Here are 100 books that Thick fans have personally recommended if you like
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I inherited an offbeat sense of humor from my mother, who encouraged me to create stories about outrageous subjects, like cats doing “people things.” I’m grateful to have made a living writing about such things, as well as observations about my own humorous experiences in essays, calendars, and books. I’ve always looked to other funny creatives for inspiration, and the books on my list reflect some of my favorites.
I love the rawness of Samantha Irby’s writing—she says it like it is. When I read her essays, I’m peeking in on her uncensored thoughts about the mundane, which are unrefined, real, and hysterical to me. Like many of us, I enjoy reading/hearing someone not trying to “polish a turd.”
While reading her book, my mind equally thinks: "I CANNOT believe she just wrote that” and “Tell me MORE.”
'Irby might be our great bard of quarantine.' New York Times
In this painfully funny collection, Samantha Irby captures powerful emotional truths while chronicling the rubbish bin she calls her life. From an ill-fated pilgrimage to Nashville to scatter her estranged father's ashes to awkward sexual encounters to the world's first completely honest job application, and more, sometimes you just have to laugh, even when your life is permanently pear-shaped.
'I cannot remember the last time I was so moved by a book. As close to perfect as an essay collection can get.' Roxane Gay 'Hilarious. I love it.' Candice…
I am a writer, actor, and comedian. I began on the Second City mainstage in Toronto. I was a writer and an actor on the Canadian television series, Call Me Fitz and I won the Gemini Award and the Canadian Screen Award for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for my work opposite Jason Priestley on that show. Let Me Be Frank is my first book and it brings together so much of what I love to write and read: feminism, women, history, underdogs, and humor.
As cliché as it sounds, I truly did laugh and cry my way through this excellent book of essays by actress and comedian Casey Wilson. Wilson is an excellent storyteller and someone who is just profoundly, naturally funny. But she does not shy away from some heartbreaking and emotionally raw material too, which, quite frankly, is my jam. I did that thing where you get both the book and the audiobook, so when you are walking the dog you can still be reading. I highly recommend following suit because Wilson is such a delight to listen to. I may have had to pull my car over while listening one day because it was not safe to drive whilst weeping uncontrollably.
The instant New York Times bestseller: Laugh-out-loud, deeply insightful, and emotion-filled essays from multitalented actress, comedian, podcaster, and writer Casey Wilson.
Casey Wilson has a lot on her mind and she isn't afraid to share. In this dazzling collection, each essay skillfully constructed and brimming with emotion, she shares her thoughts on the joys and vagaries of modern-day womanhood and motherhood, introduces the not-quite-typical family that made her who she is, and persuasively argues that lowbrow pop culture is the perfect lens through which to examine human nature.
Whether she's extolling the virtues of eating in bed,…
As an essayist, literary critic, and professor of literature, books are what John Milton calls my ‘pretious life-blood.’ As a writer, teacher, and editor, I spend my days trying to make meaning out of reading. This is the idea behind my most recent book, On Purpose: it’s easy to make vague claims about the edifying powers of ‘great writing,’ but what does this actually mean? How can literature help us live? My five recommendations all help us reflect on the power of books to help us think for ourselves, as I hope do my own books, including The Midlife Mind (2020) and Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction (2018).
I love this book not just because of its enduring importance - Woolf remains a towering feminist figure - but because of its vivid, imaginative writing.
Based on lectures given to female students at Cambridge, Woolf’s essay argues powerfully for the intellectual independence of women. Such independence, she reasons, must first be materially possible, hence the female writer’s need for that famous "room of one’s own."
To exemplify this, Woolf imagines a certain Judith Shakespeare, the playwright’s equally talented sister: would she not be incapable of achieving the same success as her brother owing to the patriarchal structures of society? In our post-Me Too world a century later, the question remains vital.
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.
I am a writer, actor, and comedian. I began on the Second City mainstage in Toronto. I was a writer and an actor on the Canadian television series, Call Me Fitz and I won the Gemini Award and the Canadian Screen Award for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for my work opposite Jason Priestley on that show. Let Me Be Frank is my first book and it brings together so much of what I love to write and read: feminism, women, history, underdogs, and humor.
