17 Books Like Vagina Obscura

I first encountered medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris when she published The Butchering Art, a biographer of pioneering surgeon Joseph Lister. This is another gore-flecked narrative that focuses on facial surgeon Harold Gillies’ pioneering work formulating ingenious surgical innovations and transforming the lives of patients disfigured fighting in WW1.

Plastic surgery has been around since the French Revolution, but attempts at facial reconstruction were limited. Gillies became fascinated by plastic surgery after watching French surgeon Hippolyte Morestin remove a cancer tumor from a patient’s face and cover it with a flap of skin taken from their own neck. In 1916, he requisitioned a ward at Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot, to cope with the grotesque procession of disfigured men disembarking from the hospital trains. He assembled a team of retired doctors, medical students, and even a vet to try to give these men their dignity back. A Daily Mail reporter at… show more.

Two pharmacists sit in a Boston courtroom accused of murder. The weapon: a fungus. The death count: 100 and rising. These facts set the stage for a true-crime thriller by investigative journalist Jason Dearen, and it has the makings of a horror movie. There’s scientific hubris, sketchy ethics, a cover-up, and a monster, too: a slimy, sticky, fungal mold that infected patients and began eating their brains alive. It’s riveting, packed with information about how fungal spores managed to contaminate a medical supply chain, and frankly hard to put down. I have done my share of forensic research, and never have I encountered killer fungus before; I consider this an unmissable book.

I loved this book because it’s a completely fresh perspective on death. While Stiff goes into the “lives” of cadavers and how they benefit society through research, this book covers the people who work with them in every aspect.

She talks to embalmers, crime scene cleaners, and death mask makers, and it’s just completely fascinating to me to learn about others’ experiences working among the dead. Plus, it’s beautifully written, with a kind and compassionate voice.

Why are there so many sex books on my peculiar list? Because sex is one of those subjects we often ignore or treat as taboo—despite it being around since, well, according to Feltman, a particularly amorous pre-historic ameba-like critter. This book also appeals to me because, as a gender-fluid person, I love the idea that the evolutionary status quo used to be essentially pansexual, with exploded gender categories (basically, that ameba was going to try its luck with anything it came across). Along the way, this book stomps on myths and instead shares true facts, which are often much weirder. You will love it.

I’m a fan of authors who are brave enough to write with reckless abandon, and Tom Robbins, the author of this book, is one of the few. I laughed my way through this novel as it careened from the stock-market crash that starts the novel right through its conclusion.

A 300-pound psychic? A born-again monkey? African rituals? Tarot-card bombshells? A man who has learned how to say “vagina” in more than forty languages? This is a rocket ride and more about great and imaginative writing than a hard plot. Just my kind of stuff.

This is a simply astonishing book, one to be read by all women but, perhaps more importantly, by all men. To say it was a revelation to read is a bit of an understatement. It is described as a revolutionary book, providing a new understanding of what it is to be female. It’s gynaecological, historical, cultural, anthropological, and evolutionary in its massive scope. 

As the author says, the vagina is actually a muscular marvel of engineering, sensitive and strong, fluid and flexible. Far from being passive vessels, female genitalia control the most important ‘role’ of all: the survival of the species.

Dr. Blackledge is a scientist, sex educator, and fertility campaigner, and her book has sold over 100,000 copies and been translated into ten languages. Jeanette Winterton says of Raising the Skirt, ‘it is completely fascinating’.

Much more than that, it throws into sharp relief the oppression of women… show more.

I’m a bit of a rebel rouser, so when The Amazing True Story of How Babies Are Made landed on bookshelves and created a big stir, I knew I had to buy it.

What sparked the controversy was a very simplistic illustration of how the erect penis fits inside the vagina. Parents were up in arms, claimed it encouraged their children to have sex, and deemed it pornographic.

It doesn’t actually do any of that - but, instead, provides a well-crafted, funnily-told explanation of human reproduction. What it really has going for it, is that it includes an explanation (albeit a brief one) of IVF, donors, and surrogates - a rare find in a picture book.

Any resource that includes these methods in the explanation of how babies are made is a winner in my book.  

We assume people have always recognized two sexes, male and female. But did they? In the past, people believed men and women were the same sex; women were just incomplete, unfinished men. Men and women had the same sexual organs, with women’s located internally. Surprisingly, if conditions were right, women could even turn into men. They also thought women needed to achieve orgasm to conceive.  That’s right. For over a thousand years of western history, women’s sexual pleasure was as important as men’s. 

I loved this book because it helped me find the connection between sexual ecstasy and spiritual ecstasy. By showing how the orgasm evolved and is related to brain function, it can help us understand how other profound human experiences are connected to this most basic sexual experience.

Most men think sex is largely about intercourse, and that intercourse is how women get to orgasm. Actually, the organ that triggers orgasm in women is the clitoris, which sits outside the vagina an inch or so above it nestled beneath the top junction of the vaginal lips. Only a small fraction of women can work up to orgasm during intercourse. Most need gentle, direct, extended clitoral caresses, by hand, mouth, or sex toy. This book explains the primacy of the clitoris in women’s pleasure. It should be required reading for all men.