Last week I taught an online writing class for the very first time! It was on Writing Intimacy and the Body, and it was for the Practice, a monthly members-only writing community run by Retreats.

I used to tell myself that I couldn’t teach. That it would be impossible to codify the chaos in my brain into a comprehensible form that I could then impart to others, for them to find useful.

How could I ever explain the decisions I made on the page when many times they just flowed out of me without much thought? How could I make others understand my choices when often I couldn’t even explain them to myself?

Now I know it’s not true. It simply means that I write by instinct. One of the most often-repeated instructions my mentor gave me as I was writing my first, ASK ME: A MEMOIR OF , was: ‘Your instincts are good. Listen to them.’

Teaching enabled me to go back to my own work as if it was written by another author and understand why I’d made those decisions, so I could share my thought process with others.

Though I’ve given workshops on copywriting and social storytelling for clients like KLM and Amsterdam Partners, the cultural marketing arm of the city of Amsterdam, this was my first time to teach online, and the first time since shifting careers from copywriter to author.

The knowledge feels new and tender in my hands, but putting it all together made me realize how far I’ve come as a writer since I first decided to write a book in December 2020. Yay, me.

To teach a class on intimacy and the body, I drew from some, by no means all, of my favourite books with (what is to me) the most memorable writing on intimacy, the body and pleasure. There is no objective best: there’s only what’s on my bookshelf and what triggers a strong physical response in my body when I read it.

Gooseflesh, wetness, deep sighs, daydreams, filthy thoughts (yes, your brain is part of your body)—that’s how you know that a writer has successfully translated a reality that they felt with their body, which became knowledge stored in their body, into an experience that comes alive in your body.

Intimacy isn’t only about sexual pleasure. For me, intimacy is proximity, a deep knowing, and heightened awareness of our body, and sometimes the body of another (or others). This also happens in pregnancy, birth, illness, pain, and aging.

Now you have my (by-no-means-comprehensive) list—take it, ravage it for summer reading, add to it, savour it. And tell me: have you read anything lately that’s made you more intimately aware of, or closer to, your own body?

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Pleasures, fantasies, and obsessions

Here’s what’s been occupying my brain space as of late. Will any of these trickle it into the new work I’ve been incubating? We shall see.

What I’m reading: You Could Make This Place Beautiful by poet , an achingly beautiful memoir-in-vignettes on divorce, betrayal, grief, love and loss. This is the second time I’m reading it; not gonna lie, the first time I read it I just didn’t get it. I thought: What on earth is this lady doing?

Then I met Maggie at a writing retreat in Greece last year. Suddenly I GOT HER. Then my identity fragmented after two years of survival mode following cancer, the biggest success of my life, and the end of a longtime love. Suddenly I GOT IT. Now I can’t love, highlight, and recommend this book enough.

Maggie annotates her brilliant poetry right here on Substack. I have ONE one-month gift subscription to give away—send me an email if you’d like one.

What I’m playing on repeat: The soulful music of Nigerian-American singer-songwriter Annahstasia, and excited to see her live next week at the Paradiso. Her voice makes every nerve in my body unwind, and her lyrics speak to me.

From Villain (ever wondered if you’re the villain in someone else’s story?) to Slow (‘Where do we go from here/ It’s not my job to know/ I heard it on the wind/ To go slow’) to Power (‘Will I ever bounce back? Will I ever bounce back?’), music for the era I’m in and the journey I’m on.

Earphones in, volume up loud, deep breath in, and feel it all.

What I’m watching: I don’t watch TV, but I have been obsessed with Madonna’s video for Frozen (1998). If you know anything at all about attachment styles, watch this and tell me that this is not in fact a love song of an anxious to her avoidant.

Also, I’m experiencing a resurgence of my teenage fascination with Tarot and its archetypes. Madonna is pure High Priestess here, casting a spell with her familiars, the raven and the hound, fragmenting into a trinity (The Furies? Maid, Mother, Crone) after a transformative total eclipse. Late-90s witchy perfection.

What I’m fantasising about: I know summer isn’t even here, but I’m already fast-forwarding to a dreamy autumn in Marrakech. Misty morning walks in the Palmeraie. Arms bare to the November sun by midday. Reading and telling stories by firelight. And writing, writing, writing all day. Inshallah.

Will you share a recent pleasure, fantasy or obsession with me? I’m always happy to hear from you. For now, let me leave you with my utter pleasure and obsession of the season.

Here in Amsterdam, peonies abound at the markets and the scent of wisteria hangs in the breeze. Possibility calls, and this time I just might answer. See you next time.

The first is that like many writers, I am a hoarder of notebooks.

My hoard goes back decades. I keep my hoard in a white cardboard file box that sits at the bottom of my bookshelf at home. The box contains, among many others, hand-bound notebooks made of handmade paper that I bought on my honeymoon in Rajasthan almost 19 years ago. Notebooks from museum gift shops from Berlin to Doha. Composition notebooks from a bookshop in Crete (whose covers simply say ‘Notebook’ in Greek). Italian notebooks with fancy marbled endpapers from Venice, tied shut with satin ribbon.

I start a new notebook for every new book idea. I keep a notebook filled with unintelligible scrawls by my headboard, because sometimes my brain will wake me up at 3 a.m. and won’t let me go back to sleep unless I write down what it has to say.

I write three pages by hand in a notebook daily, and have eight years’ worth of notebooks filled with morning pages. It’s a great excuse to keep buying new notebooks, in spite of the moratorium I periodically declare on buying them.

