The most recommended books on hedonism

Was the hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American classic African-American?

A couple of academics have advanced that theory. I’m not sure I buy it. The notion (and supporting “evidence”) seems little more than a literary parlor game, not to mention the fact that nothing in Fitzgerald’s work or his letters shows a particular engagement with, or sympathy for, black Americans.

Still, it’s an interesting metaphor and the reason this seminal American novel appears in a list of what’s otherwise non-fiction. Gatsby’s yearning for his lost love could be an African-American yearning for a beloved country that does not always love them in return.

I first read this book in high school. It wasn’t until my second, third, and fourth re-reading that I began to appreciate Fitzgerald’s gift for story-telling and his evocative, poignant language. And to identify with Gatsby, the outsider craving to become an insider.

This book relates to a lot of what I’ve learned in my own research about rituals. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it argues that we humans are not hedonists by nature. Yes, we desire comfort and we pursue all kinds of pleasures. But we also often embrace struggle, effort, and even fear and pain, and those are in fact the things that make our lives truly meaningful. From watching horror films and climbing mountains to raising children and performing painful rituals, Paul Bloom argues that, in the right context, suffering can be part of a life well-lived.

This book is eerie and unnerving, from its first few pages to the alarming revelations that ensue. I started reading this late one night and couldn’t resist the urge to stay up and finish it! Claire Fuller’s detailed prose will entice, grip, and haunt you well beyond the final scene. 

The heart of this fantasy trilogy, rife with complex, believable, and heart-breaking politics, is the relationship between Tansen, the unwilling witness to civil war, and Josarian, the face of that war that Tansen swears to protect. I love how Resnick uses their friendship to animate the conflict between patriotism and pragmatism, and the dynamic between the believer and the “once burnt, twice shy” cynic. Unforgettable.

This was one of those "stay up all night, call out of work so you can read just one more chapter" kind of books.

Henderson is an absolute master of worldbuilding and suspense, and her take on vampire lore perfectly showcases this. This story of a lower-class "blood maid" moving into a Victorian manor home in service of a mysterious, vampiric employer had such phenomenal explorations of class differences and power imbalance, absolutely bubbling sensual tension, and so many twists that I often had to put the book down and stare at a wall to digest.

I adored the way that queerness was an accepted and ingrained part of this world, along with the examples of female friendship and the steampunk Victorian gothic vibes throughout.

This French novella was written in the early ’90s but translated in 2019 to English for the first time. It lacks structure and is full of plot holes, but Serre’s writing is equal parts whimsical and erotic. It feels a bit like she wrote it in one sitting during some kind of fever dream but that’s why it feels like a poem. If you’re into chaotic women and turn of the century kink, then this is for you.

The swinging sixties are commonly thought of as hedonistic days (if you remember them you weren’t there). It was a period when young people threw off the trappings of their parents and, allegedly fuelled by drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll, set out to put the world to rights: a time without precedent.

But was it really like that? What are the women of that generation up to now; and what do they remember of those times? Is sixty the new forty?

Despite pursuing careers, raising families, with quite a few as grandparents, others caring for their own aging parents, could it be true that the once hipsters – a few now with literally new hips – have an undiluted appetite for life?

This fascinating book looks back over the lives of 67 women in their sixties, all of whom lived through ‘The Sixties’, to explore these questions through their… show more.

Like her or not, the reigning queen of the naughty girl subgenre of Chinese literature decidedly is Wei Hui, whose debut, Shanghai Baby, was a cultural phenomenon that resulted in public book burnings, an international media frenzy, dozens of imitators, and one so-bad-it’s-good movie adaptation starring Bai Ling. Not that Wei Hui is a particularly well-regarded writer – Shanghai Baby is basically a knockoff of shallow Western-style chick-lit, about a designer-brand-obsessed young woman who has an affair with a married foreigner – but in 1999 it was groundbreaking for kicking the publishing doors down for the post-1970s generation of Chinese writers.

I actually only ranked this book four stars out of five initially (I’m a harsh marker), but I couldn’t get it out of my head. Imagine a cross between the Narnia series and the Harry Potter series, but all the main characters are Edmund/Malfoy types. People sometimes do heroic things, but there are no heroes here.

It’s all much more muddy. This is a fantasy novel set in the real world, at least to start with, but there are also heavy elements of horror, and I think that’s why it put barbs into my brain – the things that happen to important characters are traumatic, unforgettable, and often very sudden.

A book that stays with you, whether you want it to or not.

Freshwater is difficult to describe, and is best approached with an open mind and no expectation. Emezi has described the novel as an autobiography of their discovery of themselves as ogbanje, a spirit within Igbo mythology. What strikes me about Freshwater is its radically new approach to understanding and talking about mental health and transness, or rather, the presence of different selves within the body. It is a subtly decolonial story, and the experience of reading it can profoundly change the way we perceive ourselves and others.