A man I was working with recommended this book to me, when he heard about my novel, while it was in the making. I got hold of this book and already after the first chapter I understood why. Janice Radway investigates how Harlequin novels have such a large audience. In essence it is because romance novels always end well, as opposed to life, that keeps being complicated. It taught me that I’m a very romantic person. This was something I had never regarded as a positive trait so of course I failed to see just how important romance was and is to me. By identifying with millions of women who read these romance novels, I gained a respect that I still feel is lacking in our culture: A respect for our emotions and the big role they play in our sense of satisfaction with life.  

bell hooks is an original thinker and approaches complex topics with pragmatism and love. I adore her straight forward writing style and her brilliant insights into our violently distorted image of masculinity and maleness.

Figes argues that although women novelists did not directly challenge the rules of a patriarchal society, they challenged its assumptions by protesting the restrictions on women’s lives and severely criticizing the clergymen, enablers of the patriarchy. My favorite section of the book is her interpretation of the Gothic novels, which she calls the female equivalent of picaresque novels. Women, she points out, were not permitted to roam the world like Tom Jones, having adventures. Instead, these novels presented women, who, through no fault of their own, are imprisoned by evil men. Their adventures, as they find their way to safety in foreign lands, prove their courage and intelligence.

This book was translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary. It’s also not really fantasy. Sorry!

I don’t read enough translated books. The flow of language is different and storytelling isn’t always as straightforward as the Western narrative structure I’m more familiar with.

(I find this to be true with books written by fellow Indigenous authors in America and Canada, as well, but I haven’t read any of their work featuring contemporary witches. Yet.)

This book intertwines the stories of Curandera Feliciana and journalist Zoe, who are brought together by the murder of Feliciana’s cousin Paloma. It’s less about witches as spellcasters, and more about them as healers, knowledge-keepers, and disrupters of the status quo (i.e., the patriarchy).

Not a light read, but an important one.

It was a brilliant decision on Natalie's part to create a graphic novel that lays out the many facets and layers that make up the dynamics of cults. It has been a pleasure for me to get to know Natalie. A former member of the Jehovah's Witnesses, she is now a dynamic and independent individual. This graphic novel explores a wide variety of aspects of the tactics used by Jehovah's Witnesses, including shunning, the reasons why cult family members will disavow non-cult family members, and a great deal more. This seemed to me to be an excellent option for storytelling geared for minds that have a tendency to gravitate toward visuals.

A short but beautiful book, full of wisdom, personal reflections, and compelling truths about men and masculinities.

This was one of the first books on men and masculinities to be published in the UK, and I read it in the early 90s. I found it profoundly helpful in guiding me to become a profeminist man. I particularly appreciate Tolson’s gentle but persuasive arguments wherein he deconstructs what it means to be a working-class British man, showing how ‘patriarchal masculinity’ gets created through, for example, family, relationships, institutions, work, and peer-group pressure.

The book is part autobiographical and throughout Tolson is openly reflective on his own masculinity and the contradictions it creates in him. I recently reread this book and was so impressed at how Tolson’s insights into the state of men over 50 years ago remain relevant to this day. 

This book is full of petty rivalries and hierarchies that seem high stakes in the moment but, with time and distance, seem absurd. Competition between employees at the LA television station where the novel takes place is cutthroat. There’s no trust, no downtime, and something as simple as taking a day off with the flu can destroy your standing.

This book is chaotic and challenging and somehow perfectly captures the feel of an office in a fast-paced office that takes itself too seriously. I’ve been there, and I felt every moment of this book. Kaplan finds ways to point out how ridiculous our workplaces are while still honouring the experiences of the women who work there. It is highly relatable and wrenching. 

If you’d told me that one of my “3 Best Books” in 2024 would be about a midwestern middle-class housewife in the mid-20th century, my response would have been “yeah, sure.” But here we are.
I wasn’t expecting such a sharply observed, smart, ironic, compassionate, often funny, sometimes sad, series of short chapters that trace the life of India Bridge as she navigates the changes of the mid-1900s. I was blown away by the simple but perfect prose and the author’s refusal to either condescend to his main character for her certainty or exonerate her for her blindness and belief in the life she takes for granted.
Even if you think this isn’t your thing, take a chance. You might be surprised.

Zina Pavlou is a woman with a past. Her unspeakable acts seem incomprehensible until we are taken across the sea to Cyprus and into her tiny prison cell in the UK, where the true facts emerge.

I found the story compelling, dramatic, and informative, and it landed me disoriented but compassionate inside Zina’s disturbed mind.  

This is more than a book—it’s an incredible call to change, and in many ways the other side of the coin for the advice for working dads. 

Mary Portas has a strong insight here—that the patriarchy has driven much of what we see, hear, and feel as ‘the world’ today, and that to start to change that, we all need to lean much more into traditionally ‘feminine’ qualities such as cooperation, collaboration, and more to start to live humanities fuller potential. 

I saw Mary speak after getting this book, and it was a double whammy of incredible change. It’s one of the most inspiring books I’ve read in an awfully long time.