood. I have also enjoyed talking with others about Frangello's willingness to go there in print.
In fact, this memoir facilitated the best book club discussion I've had in years! My book club members had incredibly diverse opinions, but one thing we all agreed on: none of us had read anyone braver.
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A Good Morning America Recommended Book • A LitReactor Best Book of the Year • A BuzzFeed Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Rumpus Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Bustle Most Anticipated Book of the Month
"A pathbreaking feminist manifesto, impossible to put down or dismiss. Gina Frangello tells the morally complex story of her adulterous relationship with a lover and her shortcomings as a mother, and in doing so, highlights the forces that shaped,…
I’m Gen X, through and through. And because I grew up in that (glorious?) time before social media, I didn’t have the worry that my messy-woman missteps would be exposed online. But the trade-off to keeping my mistakes as private as possible was that I often felt like I couldn’t live boldly. So now I’m fascinated by the ways other women handle the messier aspects of their lives: the obsessions and frustrations, the secrets we all keep, the duality we choke down. I want to know what we’re each quietly starving for, what’s driving us when we strip away social expectation and are left to sit with our gnawing hungers.
I’m drawn to books that buck expectations, whether that’s through the format, content, or approach. So I adore how this book absolutely tears them all down and creates something more original instead. Chunks of this book are written like social media posts, which create quick, digestible sections that let the absurdity, humor, and social musings really hit.
I also admire how Lockwood is able to switch so smoothly between hilarity, heartbreak, anxiety, and sadness; I was cackling one minute and then ugly crying just a few pages later. I’ve never read a book quite like this before. Lockwood’s writing style inspires me to take more risks in my own stories.
'Patricia Lockwood is the voice of a generation' Namita Gokhale 'A masterpiece' Guardian 'I really admire and love this book' Sally Rooney 'An intellectual and emotional rollercoaster' Daily Mail 'I can't remember the last time I laughed so much reading a book' David Sedaris 'A rare wonder . . . I was left in bits' Douglas Stuart * WINNER OF THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2022 * * SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 * * SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021 * * A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK * ______________________________________________ This is a story about…
I have always tried to find books that explain and explore my life stage. When I was a young mother of little babies, I read many books about early motherhood. When I was studying and travelling and working as a waitress, those topics were represented in my reading too. Now that I’m a woman writer in midlife, with growing children and an art practice, I’m keen to read books by and about women writers who evoke the joys and struggles of this period: aging, the tensions between freedom and responsibility, marriage and separation, ambition and desire.
This book is a bible for women in midlife. One of Levy’s ‘living memoirs’, it captures the author’s experience of leaving her marriage at fifty and remaking her life as a writer.
The pose is beautiful: spare and elegant. Importantly, the book explores how it is possible to create a life focused on artistic pursuit, children, and friendship, as opposed to romantic partnership, material wealth, and conservative notions of stability.
I reread it every year to remind myself of what is possible.
A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY WINNER OF THE PRIX FEMINA ETRANGER 2020
Following on from the critically acclaimed Things I Don't Want to Know, discover the powerful second memoir in Deborah Levy's essential three-part 'Living Autobiography'.
'I can't think of any writer aside from Virginia Woolf who writes better about what it is to be a woman' Observer _________________________________
'Life falls apart. We try to get a grip and hold it together. And then we realise we don't want to hold it together . . .'
The final instalment in Deborah Levy's critically acclaimed 'Living Autobiography', Real…
