The Steamy, Throbbing History of Romance Novel Covers
“We’ve got some books here I want to show you,” Johnny Carson told a Tonight Show audience in March 1990. He turned to…
Revisiting the Sensual, Highbrow Advice of The Joy of Sex
The best sex, by far, is the sort that leaves you thinking about it the next day, too embarrassed to tell anyone else…
Women, Race, and Memory: An Excerpt From Toni Morrison's New Book, The Source of Self-Regard
Toni Morrison first delivered “Women, Race, and Memory” at Queens College, Queens, New York, May 8, 1989. The Source of…
The Appalachian Women’s Rights Organization and The Lost Promises of Feminism
“One woman alone can’t do anything,” activist Eula Hall declared at the inaugural meeting of the Appalachian Women’s…
E.L. James Is at It Again
E.L. James has written another novel. It’s called The Mister, it’s about a young aristocrat and a mysterious young…
Karen Thompson Walker's The Dreamers Is 2019's First Must-Read Novel
A mysterious sleeping illness breaks out in the fictional town of Santa Lora, California, in Karen Thompson Walker’s…
Damaged People and Dark Fantasies Rule in Kristen Roupenian's You Know You Want This
I have found that as of late, my reading tastes have skewed towards the speculative and the fantastical; real life is a…
Michelle Obama's Becoming Now Every Bit As Popular As Fifty Shades of Grey
Fifty Shades of Grey and Michelle Obama’s memoir Becoming are two books I never thought I’d mention in the same…
No, Marie Kondo Is Right: Throw Away Your Books
I have yet to watch Marie Kondo’s Netflix series Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, but as I prepare to haul untold tons of…
An Hour with Dr. Pimple Popper
The first indication that I was in the presence of no mere doctor, but something more akin to a rock star, were the…
Get Ready for Great Gatsby Fan Fiction in 2021
In 1998, Congress passed the Copyright Term Extension Act, which—like its name implies—extended the copyright of works…
Looking Back With Ottessa Moshfegh at My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Her Year of Pain and Disorientation
Ottessa Moshfegh received more acclaim and attention than ever in 2018. It was also, she says, the most painful year of…
Our Favorite Books of the Year
Here are the books that were most loved by Jezebel staffers this year. This isn’t a list per se—there is no order or…
In Gemma Hartley's Fed Up, Emotional Labor Is Everything and Nothing
In 2014, on the 25th anniversary of her 1984 book The Second Shift, sociologist Arlie Hochschild was asked if we had…
Ban Men... From Writing About Sex
Meet me, a literary dunce. I’ll admit it—I am always a million years behind on the “good books” that are “out this…
Resisting Nostalgia, Plot, and Everything Else with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Sketchtasy’s narrator isn’t unreliable as much as she is inconsistent. Undependable. Frustrating, even. She’ll give you…
Daisy Johnson's Everything Under Is a Quiet Repurposing of the Oedipus Myth
In his essay on “Oedipal Knowledge,” Michel Foucault argued that Sophocles’s Oedipus, whose namesake is a man seemingly…
Michelle Obama’s Becoming Complicates Her Own Narrative
Following a long tradition of first ladies, Michelle Obama has written a memoir looking back on her journey to the…
Well-Read Black Girl's Glory Edim On Her Book Club and the Importance of Representation
When I spoke with Glory Edim, founder of the Well-Read Black Girl book club and author of the new anthology of the same…
Mexican American Author Reyna Grande On Living in the Hyphens
In Reyna Grande’s latest memoir, A Dream Called Home, the author recalls her experience attending college as a Mexican…