Here are 100 books that Loose Girl fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a therapist, and I work with people from all walks of life and with all manner of suffering. I am drawn to memoirs because I consider it the real self-help genre of literature. Like good therapy, a good memoir will make sense of a story: how it happened, why it happened, how it affected the person, and what they did (do) to face it, and thrive in spite of it. As a writer, I take pride in bringing that same quality to my work. I have been asked many times, “How can you bear to reveal all that stuff about yourself, especially when it’s unflattering?” The answer is always “Isn’t that the part that matters? Isn’t that the part where the growth occurred? Isn’t that what makes the story worth telling?”
Wendy Plump’s VOW is the only memoir I have ever read that reveals what it is like to be the “cheating” partner (there are many books that address being cheated on). This is NOT a book touting infidelity or polyamory. It is simply an extremely honest accounting of a marriage riddled by affairs (both partners), how the author coped with the fallout, and grew into a more mature and insight-driven version of herself. This very topic activates so much judgment by so many people (just read some of the seething, scathing reviews on Amazon), but the truth is, human beings DO cheat, they DO commit infidelity, and Wendy Plump, who is a terrific, elegant writer and storyteller, has addressed this topic with great candor. It takes an extremely brave person to tell this type of story; hence, this book is brave and beautiful.
There are so many ways to find out. From a cell phone. From a bank statement. From some weird supermarket encounter. One morning in early January 2005, Wendy Plump's friend came to tell her that her husband was having an affair. It was not a shock. Actually, it explained a lot. But what Wendy was not prepared for was the revelation that her husband also had another child, living within a mile of their family home.
Monogamy is one of the most important of the many vows we make in our marriages. Yet it is a rare spouse who does…
I am a therapist, and I work with people from all walks of life and with all manner of suffering. I am drawn to memoirs because I consider it the real self-help genre of literature. Like good therapy, a good memoir will make sense of a story: how it happened, why it happened, how it affected the person, and what they did (do) to face it, and thrive in spite of it. As a writer, I take pride in bringing that same quality to my work. I have been asked many times, “How can you bear to reveal all that stuff about yourself, especially when it’s unflattering?” The answer is always “Isn’t that the part that matters? Isn’t that the part where the growth occurred? Isn’t that what makes the story worth telling?”
At sixteen years old, Darin Strauss had just received his first driver’s license and was on his first unsupervised drive, when a classmate, on a bicycle, swerved in front of his car. She was killed instantly. There was never a question of actual culpability: bystanders described the girl on the bike as literally driving in front of his vehicle, as though intentionally (a theory corroborated by suicidal thoughts recorded in her last diary entry the night before the accident). But this did not alleviate the trauma of killing someone, and the anguish and guilt that Darin Strauss carried forward for many, many years into his adult life, and probably always will. “Half a Life” refers to how he lived thereafter; halfway in his own existence, and the other half in constant preoccupation with the girl whose life was no more. This book will fill you with such empathy and compassion…
In this powerful, unforgettable memoir, acclaimed novelist Darin Strauss examines the far-reaching consequences of the tragic moment that has shadowed his whole life. In his last month of high school, he was behind the wheel of his dad's Oldsmobile, driving with friends, heading off to play mini-golf. Then: a classmate swerved in front of his car. The collision resulted in her death. With piercing insight and stark prose, Darin Strauss leads us on a deeply personal, immediate, and emotional journey—graduating high school, going away to college, starting his writing career, falling in love with his future wife, becoming a father.…
I am a psychiatrist-novelist. As a psychiatrist, I’ve seen many patients struggling with infertility and miscarriage. As a novelist, I became intrigued with the idea of having false pregnancy (pseudocyesis) be a key element in a character’s life. My primary goal was to create an engrossing good read. I also wanted to show the psychological trauma of infertility/miscarriage. Another goal was to portray psychiatric patients, the psychiatrists who treat them, and psychiatry in a realistic way. I’m so gratified by the reader reviews: “gripping”...“spell-binding”...“rich, satisfying read”...“a page-turner”...“Illuminating”.
This extraordinary book combines a lived experience with the powerful writing of an accomplished author. Unexpectedly, in her mid-thirties, she finds a man to love and a baby is on the way. But then, the agony: the baby dies in utero in the ninth month. She tackles head-on the deepest feelings and questions this brings. I like the way she unsparingly describes her experience and her grief, and then how she processes this and finds a way to move on.
"This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child.
