Isham Cook
Witty, brutal, sideways attack on extreme sexual correctness, pitting a female student against her male professor.
I finally got around to this classic and was impressed by its stately and occasionally masterful style, though the subject matter was predictably steeped in tragic cliches and what we would now regard as stereotypes.
An important tome on the biggest and most physically destructive drug ever pushed on society, disguised by ideology as a necessary staple: sugar.
This book was hyped back in the early 2000s during the breakout period of Chinese female writers in English translation (Wei Hui, Mian Mian) with translator Howard Goldblatt's cachet, a mistake that blots his record, as the arid narrative meanders without purpose.
Witty masterpiece of contemporary drama, exploiting the powers of short statements in the Beckettian tradition.
Compelling manifesto on the health dangers of extreme forms of protein-deprived vegetarianism by a former vegan; sure to be dismissed by vegans.
A graphic memoir of the author's encounters and relationships with prostitutes, sympathetically and non-judgmentally written.
The first bestselling text to come out on polyamory, even before people had heard the term “polyamory” (which is why it's not in the title!), written in a breezy feelgood manner aimed at sex-positive feminists and anyone else curious about the possibilities of getting sexual with more than one person at a time.
Already a modern classic of psychedelic drug writing, distinguished by the author's dogged efforts to try every notable psychedelic drug he could get his hands on, even if it meant traveling to remote corners of the world.
Classic text on a subject most people aren't familiar with; in short, it's about understanding the hidden meaning or subtext of things in their social contexts.
It's the breakout lesbian scene that stands out, which distinguishes this from numerous other Cultural Revolution-era trauma memoirs that have come out in English.
A book primarily for teachers of Old English, but useful for anyone interested in diving into the distant world of Anglo Saxon, with numerous Old English text samples and excerpts and clear grammatical explanations.
I used this clear and informative text when teaching semiotics to grad students; one of the more approachable introductions to a difficult subject.
This fascinating little book should be required reading for all actors who perform Shakespeare professionally. Shakespeare's English would not have sounded as we normally encounter it on stage or in film - in Queen's English - because Queen's English as we know it hadn't yet evolved when he was living; his English would have sounded closer to modern-day Scots or even North American English than modern British English. The world's foremost authority on the English of Shakespeare's day explains how to pronounce Shakespeare properly.
New Age classic on sexuality informed by Eastern practices and illustrated with beautiful drawings of the natural and erotic body; perhaps the best book of its type.
One of the early feminist attacks on sexual correctness; the other that comes to mind is Rene Denfeld's The New Victorians (1996).
Tangled analysis on a timely topic; remembered almost nothing after finishing the book.
Merged review:
Tangled analysis on a timely topic; remembered almost nothing after finishing the book.
One of the last texts to come out advocating for the possibilities of eroto-romantic teacher-student relationships (in a long line of such texts going back to the 12th-century Letters of Abelard and Heloise) before it became taboo.
A book primarily for teachers of Old English, but useful for anyone interested in diving into the distant world of Anglo Saxon, with numerous Old English text samples and excerpts and clear grammatical explanations.
I find Harris' books generally compelling, but this got tangled up for me in redundancies and logical excesses, slim though the volume is.
This was one of the first metaphorical bombs in the form of a book that blew up in my face (in my junior year of college); the other was the Marquis de Sade's Justine.