100 Books Like [Available]

I rarely see a book cover the dating world from this author’s vantage point: as a long-married woman entering the dating world after 25 years with an “I’m open to anything” attitude, yet with the gravitas and insight of a successful Manhattan psychotherapist.

Her forays into the worlds of polyamory and swinging made me go, “Wait! Stop! Go home!” Her bravery and vulnerability left me breathless. But then I realized that to find intimacy, those are the very qualities you must marshal.  Equal parts action-packed and introspective, the book gave me the tools to look at my own social life. 

In her late forties, Lithgow embarks on a dating campaign that proves wildly funny and often outrageous.

Her descriptions are enormously entertaining, but what I liked best about the book is that the author grows from her year of “putting herself out there.”  She comes to fascinating realizations, both about her dates and about herself – revelations that I could apply to my own self.

In this boldly candid memoir, Lyz Lenz chronicles her escape from a marriage missing mutuality and respect only to discover the same phenomenon at play in the dating market.

I felt less alone in my shock at what men say to me on dates when I read what dates said to Lenz, a beautiful, successful writer: “If you want to be with me, you’ll need to be a better cook,” and “your professional accomplishments are not as impressive as my dick.” 

But ultimately, what I liked best about the book is Lenz’s hard-won conclusion – to never again lose herself in a man.

This collection of personal essays, culled from 8,000+ submitted each year to the New York Times “Modern Love” column, absolutely sings!

What I liked best about this book of true stories about love is the revelation that everyone is inherently a storyteller.  That’s because conflict is part of everyone’s life, and conflict, by definition, equals drama.

How revelatory to witness an artful 1,000 words woven out of the day a woman’s flirty email to her new beau is not answered, at least not right away. Also, I loved the writing style of each essay, as if the reader is eavesdropping on two friends telling it like it is over a cup of coffee.  

I found this book engaging and fun to read. It's filled with well-written, informative stories of many women's first dates. Some of the dismal dates remind me of the saying, "You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince."

Sometimes my mouth would drop open in shock while reading about a miserable first date. Other stories had happy endings. Some couples continued dating and married. Others had successful first dates because the people liked each other but decided then, or after a few dates, that they weren't a good fit for a romantic relationship.

First Date Stories makes for a friendly, optimistic companion to women experiencing the ups and downs of dating. It reassures them that they are not alone, worthy, and likely to succeed in reaching their goal if they persevere. The implication is that every first date is successful because of the learning it… show more.

Julia Cherry Spruill is herself a fascinating character, one who worked in her husband’s shadow most of her life, an academic wife, as it were, creating research methods for the decade-long project of examining women’s experiences in the New World. The book, after being published, was largely ignored for thirty years, until it was published in paperback at a time when women’s history was attaining status as an academic field. Women’s Life and Work is overflowing with details concerning women’s activities, clothing, food and drink, childbearing, and death, with personal anecdotes of their feelings about it all. 

The title says it all. In this short story collection, simply being a woman is a kind of emergency. These stories are slow burns, full of interiority and character development. The devastation is in the details: tiny moments that reveal deep-seated fears and barely acknowledged longings.

Each story is full of quiet revelations: there’s subtlety in the dangers these women face; in fact, it’s woven into the very fabric of their lives.  

This book is a memoir that demonstrates the power and joys of gratitude through the author’s memories of her childhood in Moline, Illinois. 

Diane Johnson demonstrates much gratitude for her childhood, but she is no midwestern hickster. Johnson is a Hollywood film writer who has worked with such directors as Francis for Coppola and Sydney Pollack. She has traveled the world, and yet she reveals how the gratitude for her youth has sustained her through life.

Although this book is about the influential women of Arizona exclusively, they stand in for the many women who have made contributions to the history and culture of the entire West. Cleere begins with indigenous women, and moves on to both historic and modern women in medicine, the arts, business, education, and the law. The short biographies of the nearly forty women profiled here are just enough to whet the appetite for more, and are written in an engaging and accessible style.

Even though this is a work of anthropology, it also provides unique insights into rural history. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Margery Wolf did fieldwork in a poor village in rural Taiwan. At that time, modernization was just beginning to affect the countryside, so most aspects of village life were still traditional. Although Taiwanese society differed from the mainland in certain ways, in most aspects of life there carried on the traditions of Chinese village life. This book looks at rural society from a female perspective. Due to poverty, both women and men had few options. They did whatever it took to survive. Many of the people the author interviewed seem very discontent with their lives, but they usually had no other choice.