These are books I recommend to coaching clients, so as a service to all, we have compiled this list of books for you here.

This list is a starting point for a quirkyalone/together library. Let’s add to it and make it longer and longer!

Be sure to sign up for my mailing list to get word of publication of my new books–and when we make a big update on this list!

Add your suggestions in the comments.

Comfort and Inspiration

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Edmund White (he urban explorer, the connoisseur of the street)

The Contemporary Single Experience and Living Alone

It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single by the wonderful Sara Eckel

Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone
by Eric Klinenberg

Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After by Bella de Paulo

I Didn’t Work This Hard Just to Get Married: Successful Single Black Women Speak Out by Nika C. Beamon

Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics by Sasha Cagen

Quirkytogether/Dating/Relationships

Deeper Dating: How to Drop the Games of Seduction and Discover the Power of Intimacy

Schopenhauer’s Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy by Deborah Luepnitz

Can Love Last?: The Fate of Romance over Time (Norton Professional Books) by Stephen Mitchell

All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

What Makes Love Last?: How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal

Quirkysensual/Wet

Healing Sex: A Mind-Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma

Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence by Esther Perel (brilliant, and also a real argument for healthy amount of separation in relationships, aka quirkytogether, in order to keep erotic energy and connection alive)

What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety by Jaclyn Friedman (a helpful workbook written for young women that women of any age could benefit from in owning their sexual wants and needs and to work on communication)

What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire by Daniel Bergner

Eat Mangoes Naked: Finding Pleasure Everywhere (and dancing with the Pits) by SARK

Yet to come: My third book, Wet.

Vagina: A New Biography by Naomi Wolf (to go deeper into the biology of the vagina-brain connection at work in pussywalking!)

Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape

Friendship

Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival by Andrew Sullivan (beautiful essay on friendship drawing on the Greeks’ notions of love)

The Object of My Affection (A moving novel remarkable for the attention it plays to friendship, later made into a sweet movie starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd)

Loneliness vs. Solitude

Solitude: A Return to the Self by Anthony Storr

Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton

Self-Compassion, Self-Acceptance and Shame Resilience

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Make Miracles in Forty Days: Turning What You Have into What You Want

Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart

The Highly Sensitive Person