In The Comfort Of Your Own Home:

Out On The Town:

Even if you’re not in school anymore, summer still feels like the time when you can get away with reading complete trash. If you’re not up for diving into War and Peace or something “deep,” try one of our suggestions. Trust us, you won’t strain your brain doing so.

Do women really need special “women’s” products? Sure, women have different needs when it comes to things like vitamins, but I use men’s razors and wear a men’s watch, and things have worked out okay for me. Jessa Crispin writes on The Smart Set that the for-women book category has gotten out of control—from travel books just for girls (that are largely anecdotal and not really “guides”) to women’s erotica. Keep reading to see five of the most stupid upcoming books that are just for us, no boys allowed. [The Smart Set]

Erotic pictures from the 1800s were very different from the ones guys gaze at these days. The women didn’t have fake tans or have silicone boobs; there was not such thing as a women’s razor, and they definitely didn’t wax; and men were often photographed with their socks on (just like Eliot Spitzer!).

What really turns women on?  The Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative set out to create books of really sexy stuff by stripping away the usual conventions of the genre.  In their SFW books with a sense of humor, Porn for Women and Porn For New Moms, you won’t find the typical tan babes wearing nothing but a smile.  But what you will find inside maybe be something even more satisfying—hotties doing housework. 

A man’s hair says so much about him—especially if he’s bold enough to be bald.  But since every lady loves to run their hands through Greek god-like ringlets (right?), some men in New York set out to see if a perm would have the same power. The gentlemen were simply looking to spice up their look, but that’s quite a risky move considering the perm’s potential resemblance to the jheri-curl (see the video, after the jump).  Still, Todd Lamb, an author and humorist from Brooklyn, convinced 15 of his friends to do up their ‘do and he compiled the results in a book called Yo, Check The Perm! Will this guy trend catch on? Perhaps you hope it doesn’t, but after seeing the proof in these pages, the perm might be ready to rise again!

Getting dumped sucks, but there’s always a lesson to be learned from a failed relationship, right? Ben Karlin and the other men who contributed to Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me seem to think so. We had real-life couple (who have broken up and gotten back together) read and discuss the book of essays.

Yasmin: I don’t know what to make of this book. Some of the essays had me cracking up, and others left me thinking, “Where’s the punch line?”
Harley: I actually thought it was a great idea to take a bunch of writers and comedians and have them share their stories about getting screwed over by girls. I found myself thinking back on similar events. No matter who you are, you can relate, you know?

Speaking of plastic surgery and kids, a new picture book is coming out this Mother’s Day called “My Beautiful Mommy” which attempts to explain to kids why their mother is getting cosmetic surgery. Strangely, the book wasn’t written by a mom who has had plastic surgery, but by a a plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael Salzhauer. While you might assume that Dr. Salzhauer wrote the book out of genuine concern for the family dynamics of his patients, he actually uses it as a tool to convince mothers to get plastic surgery. The book’s message is that mommy is so much more beautiful after her tummy tuck and nose job —and that your little girl or boy will be totally thrilled with your results too! [Newsweek]

Polyester isn’t just a fashion faux pas, it also makes you un-effable, as researcher Mary Roach writes in her new history book Bonk: The Curious Couple of Science and Sex. She has compiled interesting studies from the 19th century up until today, including one from Egypt, which found lab rats in polyester pants had less sex than their cotton-covered counterparts. So while the ‘70s were swinging, she actually credits the ‘20s flappers for the American sexual revolution. “There were sex manuals at the time that were encouraging women to try being on top,” Roach reminds us. And my how we are now!  From Kinsey’s research to Castro’s butt hole, Ms. Roach’s book approaches accounts of sexual experiments with an irreverent, albeit scientific, flair. While she laments that much remains unknown about the physiological ins and outs of sex, Roach took the research into her own, er,  hands , nd this book is still sure to teach you a thing or two. [NPR and Amazon]

Melissa Plaut, author of Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About What To Do With My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab talks about passengers’ pick-up lines, fare beaters, and sex in the backseat.

