Jo is refreshed by Trouble in the Cotswalds by Rebecca Tope but Charlotte quickly ruins their peace by connecting the sex in Heather Lewis’s violent novel Notice with Miranda July’s NBA-shortlisted All Fours. The effervescent Emma Robinson joins to share her love for Dianne Brill’s Boobs, Boys, and High Heels, which inspires further reflection on 90s era beauty books and instruction manuals.

Other books mentioned in this episode: Steven Saylor’s Murder on the Appian Way, Rachel Cusk’s Aftermath, Gemma Hartley’s Fed Up, Shelia Heti’s Motherhood, Bobbi Brown’s Teenage Beauty, Amanda Brooks’ Internet Escort’s Handbook, and Sydney Barrow’s Mayflower Madam and Just Between Us Girls.

Charlotte’s review of All Fours and Gemma Hartley’s Fed Up, both in Bookforum. 

Inspired at once by radical philosophers and tulips, Emma Cager Robinson is looking for beauty. As a mechanism for change and source of inspiration, Emma uses beauty as the driving force behind her activism. With a focus on Consciousness Raising and creating “Insurgents,” Emma uses media of all forms to shift the way we interrogate culture and the systems we interact with on a daily basis. A Texan at heart, she’s especially impassioned about spreading this energy through the South; as a means of completing ancestral business, and working in a long line of women committed to making the world suck less for their families and communities.

Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. 

Charlotte’s most recent book is An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work. Learn more at charoshane.com

Jo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.

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