Love Wife, Inc.? Readers share 100 books like Wife, Inc....

By Suzanne Leonard,

Here are 100 books that Wife, Inc. fans have personally recommended if you like Wife, Inc.. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Wedding Spectacle Across Contemporary Media and Culture: Something Old, Something New

Diane Negra Author Of Imagining "We" in the Age of "I": Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture

From my list on romance, intimacy and media culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an academic who writes about gender and media culture.  At the start of my career, I often wrote about silent and classical-era Hollywood, and I still teach these periods, but most of my research now focuses on the contemporary era and the complexities of gender, class, and consumer culture. My current project is a study of the broken customer service culture and the anti-social effects of technologization called I’m Sorry You Feel That Way:’ Affect, Authority and Antagonism in the Cultures of Customer Service.

Diane's book list on romance, intimacy and media culture

Diane Negra Why did Diane love this book?

While there are other books on the “matrimonial industrial complex,” this one provides a really in-depth analysis of the cultural fascination with weddings, and I found it an absolutely engrossing account of phenomena ranging from royal weddings to “purity porn.” 

What comes across here is the scale of the idealized wedding as a consumerist ritual and form of deep aspirational investment. One of the most thought-provoking aspects of the book is the notion that the cultural norms around weddings and marriage have slipped out of alignment so that there is a growing gap between the celebration of getting married and the state of being in a marriage.

By Jilly Boyce Kay (editor), Melanie Kennedy (editor), Helen Wood (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Wedding Spectacle Across Contemporary Media and Culture as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book interrogates the hyper-visibility and stubborn endurance of the wedding spectacle across media and culture in the current climate.

The wide-ranging chapters consider why the symbolic power of weddings is intensifying at a time when marriage as an institution appears to be in decline - and they offer new insights into the shifting and complex gender politics of contemporary culture. The collection is a feminist project but does not straight-forwardly renounce the wedding spectacle. Rather, the diverse contributions offer close analyses of the myriad forms and practices of the wedding spectacle, from reality television and cinematic film to wedding…


Book cover of After Happily Ever After: Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age

Diane Negra Author Of Imagining "We" in the Age of "I": Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture

From my list on romance, intimacy and media culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an academic who writes about gender and media culture.  At the start of my career, I often wrote about silent and classical-era Hollywood, and I still teach these periods, but most of my research now focuses on the contemporary era and the complexities of gender, class, and consumer culture. My current project is a study of the broken customer service culture and the anti-social effects of technologization called I’m Sorry You Feel That Way:’ Affect, Authority and Antagonism in the Cultures of Customer Service.

Diane's book list on romance, intimacy and media culture

Diane Negra Why did Diane love this book?

For the past 25 years, romantic comedy has largely been considered a failed genre, out of sync with a new climate of uncertainty about intimacy and couplehood.

This book challenges that oversimplified view and shows how romance narratives are shape-shifting in the 21st century. Even in an era of heteropessimism, romantic comedy continues to be an important form, and the contributors here track its increasing openness to racial and sexual minorities it traditionally overlooked.

By Maria San Filippo (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked After Happily Ever After as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In defiance of the alleged "death of romantic comedy," After "Happily Ever After": Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age edited by Maria San Filippo attests to rom-com's continuing vitality in new modes and forms that reimagine and rejuvenate the genre in ideologically, artistically, and commercially innovative ways. No longer the idyllic fairy tale, today's romantic comedies ponder the realities and complexities of intimacy, fortifying the genre's gift for imagining human connection through love and laughter. It has often been observed that the rom-com's "happily ever after" trope enables the genre to avoid addressing the challenges of coupled life. This volume's…


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Book cover of Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre

Diane Negra Author Of Imagining "We" in the Age of "I": Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture

From my list on romance, intimacy and media culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an academic who writes about gender and media culture.  At the start of my career, I often wrote about silent and classical-era Hollywood, and I still teach these periods, but most of my research now focuses on the contemporary era and the complexities of gender, class, and consumer culture. My current project is a study of the broken customer service culture and the anti-social effects of technologization called I’m Sorry You Feel That Way:’ Affect, Authority and Antagonism in the Cultures of Customer Service.

