When you’ve finished your morning paper, pick up one of these books to join in on New York City’s largest unofficial reading group: The Subway Book Club. In honor of Women’s History Month, these books by and about women will educate and entertain you during your commute — and maybe help you strike up a conversation with a fellow straphanger reading the same title!
‘Difficult Women’
By Roxane Gay
The follow-up to scholar and identity politics writer Roxane Gay’s best-selling “Bad Feminist,” this collection of fictional short stories delves into the lives of women (and some men) from all walks of life, spanning a diverse range of identities and backgrounds — exactly the types of characters you’ll want to read and think about in this age of “Nasty Women.”
‘Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race’
By Margot Lee Shetterly
Title sound familiar? Before the Oscar-nominated film hit theaters, the true story of three black, female geniuses working at a segregated NASA in the mid-20th century hit bookshelves last September. If you wanted to fact-check the film (yes, there’s some added drama) or just want to delve deeper into this story, this more than 300-page book will give you your fill of previously underreported American history.
‘All Grown Up’
By Jami Attenberg
The author of the beloved family dramedy “The Middlesteins” returns with a novel following the now familiar yet still stigmatized single 40-year-old female New Yorker Andrea Bern. Single but nowhere close to alone, Andrea’s world starts to shift as challenging family dynamics — a newborn niece with a severe health condition — and the marriage of her best friend disrupt any semblance of stability she once had.
‘The Rules Do Not Apply’
By Ariel Levy
“Do you ever talk to yourself? I do it all the time,” writer Ariel Levy prefaces her new memoir. The introspective, hilarious and heartbreaking memoir does everything a personal story about grief, success and all the struggles in between should do. (Out March 14)
‘Ten Days in A Mad-House’
By Nellie Bly
In the age of fake news and so-called alternative facts, head back to 1887 when courageous reporter Nellie Bly faked insanity to get committed in an insane asylum on Roosevelt Island to report from within. Check out this piece and her other works in the collection “Around the World in Seventy-Two Days and Other Writings.”