How’d you start driving a cab, anyway?
I was about to turn 29 and had been laid off from my corporate office job, which was never fulfilling. I was collecting my unemployment benefits and thinking about what I was going to do for the rest of my life, and it was sending me into a panic. Finally I realized that I didn’t know whether I was ever going to be able to do any one thing with the rest of my life. Instead, I decided that I would live my life as a series of adventures, and my first would be getting behind the wheel of a yellow cab.

If you’ve been thinking lately that relationships are nothing but heartbreak, letdowns, and awkward moments, you have an assignment. Get a copy of Sex and Sensibility, and read one cartoon a day. If that doesn’t make you feel better about your love/sex/hookup life, you should probably be in therapy. The ten women whose cartoons make up the book include eight New Yorker contributors and two Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists. They find the funny in everything from cross-dressing and boob jobs to annoying habits and fights. Yes, even fighting can be funny. Sex and Sensibility: Ten Women Examine the Lunacy of Love…in 200 Cartoons is available now.

Huge thanks to the chicks over at Shine for telling us about the greatest website we never heard of, Bookmooch, which allows you to swap paperbacks with other users. Great for people who hate clutter or have a small living space, really want to read Eat, Pray, Love but don’t want to buy it, and care about the environment and don’t want to waste paper. [Bookmooch via Shine]

The New York Times’ Book Review section had an interesting, Modern Love-esque column this weekend about how hard it can be dating someone whose taste in books you hate. Like the writer, Rachel Donadio, when I was single, I seriously considered it a dealbreaker if a guy I was interested in had a thing for Ayn Rand—I think she’s a terrible writer and a total fascist. The guy could be the nicest person in the world, but loving Atlas Shrugged definitely told me he had a secret heartless side. Likewise, it can be a real turn-on to share a love for the same books with another person—I was once convinced that a guy and I were soul mates because we both loved J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. But judgment of ones’ literary taste can go both ways—I certainly would be pissed off if a dude wrote me off just because I like reading V.C. Andrews and Sweet Valley High “novels” while I get a tan on my roof deck. So how important is it to you that you share the same interest in books with the person you’re dating? [NY Times]

I basically lived for reading Sweet Valley High when I was in elementary school—as I previously wrote, SVH #3 Playing With Fire was the first time I read the word “breast” in print in a somewhat sexual way. I remember vividly thinking that SVH was the way high school would be like, in a wonderful dream world, and in order to be a part of that dream, I would need to be “a perfect size six” just like Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield. Make that a “perfect size four.” The books are getting a major makeover—when Random House re-releases the series, they are giving the books new covers (featuring soap star Levin Rambin as the twins) AND updating some of the content so they’re not so ‘80s. Oh and they’re trimming a size off Liz and Jess, because everyone knows that four is the new six and six is fat. That was sarcasm, by the way. [Feministing]

Because we’re such bookworms (occasionally with questionable taste, if I’m being honest), each month we’ll be giving out recommendations for what to read when you’re not watching America’s Next Top Model. Enjoy!

Harlequin, the world’s largest publisher of romance fiction, is keeping up with the times by offering all of its current titles as ebooks, holding readings in Second Life, and blogging about paranormal romance.  According to Brent Lewis, Harlequin’s director of Internet and digital, five of the top 10 bestselling books in Japan were written on a mobile phone (mostly written for consumption on mobile devices and later published due to their popularity). For its own ebooks, Harlequin breaks stories down to 500 words chunks that are delivered daily via text message. We’re kind of wondering what happens when those 500 words end in the middle of an especially steamy scene—do they get you all worked up and then leave you hanging for 24 hours until the next 500 words arrive? [Fast Company and Harlequin]

Have you ever written a love letter? Unless you count the occasionally cheesy emails we send a certain Frisky boyfriend from time to time (“If I come home and the dishes are done, you may just get a blow job!), we’ve only written one real love letter, but we never actually delivered it to its intended recipient. Lucky for us, it didn’t end up in a book! But a whole bunch of others did in the new book Other People’s Love Letters, which is filled with hundreds of real love letters sent over the decades compiled by editor Bill Shapiro. Some are scrawled on bar napkins or childlike doodles, while others are lengthy email odes. Our favorite is the third grade-inspired letter in which the recipient was given multiple choice answer possibilities. Adorable! [Other People’s Love Letters]