Diane's book list on romance, intimacy and media culture

Diane Negra Why did Diane love this book?

This short book covers a lot of ground and has been really influential in my thinking about the “Chick Flick” as a form of popular storytelling. It’s extremely useful for coming to grips with the genre’s conventions, and it’s open to the thematic and ideological range of a set of films that are too often written off as boilerplate and conservative.

It enables readers to see the interconnectedness of celebrated screwball comedies from the 1930s, Doris Day/Rock Hudson sex comedies, “radical” romantic comedies like Annie Hall, and contemporary “neo-traditional” romances like Sleepless in Seattle. A standout section for me is the author’s close reading of You’ve Got Mail.

By Tamar Jeffers McDonald,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Romantic Comedy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Romantic Comedy offers an introduction to the analysis of a popular but overlooked film genre. The book provides an overview of Hollywood's romantic comedy conventions, examining iconography, narrative patterns, and ideology. Chapters discuss important subgroupings within the genre: screwball sex comedy and the radical romantic comedy of the 1970s. A final chapter traces the lasting influence of these earlier forms within current romantic comedies. Films include: Pillow Talk (1959), Annie Hall (1977), and You've Got Mail (1998).


Book cover of Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong

Isham Cook Author Of Confucius and Opium: China Book Reviews

From my list on foreigner memoirs of China.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having lived in China for almost three decades, I am naturally interested in the expat writing scene. I am a voracious reader of fiction and nonfiction on China, past and present. One constant in this country is change, and that requires keeping up with the latest publications by writers who have lived here and know it well. As an author of three novels, one short story collection, and three essay collections on China myself, I believe I have something of my own to contribute, although I tend to hew to gritty, offbeat themes to capture a contemporary China unknown to the West.

Isham's book list on foreigner memoirs of China

Isham Cook Why did Isham love this book?

Absorbed by Chinese culture while a grad student in Hong Kong, Susan Blumberg-Kason is charmed into marriage with Cai, a PhD student of Taoist music from the Hubei Province backwater. Marital discord arises when the openhearted Midwesterner realizes her function as a wife is to produce a son, turn it over to his (not her) parents for upbringing, and get out of the way so the husband can carry on with his philandering and porn watching. But even as he molts his intellectual shell and his narcissistic monster emerges, Cai can also be sympathetically understood as a product of his culture. Intercultural conflict is what makes this fairy tale so readable and engrossing, with its timeless theme of the loving sweetheart enthralled and entrapped in her dark prince's perverted castle. What moved me most was Blumberg-Kason’s honesty in laying everything bare, at the risk of baring her own flaws.

By Susan Blumberg-Kason,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Good Chinese Wife as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A stunning memoir of an intercultural marriage gone wrong

When Susan, a shy Midwesterner in love with Chinese culture, started graduate school in Hong Kong, she quickly fell for Cai, the Chinese man of her dreams. As they exchanged vows, Susan thought she'd stumbled into an exotic fairy tale, until she realized Cai―and his culture―where not what she thought.

In her riveting memoir, Susan recounts her struggle to be the perfect traditional "Chinese" wife to her increasingly controlling and abusive husband. With keen insight and heart-wrenching candor, she confronts the hopes and hazards of intercultural marriage, including dismissing her own…


Book cover of Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs

Brenda Stanley Author Of The Treasure of Cedar Creek

From my list on escaping polygamist cults.

Why am I passionate about this?

