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Erica Jong's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Erica Jong recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Erica Jong's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

The Female Eunuch

The clarion call to change that galvanized a generation.When Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch was first published it created a shock wave of recognition in women, one that could be felt around the world. It went on to become an international bestseller, translated into more than twelve languages, and a landmark in the history of the women's movement. Positing that sexual liberation is the key to women's liberation, Greer looks at the inherent and unalterable biological differences between men and women as well as at the profound psychological differences that result from... more
Recommended by Erica Jong, and 1 others.

Erica JongWhen I read Germaine Greer back in 1971, I was just delighted, because here, suddenly, was somebody saying all the things we felt in our bones but didn’t dare say. (Source)

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2
Motherhood as Experience and Institution.

"In order for all women to have real choices all along the line," Adrienne Rich writes, "we need fully to understand the power and powerlessness embodied in motherhood in patriarchal culture." Rich's investigation, in this influential and landmark book, concerns both experience and institution. The experience is her own - as a woman, a poet, a feminist, and a mother - but it is an experience determined by the institution, imposed in its many variations on all women everywhere. She draws on personal materials, history, research, and...
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Recommended by Erica Jong, and 1 others.

Erica JongRich touches on so many of the issues that women go on debating today, and it seems sad to me that a lot of the young mommy bloggers don’t even know about her. (Source)

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3

The Golden Notebook

"The Golden Notebook is Doris Lessing's most important work and has left its mark upon the ideas and feelings of a whole generation of women."  — New York Times Book Review

Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine relives part of her own experience. And in a blue one she keeps a...
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Recommended by Barack Obama, Erica Jong, and 2 others.

Barack ObamaWhen asked what books he recommended to his 18-year-old daughter Malia, Obama gave the Times a list that included The Naked and the Dead and One Hundred Years of Solitude. “I think some of them were sort of the usual suspects […] I think she hadn’t read yet. Then there were some books that are not on everybody’s reading list these days, but I remembered as being interesting.” Here’s what he... (Source)

Erica JongThe thing that I thought so fabulous about Doris Lessing was that she created a heroine who was intellectual and sexual. (Source)

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4

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein when she was only eighteen. At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but; upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature's hideousness. Tormented by isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil... more

Michael ArringtonShelley wrote this book as a teenager, and most of us read it in high school. Often credited as the first science fiction novel. You can read just about any political viewpoint you want into the book, and there are strong undertones that technology isn’t all good. But what I get out of it is the creativeness that can come with solitude, and how new technology can be misunderstood, even perhaps by... (Source)

Adam RobertsBrian Aldiss has famously argued that science fiction starts with Mary Shelley’s novel, and many people have agreed with him. (Source)

Adam RobertsBrian Aldiss has famously argued that science fiction starts with Mary Shelley’s novel, and many people have agreed with him. (Source)

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5

The Second Sex

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, and brilliantly introduced by Judith Thurman, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpiece weaves together history, philosophy, economics, biology, and a host of other disciplines to analyze the Western notion of “woman” and to explore the power of sexuality.

Sixty years after its initial publication, The Second Sex is still as eye-opening and pertinent as ever. This triumphant and genuinely revolutionary book began as an exceptional woman’s attempt to find out who and what she was. Drawing on extensive interviews with women...
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Arianna HuffingtonGreat Thrive Questionnaire by @smlafleur, founder of M.M.LaFleur. On the book that changed her life, The Second Sex: "it changed my entire perception about what it means to be a woman, and it may be the unconscious reason behind why I started my company." https://t.co/tudVOb28J2 (Source)

Erica JongThe French literary world is incredibly sexist and here was one of their darlings pointing out how much they discriminate. (Source)

Belinda JackIn making a distinction between sex and gender she drew attention to how much of what women had to contend with was actually something that society imposes. (Source)

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