Katy Wix, the brilliant actress and comedian, has written a memoir about “cake and death” in which she delves into womanhood, body image, disordered eating, grief and addiction. Because Wix is a genius comedian, she is able to paint the deeply human, painfully honest stuff here while also making us laugh. Again, this is the type of work that I gravitate to! Honest, human, darkly humorous…I simply adore truth-tellers. Ones, like Wix, that make us laugh, make us uncomfortable, make us look at our own “shit”, but also help us to heal.
'Mesmerising . . . an extraordinary piece of writing.' - The i paper
'A book that has the rare quality of being both poetic and accessible . . . missing Delicacy would be a huge mistake.' - Guardian
'A book that gets wiser, darker, and more brutally truthful every time you turn the page. Word of mouth is slowly turning it into a passionately recommended cult hit. A book you give a friend in trouble.' - Caitlin Moran
'Hilarious . . . heartbreaking.' - The Observer
'A layer cake of truth, pain and wisdom iced with charm. I loved it.'…
As an ethnographer, I have been studying the lives of ordinary women in socialist and post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe for over twenty-five years. I have always been fascinated by the differences in women’s life options in the presence or absence of robust social safety nets. As a scholar, I’ve spent decades working in archives and interviewing people across the region, and I have written eight books about the various gendered experiences of everyday life in Eastern Europe. As a professor, I have taught a course called “Sex and Socialism,” almost every year for eighteen years and I am always reading widely in this field to look for new material for my syllabi.
Engels provides the canonical theoretical framework for understanding how capitalism uniquely impacts women’s lives and how a more collectivized economy lays the foundation for women’s full emancipation. While many subsequent feminist and socialist scholars have disagreed with this book, The Origin of the Family is a classic that has inspired countless generations of theorists and activists.
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan (German: Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats) is an 1884 historical materialist treatise by Friedrich Engels. It is partially based on notes by Karl Marx to Lewis H. Morgan's book Ancient Society (1877). The book is an early anthropological work and is regarded as one of the first major works on family economics.
Following the death of his friend and co-thinker Karl Marx in 1883, Friedrich Engels served as his literary executor, actively organizing and preparing for…
Núria Añó is a Spanish novelist and biographer. She writes on authors like Elfriede Jelinek, Patricia Highsmith, Salka Viertel, Alexandre Dumas fils, Franz Werfel or Karen Blixen. Her writing centers on the characters’ psychology, often through the use of anti-heroes. The characters stand out most about her work; they are more relevant than the topic itself. With an introspection, a reflection, not sentimental, but feminine, she finds a unique balance between the marginal worlds of parallels. Her novels deal with important social and current themes like injustice or lack of communication between individuals.
A controversial play because of its end. Nora Helmer is the main character, a Norwegian married woman, wife of a bank manager, and a mother of three. Her life elapses day after day without opportunities for self-fulfillment in the last decades of the 19th century. I can’t say this female character is a feminist for its time, because she lives in a world full of laws made by men; so, in this sense she is like a doll, a superficial and wasteful person, and she changes slowly from act to act; she feels empty, she contemplates killing herself and at the end of the play Nora leaves her husband and family trying to escape from a stifling male-dominated society. Although this play was not intended written as a feminist, it has a great historical value in this field. If after reading you try to imagine what kind of life…
One of the best-known, most frequently performed of modern plays, A Doll's House richly displays the genius with which Henrik Ibsen pioneered modern, realistic prose drama. In the central character of Nora, Ibsen epitomized the human struggle against the humiliating constraints of social conformity. Nora's ultimate rejection of a smothering marriage and life in "a doll's house" shocked theatergoers of the late 1800s and opened new horizons for playwrights and their audiences. But daring social themes are only one aspect of Ibsen's power as a dramatist. A Doll's House shows as well his gifts for creating realistic dialogue, a suspenseful…
As a writer of dystopian novels, I have always been interested in narratives that challenge the reader. Why? Because I firmly believe that if literature is, as they say, "a window on the world," then mind-bending texts create their own windows, and hence allow the readers to free themselves from all sorts of conventions. What's more, many of my novels deal with a drug, "Synth," that allows the users to change their surroundings at will. So I do write some “mind-bending” stuff myself, with precisely the purpose I mentioned above. To challenge yourself through fiction is to challenge a reality you have not chosen to live in. It is not only an act of defiance, but also, very often, an act of courage.