Living in southern Utah for many years, I saw first-hand the polygamist communities of Colorado City, Arizona and Hilldale, Utah. It always intrigued me that these people still held on to the beliefs and teachings of the early Mormon leaders regardless of the laws or scorn of those who lived around them. The research I did for The Treasure of Cedar Creek, was about polygamy, but also the history of the area of Idaho where the novel takes place and how it would be as a woman not only trying to escape, but facing the challenges of the terrain and perceptions of the day.

Brenda's book list on escaping polygamist cults

Brenda Stanley Why did Brenda love this book?

I found Wall’s first-hand account of what life is like inside a polygamist cult to be both revealing and tragic. The book is nonfiction but reads like a novel. I loved how the pages were full of descriptive passages that gave me an insider’s view of what these young girls are taught and must face as child brides. It helped me see that what began decades before is still happening under a cloak of secrecy. I found this book revealing and disturbing, and one I couldn’t put down.

By Elissa Wall,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Stolen Innocence as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A tale of survival and freedom, Stolen Innocence is the story of one heroic woman who stood up for what was right and reclaimed her life.

In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs forced her to marry her first cousin at the age of fourteen. This harrowing and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the harsh realities of the lengths to which Jeffs went in order to control the sect's women.…


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Book cover of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier,

The coaching book that's for all of us, not just coaches.

It's the best-selling book on coaching this century, with 15k+ online reviews. Brené Brown calls it "a classic". Dan Pink said it was "essential".

It is practical, funny, and short, and "unweirds" coaching. Whether you're a parent, a teacher,…

Book cover of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

Clifford Garstang Author Of The Shaman of Turtle Valley

From my list on contemporary Korean society.

Why am I passionate about this?

Fresh from college, I arrived in South Korea in 1976 to teach English as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and despite my naivete, or maybe because of it, I fell in love with the country—the people, the food, the culture, the history. I have since lived and worked in many other countries, but Korea will always be my first love and I have returned many times for both work and pleasure. When I became a fiction writer, I was keen to read the work of Korean novelists who, naturally, had an even better understanding of their culture than I did, and I love staying connected to the country in this way.

Clifford's book list on contemporary Korean society

Clifford Garstang Why did Clifford love this book?

It came as no surprise to me, having spent so much time in the country, that Korea has long been and still is a sexist society, and this book illustrates that sexism brutally. When I lived there, my good friend, a woman, was a professor of biochemistry, and she struggled in her career the way men didn’t have to. Also, while people thought nothing of my going out to a pub with my male friends, it was somewhat scandalous when I did the same with this woman. In this novel, set in more recent times, a young woman has similar troubles trying to find her way. For many readers, it has served as a wake-up call for Korean society.

By Cho Nam Joo, Jamie Chang (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the most notable novels of the year, hailed by both critics and K-pop stars alike, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman's psychic deterioration in the face of rampant misogyny. In a tidy apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, millennial "everywoman" Kim Jiyoung spends her days caring for her infant daughter. But strange symptoms appear: Jiyoung begins to impersonate the voices of other women, dead and alive. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her concerned husband sends her to a psychiatrist. Jiyoung narrates her story to this doctor-from her birth to parents who expected a son to…


Book cover of The Color Purple

Keith Corbin Author Of California Soul: An American Epic of Cooking and Survival

From my list on rewriting your story.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am always drawn to these remarkable books because they illuminate the intricacies of the human experience and the power of resilience. Sparrow in the Razor Wire captivates you with its message of hope and redemption, demonstrating that the human spirit can thrive even in adversity. The Power Elite challenges you to critically examine societal structures, igniting your passion for social justice and change. The 33 Strategies of War empowers you with strategic insights to navigate life's challenges and turn obstacles into opportunities. The Color Purple celebrates love and self-discovery, while Becoming Ms. Burton inspires you with stories of overcoming adversity and personal growth. 

Keith's book list on rewriting your story

Keith Corbin Why did Keith love this book?