This book is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. How do you deal with and recover from…
I grew up reading books that featured strong women, including Little Women and Anne of Green Gables so it only made sense that I would go on to write a book featuring four strong women. As much as I love reading fiction, since I am a professor, my writing is mainly academic and/or non-fiction and I aim to make research translatable and interesting to all – including mainstream audiences. Currently, I am working on a new book about evangelical Christian women and politics, which I started in 2020 right before the presidential election. No matter where I live or work, exploring the various facets of women’s lives will remain my driving pursuit.
Karr's memoir diverges from my other recommendations insofar as it’s a memoir and features just one woman’s voice.
I found this book while living in Madrid over a decade ago and remember sneaking out into the living room late at night to read it. Karr is a master storyteller and a master memoirist – highly relatable even if you’ve never struggled with alcoholism.
The long awaited sequel to the beloved and bestselling 'The Liars' Club' and 'Cherry' - a memoir about a self-professed 'blackbelt sinner's' descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness, and her astonishing resurrection.
'If you'd told me, even a year before I start taking my son to church regular that I'd wind up whispering my sins in the confessional or on my knees saying the rosary, I would've laughed myself cockeyed. More likely pastime? Pole dancer. International spy. Drug mule. Assassin.'
Mary Karr's prizewinning 'The Liars' Club' chronicled her hardscrabble Texas childhood and sparked a renaissance in memoir, cresting…
My name is K. E. Garland, and I am a recovering female sex addict. I didn’t know it until I was 42. In 2014, I had a rock-bottom moment that forced me to confront my compulsions. I self-therapized through writing. As a blogger, I described ways I’d buried interrelated traumas. During the nine years it took for me to research and write my memoir, there were few books about female sex addiction. Now, there are several! The books I’ve recommended not only provide a well-rounded understanding of a little-known phenomenon, but they also help to demarginalize stories of how women live with behavioral addictions. I hope you’ll find them useful.
I loved this book because it was the first memoir I’d read about a Mexican-American woman who struggled with sex and porn addiction. I liked that Garza didn’t experience a lot of trauma in her life, yet she still found herself addicted to watching porn.
A lot of times, we only hear about porn addiction as a young man’s problem, but Garza’s memoir illustrates how women can also live with this issue. Because of Garza’s memoir, I knew I wasn’t alone in my sexual experiences.
"Erica Garza has written a riveting, can't-look-away memoir of a life lived hardcore...In an era when predatory male sexual behavior has finally become a topic of urgent national discourse...Getting Off makes for a wild, timely read" (Elle).
A fixation on porn and orgasm, strings of failed relationships and serial hook-ups with strangers, inevitable blackouts to blunt the shame-these are not things we often hear women share publicly, and not with the candor, eloquence, and introspection Erica Garza brings to Getting Off.
What sets this courageous and riveting account apart from your typical misery memoir is the absence of any precipitating…
My name is K. E. Garland, and I am a recovering female sex addict. I didn’t know it until I was 42. In 2014, I had a rock-bottom moment that forced me to confront my compulsions. I self-therapized through writing. As a blogger, I described ways I’d buried interrelated traumas. During the nine years it took for me to research and write my memoir, there were few books about female sex addiction. Now, there are several! The books I’ve recommended not only provide a well-rounded understanding of a little-known phenomenon, but they also help to demarginalize stories of how women live with behavioral addictions. I hope you’ll find them useful.
I LOVED this book because the author does a great job of explaining and describing female sex addiction with anecdotes.
Ferree spent 30 years as a certified sex addiction specialist. As a scholar, I appreciated how she wove in her personal experience with what studies have shown. This approach made reading about sex addiction clinical yet relatable. I also liked that she gave advice on how to talk to family members about this type of addiction. These tips were helpful. I even photocopied some of the pages and gave them to my husband.
In this book Marnie C. Ferree offers a unique resource for women struggling with sexual addiction. Taking her book's title from the parable where Jesus extends grace to the woman caught in adultery, Ferree bravely shares her own story of sexual addiction, recalling her years of shame from living a double life and the moment when she ultimately had to tell the truth. But more than just offering her story as a hopeful example of God's transforming power, Ferree distills her clinical expertise on female sexual addiction accessibly and gently, providing a much-needed resource for women struggling with any degree…
My name is K. E. Garland, and I am a recovering female sex addict. I didn’t know it until I was 42. In 2014, I had a rock-bottom moment that forced me to confront my compulsions. I self-therapized through writing. As a blogger, I described ways I’d buried interrelated traumas. During the nine years it took for me to research and write my memoir, there were few books about female sex addiction. Now, there are several! The books I’ve recommended not only provide a well-rounded understanding of a little-known phenomenon, but they also help to demarginalize stories of how women live with behavioral addictions. I hope you’ll find them useful.