The Bridge is a terrific and terrifying novella about womanhood, the patriarchate, technology, identity, and, ultimately, freedom. Its theme appeals to me as I have always been an ally of the women’s cause and JS Breukelaar does a great job describing a disturbing future if we are not more careful and respectful. What’s more, it is a great story, which embarks the reader in a dark and fascinating labyrinth. Both nightmarish and poetic, with references to ancient mythologies,The Bridge offers a unique reading experience. Although it’s very different stylistically from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, I nonetheless consider it to be a top-class feminist speculative fiction classic.
"I was raised by three sisters, one a witch, one an assassin and the third just batshit crazy." And so begins The Bridge, from Shirley Jackson Award, Aurealis Award, Shadows Award, and Wonderland Award finalist, J.S. Breukelaar. Meera and her twin sister Kai are among thousands of hybrid women—called Mades—bred by the Father in his Blood Temple cult. Meera is rescued by a mysterious healer and storyteller, Narn, but her sister, Kai, does not survive the Father's "unmaking." Years later, when the cult is discovered and abolished, Meera, still racked with guilt and grief, enrolls in college to take advantage…
My work over the past four decades has been to promote women’s rights, end violence against women, promote social justice, and positively transform the lives of men. I’ve worked extensively with the United Nations; presidents, prime ministers, and governments; companies and unions; NGOs and educators in fifty countries. I continue to be inspired by the many incredible people I get to meet. In addition to my talks to communities, companies, and universities, my activism, and my books on this subject, I also write fiction, most recently my mystery The Last Exit.
I always get pissed off when I hear some guy ranting that feminists are anti-male. In fact, I think feminists are the most pro-male humans on the planet: in spite of 8,000 years to prove the contrary, they believe that men can be peaceful and loving, and can be equal and equitable partners with women. Liz Plank is one such woman. Her book shows exactly that.
A nonfiction investigation into masculinity, For The Love of Men provides actionable steps for how to be a man in the modern world, while also exploring how being a man in the world has evolved.
In 2019, traditional masculinity is both rewarded and sanctioned. Men grow up being told that boys don’t cry and dolls are for girls (a newer phenomenon than you might realize―gendered toys came back in vogue as recently as the 80s). They learn they must hide their feelings and anxieties, that their masculinity must constantly be proven. They must be the breadwinners, they must be the…
Allan D. Hunter came out as genderqueer in 1980, more than 20 years before “genderqueer” was trending. He decided that women's studies in academia was the proper place to discuss these ideas about gender, so he headed to New York to major in women's studies as one of the first male students to do so.
This book is a typical first-person account of a student in a program (medical, in this case) who encounters some discrepancies between the idealistically-drawn portrait of how a medical school is supposed to operate and the actual realities in which jealousies, territoriality, and the ongoing scramble to acquire and defend power within the institution play a major role. The main character is naïve to such considerations until they are made apparent to him.
This is a novel about doctors: what they do to each other and to their patients. And what their patients do to them. The heroes are young doctors, fresh out of medical school and taking the blame for disease and random disaster.
I am a writer and an internationally recognized communications expert who grew up poor, homeless, and oppressed by fear and violence. I am a woman who crashed through the glass ceiling and had an exciting career with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency where I became a leader on the international stage. During my troubled times growing up, I fantasized about being an elite operative who got the bad guys and traveled the world. That’s why I wrote about one. I know how hard it is to be a strong woman. That’s why I celebrate them.
The diversity in this feminist collection pushed me to open my mind. It didn’t allow me to accept there is only one way to be a feminist. Through the brave unconventionality of the stories, I saw how women see their connection to society, to the world, in different ways. I heard strong voices: creative, brilliant, and courageous ones. One of my favorite stories was L. Timmel Duchamp’s "The Forbidden Words of Margaret A". It kept me gripped and fascinated by what it didn’t say.
Sisters of the Revolution gathers a highly curated selection of feminist speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror, and more) chosen by one of the most respected editorial teams in speculative literature today, the award-winning Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. Including stories from the 1970s to the present day, the collection seeks to expand the conversation about feminism while engaging the reader in a wealth of imaginative ideas.
From the literary heft of Angela Carter to the searing power of Octavia Butler, Sisters of the Revolution gathers daring examples of speculative fiction’s engagement with feminism. Dark, satirical stories such as Eileen Gunn’s…