This is a powerful and moving novel that tells the story of Celie, an African American woman in the early 20th century who overcomes tremendous adversity. Through letters addressed to God and later to her sister, Celie shares her experiences of abuse, oppression, and isolation. However, her journey transforms as she discovers her own strength, resilience, and voice.

The relationships she forms with other women, particularly with the bold and independent Shug Avery, empower her to reclaim her identity and embrace her sexuality. Ultimately, it is a celebration of sisterhood, self-discovery, and the indomitable spirit of women, reminding us that love and hope can flourish even in the darkest of circumstances.

By Alice Walker,

Why should I read it?

16 authors picked The Color Purple as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Alice Walker's iconic modern classic is now a Penguin Book.

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug…


Book cover of Free Love

Saskia Sarginson Author Of The Central Line

From my list on London and love.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an author and a romantic. Put the two together and it makes sense for me to write love stories. I’ve always been interested in relationships and fascinated by how complex our feelings make us when we fall in love. There’s a love story in all my books, but for the last three novels, a love story has been the story. I’m a Londoner too, and I like it when a city becomes another character in a book, as I hope London has in The Central Line.

Saskia's book list on London and love

Saskia Sarginson Why did Saskia love this book?

It's 1969, Phyllis is married to a kind man, with two children and a large house in suburban London. Her domestic world is not far removed from a dutiful 50s housewife’s. Then a much younger man, dashing, selfish, and a family friend, kisses her in a dark garden, and her life explodes. She abandons her family and moves to a shabby flat in Ladbroke Grove. A new world opens to her – she meets people of colour, artists, activists, drinkers, and idealists. She experiences sexual freedom and romantic love. Phyllis’s teenage daughter joins her in her new life, and mother and daughter must work out a different kind of relationship. I found myself feeling furious with Phyllis at the same time as emphasising with her.

By Tessa Hadley,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Free Love as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book. She writes with authority, and with delicacy: she explores nuance, but speaks plainly; she is one of those writers a reader trusts.”—Hilary Mantel

From the bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past comes a compulsive new novel about one woman’s sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London.

1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability: pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their…


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Book cover of Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption

Who Is a Worthy Mother? by Rebecca Wellington,

I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…

Book cover of In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith

Alex Beam Author Of American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church

From my list on Mormon history.

Why am I passionate about this?

In 2012, a publisher asked me if I wanted to write a book about Joseph Smith's assassination. I leapt at the chance, in part because I was fascinated by Smith and the Latter-day Saints, and in part because I appreciated how many of the important contributions to Mormon history --- including Fawn Brodie’s famous biography of Joseph Smith, or the first honest and comprehensive account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre -- sprang from the pens of women and men with no formal academic training. By contrast, many “scholars” have disgraced themselves with prevaricating or pusillanimous accounts of the religion’s raucous and fascinating 190-year history. So jump in! Never a dull moment with the Latter-day Saints! 

Alex's book list on Mormon history

Alex Beam Why did Alex love this book?

These heart-wrenching biographies of 33 of Joseph Smith’s wives were the first, in-depth exploration of the social and emotional costs of Mormon polygamy. Loneliness appeared in 1997. The church waited until November 2014, six months after the publication of American Crucifixion, to officially acknowledge that Joseph had up to 40 wives.

By Todd Compton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked In Sacred Loneliness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Beginning in the 1830s, at least thirty-three women married Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. These were passionate relationships which also had some longevity, except in cases such as that of two young sisters, one of whom was discovered by Joseph’s first wife, Emma, in a locked bedroom with the prophet. Emma remained a steadfast opponent of polygamy throughout her life. 

The majority of Smith’s wives were younger than he, and one-third were between fourteen and twenty years of age. Another third were already married, and some of the husbands served as witnesses at their own wife’s polyandrous wedding. In…


Book cover of The Wedding Spectacle Across Contemporary Media and Culture: Something Old, Something New
Book cover of Single Women in Popular Culture: The Limits of Postfeminism
Book cover of After Happily Ever After: Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age

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