books

Female characters are not permitted to laugh in books presented at the Tehran International Book Fair, which opened this week. What would Jane Eyre say?

Some will say that there are technical considerations—the quality of rendering, the beauty of the language, or the composition of the scene make a difference between obscene and not, porn and art.

Personally, whether it's prize-winning literature, a cheesy film, or a fashion spread, my impulse to name the obscene, to pick up a black marker or start scribbling protests in the margins, depends a lot on who wrote, or painted, or filmed it. After all, you don't want your vision of the world hijacked by just anyone, even for a moment or an hour or a few hundred pages. Do you?

We're very excited to announce the newest book available at BitchMart! Jennifer's Journal: The Life of a SubUrban Girl Vol. 1 is the first comic book in a series that chronicles the life of author and illustrator Jennifer Cruté. In this self-published debut, Cruté shares stories about her childhood, family, interpretations of popular culture, and her spirituality with honesty and humor. This book is not to be missed!

Order your copy of Jennifer's Journal: The Life of a SubUrban Girl Vol. 1 now! And while you're at it, check out the rest of the incredible books available at BitchMart. Support independent feminist media and do a favor for your bedside table. Don't forget—every order at BitchMart comes with a free Bitch tattoo!

A new wave of children's books depicts families who encourage their kids to be who they are.

The Vanishers is four-time novelist and Believer founding editor Heidi Julavits's new work, and it has a really, really bright cover. It's a good book, for the most part, and an interesting book, and I promise I'll talk about it in an interesting way for the rest of this post, but first I have to talk about the cover. Remember folks, never judge a book by its cover! Except I feel like this one, with its masses of blinding and hyperdetailed flowers crowding the dust jacket and threatening to take over the text of the title itself, captures pretty well what's going on between those pieces of cardboard, which is: a LOT.

The freedom of being a librarian in the west during this time was unparalleled: women were trained to be respected and valued members of the community, trusted with the task of educating and exposing their neighbors to the literary lifestyle, and they had the option of seeking new work in a huge variety of locations. These "cultural crusaders" pioneered a profession that gave other women a chance to join in academic and educational pursuits as well as create a literary community wherever they went.

If you're interested in keeping a seven-day Sex Diary, visit the Sex Diaries Project here (be sure to click on the link from here so that Arianne knows who's coming from the Bitch site)! We'll also post an anonymous Sex Diary here on the Bitch blogs every Tuesday in March (Arianne won't run any diaries without explicit permission from the diarist and will change all identifying details), so even if you'd rather not keep a diary you can still participate.

We asked Arianne a few questions about the Sex Diaries Project for you to read before you get started. If you have more questions for her be sure to leave them in the comments!

In this blog series I want to look into “required reading,” how it’s taught, and what we (should/could) get out of it. Which classics take up the most space in the collective memory? Is there something worth remembering from the dudecentric classics of high school book lists? (I’m looking about you: To Kill a Mockingbird, Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, Great Expectations, Huck Finn, and Lord of the Flies) What about from Mrs. Dalloway, Beloved, and Pride and Prejudice? What makes literature unforgettable and important to fledgling feminists? And what new works should become required reading?

Many of us have, at some point, asserted that we “don’t feel like leaving the house.” It may take a few days, several long naps, and many hours of Criminal Minds reruns, but eventually most of us manage to get out the front door and back to our regularly-scheduled lives. Sara Benincasa, not so much. You may know Benincasa from the spot-on Sarah Palin impression  she perfected back in 2008, or perhaps from her take on a vlogging Peggy Olson.  Perhaps you’re heard the sex-and-relationship show she formerly hosted for Cosmo Radio on Sirius XMchannel, or tuned in to the more mental-health-focused “Sex and Other Human Activities,” podcast she currently hosts with fellow funny person Marcus Parks. Or maybe you’ve seen her sharing a bathtub with luminaries like Margaret Cho and Donald Glover on her web chat show, Gettin’ Wet with Sara Benincasa. 

But, as revealed in Benincasa’s new memoir, getting out in the world has been both more difficult and more mordantly funny than you might imagine. Based on her one-woman show of the same name, Agorafabulous! Dispatches from My Bedroom is the story of how one girl’s anxious, clenched-sphincter childhood blossomed into adolescent panic attacks and then, as a college student, into full-blown agoraphobia. Along the way, there’s public embarrassment (Benincasa’s panic attacks curtail a school trip to the beach, to the chagrin of a tanning-obsessed gaggle of New Jersey mean girls), family confusion (at the hight of a panic attack, she subjects her mother to four and a half hours of the same Dave Matthews Band song) and cereal bowls full of urine (at a particularly challenging juncture during college, she developed a fear of toilets.)

There’s also a revelation: This is not a recovery narrative, and Benincasa isn’t cured by a new medication, a folksy Robin Williams-esque medical figure, or the love of her life. She’s here, she’s got irrational fear, she’s used to it.

One of my 2012 resolutions is to get back in the books game. I'm resolving to read two new(ish) books a month, even if it means cutting down on the number of TV episode recaps I read online. What about you? Do you have any literary resolutions (or suggestions for contemporary books to add to my growing list)?