Off the Shelf: For Shits and Giggles

Here’s another collection of books we’d like to share with you – if only, just for shits and giggles.

Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide, by Maureen Dowd

Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide

Was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? Do women get less desirable as they get more successful? These are just some of the questions asked by Maureen Dowd in this book. Four decades after the sexual revolution, nothing has worked out the way it was supposed to and the sexes are circling each other as uneasily and comically as ever.

In Are Men Necessary, Dowd explains why getting ready for a date went from glossing and gargling to Paxiling and Googling, why men may be biologically unsuited to hold higher office and why the new definition of Having It All is less about empowerment and equality than about flirting and getting rescued. The triumph of feminism lasted a nanosecond and generated a gender tangle that has lasted 40 years. The battle of the sexes will never be the same again.

The Between Boyfriends Book, by Cindy Chupack

The Between Boyfriends Book: A Collection of Cautiously Hopeful Essays

Cindy Chupack takes a hilarious look at love, dating-and not dating-in this witty, truthful and utterly charming book. Tackling topics such as “sexual sorbet” (the first man you sleep with after a breakup), “the VISA defense” (the claim, usually invoked by men, that ‘I paid, therefore I am innocent’) and “eggsistential crisis” (a panic attack, common among women in their late thirties), The Between Boyfriends Book is as reassuring as that late-night post-date phone call to a best friend. It says: you may be single, but you are not alone.

The Submissive, by Tara Sue Me

The Submissive

“Beside the pillow was a sheer nightgown. My hands shook as I changed. The gown barely skimmed my upper thighs and the gauzy material would show every part of my body. I folded my clothes and put them in a neat pile beside the door. All the while I was chanting to myself:

This is what you wanted. This is what you wanted.”

Before Fifty Shades of Grey, there was The Submissive – the first in Tara Sue Me’s seductive and scandalous trilogy series.

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, by Neil Strauss

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

The Game recounts the incredible adventures of an everyday man who transforms himself from a shy, awkward writer into the quick-witted, smooth-talking Style, a character irresistible to women. But just when life is better than he could have ever dreamed (he uses his techniques on Britney Spears, receives life coaching from Tom Cruise, moves into a mansion with Courtney Love and is officially voted the World’s Number One Pickup Artist) he falls head over heels for a woman who can beat him at his own game.

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, fastidious college professor. He also likes little girls. And none more so than Lolita, who he’ll do anything to possess. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these?