"For many years I had a problem with Emma, as compared to, say, Pride and Prejudice. I loved ‘P and P’, and I loved its practically perfect heroine, Elizabeth Bennet. Emma, on the other hand, has a much more problematic heroine: Emma Woodhouse is bossy, controlling, obstinate, pigheaded and manipulative. In short, she is horribly like me at my worst. Getting older has mellowed me in many ways, and now that I like to delude myself that I’m not as much like Emma Woodhouse as I used to be, I’ve grown to love the book. Still, Pride and Prejudice is probably my favorite book ever, ever, ever."

"For many years I had a problem with Emma, as compared to, say, Pride and Prejudice. I loved ‘P and P’, and I loved its practically perfect heroine, Elizabeth Bennet. Emma, on the other hand, has a much more problematic heroine: Emma Woodhouse is bossy, controlling, obstinate, pigheaded and manipulative. In short, she is horribly like me at my worst. Getting older has mellowed me in many ways, and now that I like to delude myself that I’m not as much like Emma Woodhouse as I used to be, I’ve grown to love the book. Still, Pride and Prejudice is probably my favorite book ever, ever, ever."

"Camille Paglia is one of the most controversial feminists of all time, and also one of the most compelling. This mammoth book, put very shortly, examines the representation of sexuality in Western art. But it also goes into fierce discussion about religion, literature, art history, psychology, the brutal forces of sex and nature, and the amorality and pornography present in great art. As someone who personally writes a lot about sex work, one of my favorite lines in the book is, “The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture.”"

"This novella is explicitly a book about ridicule and caricature—Professor Pnin is a joke of a man on a college campus. He’s an awkward Russian émigré with bad English, false teeth, a clumsy sense of humor, a tendency to burst into tears or take offense at small slights. Everybody on campus can do an impression of him. He’s a clown. But at the core of the book is the idea that there is a Pnin who is as real as the people who ridicule him. You are invited to laugh at him, and then you are humbled and shamed by your own laughter. It’s a gorgeous, hilarious, humane book that uncovers the reality of a man’s life in sly, piecemeal fashion. I think it’s my favorite novel."