I enjoyed this book because Golden is a Black woman, and rarely do Black women admit to being sex and porn addicts, much less write about their experiences. I also like that Golden is from the South; her book destroys the “prim and proper” American Southern trope with which I’ve been familiar due to living in the South for over two decades.
Also, although I am a recovering female sex addict, I’ve never been to therapy. Golden’s book showed me what that would have been like. Overall, her memoir helped me to know my life was not an anomaly.
My name is K. E. Garland, and I am a recovering female sex addict. I didn’t know it until I was 42. In 2014, I had a rock-bottom moment that forced me to confront my compulsions. I self-therapized through writing. As a blogger, I described ways I’d buried interrelated traumas. During the nine years it took for me to research and write my memoir, there were few books about female sex addiction. Now, there are several! The books I’ve recommended not only provide a well-rounded understanding of a little-known phenomenon, but they also help to demarginalize stories of how women live with behavioral addictions. I hope you’ll find them useful.
I loved this book because, while it is common for celebrities to write tell-all memoirs, it is not common for esteemed actresses to write so candidly about mental illness and sex addiction.
I was shocked when I read that Lewis was diagnosed as bipolar, and that is what led to a subsequent diagnosis of being a female sex addict. Reading her words and descriptions made me question if I, too, needed to seek out a psychiatrist to confirm if I was bipolar.
This book also helped me to see that there didn’t need to be shame attached to being a female sex addict, and I don’t have to be a celebrity to “tell it all.”
I was born in Ukraine and moved to the Midwest in the early 1990s. I am the author of two novels: At the End of the World, Turn Left, which was called “elegant and authentic” by NPR and named by Booklist as one of the “Top Ten Crime Debuts” of 2021, and the domestic thriller Breakfall (April 2023). Perhaps one of the oldest literary tropes, affairs up the ante in literary works while simultaneously exploring human nature. Throw an affair into a novel, and most likely, some characters will be blowing up their lives; add it into a mystery novel, and murders are likely to happen.
This is one of my all-time favorite books; while the focus is not an affair exactly, the 1968 Prague-set novel goes into much depth exploring the nature of commitment and monogamy in general. Also, you get wonderful insight into some timeless ideas of what it means to be human, such as this one: "Living, there is no happiness in that.
Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being: becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain."
'A cult figure.' Guardian 'A dark and brilliant achievement.' Ian McEwan 'Shamelessly clever ... Exhilaratingly subversive and funny.' Independent 'A modern classic ... As relevant now as when it was first published. ' John Banville
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon; a man torn between his love for her and his womanising. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals; while her other lover stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by choices and events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems…
I’ve been reading almost exclusively memoirs and personal essays for over a decade. The women who generously wrote about their bodies—the bowels, the breasts, the bad sex—lit up the path for me when I was drowning in my own body shame and body confusion. Every year I read at least 50 memoirs, and the ones on this list are the ones I revisit over and over. I also study writing with Lidia Yuknavitch at Corporeal Writing, where I first heard six years ago that “the body has a point of view.” I love this as a writer and a reader. So much of women’s bodies and experiences has been hidden away or unstoried, but those days are coming to a close, and these writers are leading the way.
Dederer’s book explores her sudden, mid-life yearning for carnal pleasure and compares them to her promiscuous youth. We see her sleeping with enough people in college to earn a recommendation on a park bench (“for a good time call Clare Dederer"), and also as a married mother and artist who longs for something more, but she’s not sure what it is. Punctuated with hilarious entries from her childhood journal, this book delivers on every level.
A hilarious, confrontational and moving story of one woman's attempts to navigate her way through the challenges of mid-life, for lovers of HOW TO BE A WOMAN and I'M NOT WITH THE BAND. 'Claire Dederer is not only a brilliant author, but an honest and brave one' Elizabeth Gilbert, author of EAT, PRAY, LOVE
Claire Dederer's youth was wild, an endless cascade of beer and rock and acid and sex that left her benumbed and adrift. But then, after two decades of disciplined transformation, she'd become a successful writer, a faithful wife, and a mother - a real adult. That…
