100 Books Like Candy

This notorious 1969 Roth novel is a monologue of a self-loathing and sexually repressed Jewish man to his psychologist.

He recounts in excruciating detail his efforts to escape his parents’ interference in his life and his lifelong obsession with bedding a "shiksa" (non-Jewish woman). Portnoy’s rants are brilliant, vulgar, and entertaining – though the cultural references are dated and female readers might become incensed at the demeaning descriptions of “Monkey” (the shiksa he finally beds).

In a story I wrote, a man facetiously asks his female friend whether Carrie Bradshaw’s neuroticism and sexual dalliances would make her the “female Portnoy.” Both are insightful, emotionally needy, and charming characters. Behind this novel’s sexual humor is a complex portrait of a man trapped by his own obsessions.

Marco Vassi wrote explicit novels that explored sexuality and polyamory. He grew up during the free love era in the 1960s, and his fiction mixes the cerebral with the sensuous. 

In Touch is a rich, complex tale masquerading as a minor satire of the psychotherapy profession. A female therapist helps patients explore their sexual fantasies (both literally and figuratively). This story was witty, sensuous, and yes, slightly ridiculous. 

Of course, there's a lot of sex, but the plot had several clever twists. I loved the witty banter between the therapist and her cynical screenwriter boyfriend.

I first heard portions of this crazy, hilarious story when it was broadcast on "This American Life" radio show.

The author worked as the only female clerk at a video store that rented out adult videos to (mostly) men. This tale relates the strange behavior she observed of the store's customers and the awkward conversations she had with them. 

The narrator does not sugarcoat the kinds of videos found at the store (or her opinions about the men who rented them), but mostly she takes everything in stride and enjoys the strange unreality that the store and its customers occupy. Davis’ portrayals of the store’s customers are great, funny, sympathetic, and even sad.

BONUS: The author herself narrated the audiobook.

If you remember reading "maze stories" as a kid and wondered what it would be like to read one that was sexually explicit, this is the book for you!

It centers around two British ex-lovers, Barney and Barbie, at a party. At the start, you can either be Barney or Barbie, but each faces a variety of choices about whether to hook up with new people, go to different parties, or try to rekindle a romance with an ex.

All the characters are great and hilarious, and so is the witty (and sexy) dialogue. This impeccably written maze story offers a variety of endings – including many unexpected ones. This book always left me guessing… and laughing.

Sometimes, when I talk about this book when I’m teaching writing students, I like to joke: “Luckily, I’m Jewish, so I can say this: Fleming was sexist, racist, and anti-Semitic, but boy, could he write!”

It always gets a laugh. And indeed, I don’t think it’s true. He was a writer in his time. I take pride in my writing being clean, clear, and simple. My inspirations were writers such as Chandler, Hammett, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald. Fleming took the lessons he’d learned from them and created a whole new genre. Pick up any of his novels and see how they are far more complex, compelling, and, as you’ll see, beautifully written. 

Although this novel focuses on the world of investment banking, I list it here because it shows the difference between being a female working in finance and being a male working in finance; like This is what happens, it shows the impact of sexism on one woman's professional life, her dream, her ambition, her failure to achieve the former despite the latter.

I read it quite a while ago but was reminded of it while reading recently about the recent Martin/Nicole thing (wherein they switched email addresses, so Martin experienced what it was like to be Nicole for a couple of weeks) ("Folks, it sucked" was his summary).  

Song’s interdisciplinary work in the fields of politics, law, and philosophy explores the tensions that arise when culturally diverse democratic states pursue justice for religious and cultural minorities and justice for women. Much of Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism relates to North America. Song argues that egalitarian justice requires special accommodations for cultural minorities and that gender equality may restrict cultural accommodation. While we need to be sensitive to historical cultural rights, we should also protect basic human rights. Song lucidly and incisively discusses cultural defense in criminal law, aboriginal membership rules, and Mormon polygamy, examining the role of intercultural interactions in shaping such cultural conflicts. As I did in my work, Song emphasises intercultural democratic, deliberative dialogue as a means for resolving cultural conflicts.

Feminist theorist Dale Spender wrote, in Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them, “We need to know how women disappear….”  Although she spoke of women who disappear from the historical record, all too many women seem to disappear from any sort of public life as soon as they leave high school: so many shine there, but once they graduate, they become invisible. What happens?  

Marriage and kids is an inadequate answer because married-with-kids straight-A boys are visible.  Everywhere. Even the straight-B boys are out there. So what happens?

This is what happens.

I'm a reader who loves books where characters determine the story arc. Plot-driven books generally leave me cold. This novel has a cast of players I found easy to empathize with; even the villains. They are drawn in fascinating detail with all their flaws and all their glories to make them real people who are easy to engage with throughout the story. In spite of some tough scenes, it's a book I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

The author introduces some thought-provoking and timely themes here. The story examines injustice, wealth inequality, gender discrimination, political intrigue, the fallibility of leaders, ethics, and morality, and the ever-present problems of prejudice driven by ignorance. All themes guaranteed to engage me.

Once I’d belatedly realised that women wrote noir, it was a short step to becoming obsessed with Margaret Millar, a Canadian/American counterpart to British Celia Fremlin.

This book kept me guessing right to the end. It has a psychological complexity that means the characters got under my skin, and it is crammed with razor-sharp insights into dysfunctional relationships. I just love Millar’s spare prose: "The smile meant nothing. It was one of habit. She put it on in the morning along with her lipstick and removed it at night when she washed her face. Jim liked this smile of Daisy’s…"

It is easy to see why Millar was celebrated in her own time – and, sadly, equally easy to guess the reasons she now needs "rediscovering."