Last week I was digging in my stash for the perfect notebook to start a dream journal, when I unearthed a notebook I’d started in 2018 and abandoned.

In it, I found a list.

The second thing you should know about me is that I’m a keeper of lists.

In Abandon Me: Memoirs, writes: “The urge to list is an urge to locate and to contain. A list is an attempt to organize the chaos both inside and outside of us into something manageable, finite.”

Perhaps I’ve always wanted to categorize and contain myself. I’ve kept lists for as long as I can remember.

As a child I wrote lists of names I wanted to change my name to, and classmates I wanted to invite to my birthday. As a teen, I kept lists of teachers’ grammatical errors (to keep from zoning out in class), songs I taped off the radio, and names of celebrity crushes, a perpetually changing roster.

I keep a list of every book I’ve read for the last eight years. I keep a list of people that I’ve slept with. Don’t even think of asking me how many names are on it; a Dutch journalist tried that on me and it wasn’t pretty.

Perhaps a list is also a way of codifying the unseen—hopes, wishes, dreams, desires—as the first step in bringing it into being. My daily to-do list sets out my aims for the day; my debut memoir began as a list of questions people asked me about my open marriage. And who can forget Arya Stark’s kill list from Game of Thrones?

At the age of 16, I wrote down everything I wanted to do in my senior year of high school and promptly forgot about it. A year later, I found that list and realized I had accomplished everything on it.

This is a (re)discovery in the same vein.

In 2018, I was freelancing as a copywriter while trying to write essays and get them published, to no avail. I shared a office space with a Swedish brand strategist named Matilda, who was preparing to pivot to consulting. Matilda wanted to pilot-test a workshop designed for creatives to define their purpose. Feeling a bit directionless, I volunteered to do it.

This list is from that process, and from that time. It’s simply called: things I want to inspire people to do.

I had no idea how I was going to do any of this. No proof that I would ever be able to. No business plan, no strategy.

I simply wanted to.

And I think there’s something powerful in that: simply allowing ourselves to want. Without judging ourselves for our qualifications for wanting what we want, or for our plan for getting it done.

Because eight years later, I re-read this list and immediately recognized: I did it.

Not everything, but most. The ones I haven’t, I can still do. Or I can simply say: I’ve done enough. And start a new list, with new dreams.

When I imagine the confluence of all the factors that came together after I made this list, and how much of them were beyond my control, it blows my mind. The people that came into my life (and left it). The decisions made (or not made). The events that happened, and their timing. Pretty staggering. Even miraculous.

Share Letters by Deepa

Finding this list has been the biggest boost of wonder I’ve gotten recently, and one that I needed.

Maybe life can really be this simple. Maybe sometimes we can take off the pedal from all the thinking and strategizing and orchestrating, to simply allow what we want to bloom in us for one uninhibited moment of possibility.

Maybe that one unimpeded moment of belief is enough to get things going, like the first deep breath in the morning or the first glass of water after waking—until it isn’t. Then we can make the choice to allow ourselves more.

The pure delight of wanting. Desire, hope, belief without proof. Some might call it foolishness. Some might call it faith. What have you allowed yourself to want without proof lately?

Here in Amsterdam, the first tulips are holding their tender buds aloft into the sunshine, hoping, waking. I wish you a beautiful Easter weekend.

My book, ASK ME: A MEMOIR OF DARING TO LOVE DIFFERENTLY, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-fiction, is out in paperback. If you haven’t yet, order it, share it, and show it some love. Thanks, as always, for being here.

Anger is not an easy emotion for me to deal with. I’d prefer not to feel it. I’ve spent my life perfecting ways not to. Ways to make my anger acceptable in the face of the unacceptable. And I’ve been rewarded for them. Most women are.

Most mornings I write by hand—two, three pages, sometimes more. At the white hot peak of my anger I wrote this down in my notebook. I wrote it to give myself a safe way to be angry without eating myself alive or laying waste to my life.

Maybe it’s a how-to. Maybe it’s a ritual. Maybe it’s a permission slip.

Permission to be angry. Permission to not be so happy and composed and have it all together all the fucking time.

The world is far from perfect. Why should I be?

I don’t know if you need this. I don’t know if you’re angry. Actually, I would be surprised if you aren’t. Have you seen the world lately? Maybe I’m the one who’s late to the party. Maybe you’ve been angry for a long time, and I’ve finally caught up. I’m always late to everything. I’m Filipino, we’re always on island time.

But I wrote this. By hand. Maybe you could use it. I sure did. Tell me if you do, too.

I’ve always loved writing by hand, and I always will.

Lately I realized how much of my writing is done by hand, but is kept private. It made me wonder: is what’s messy less worthy of sharing? Is my writing less valid, less polished, less palatable if it is produced by hand versus processed by a machine?

If you have thoughts on handwriting, are a fan of the handwritten, need a lot of hand-holding to get angry, or are really just fucking angry, tell me. Subscribe, hit the reply button, write me an email, leave a comment, send me your meticulously curated playlists of rage. You know I love hearing from you.

It’s time for my annual geeky book roundup!

The last three years have been a huge shift for me as a reader.

I now read with specific objectives to further my own writing, which sounds like it would suck the joy out of reading, but it’s added so much more passion and urgency instead. I keep adding new books to a huge TBR pile and often feel like I can’t read fast enough.

I used to go for months without reading; now, I pick up a new book as soon I’ve put down the last. I still find so much pleasure in reading “for work”—maybe even more, because now joy comes hand in hand with inspiration.

In 2021 my goal was to read as much sex writing as I could to help me figure out how to write my own sex scenes. In 2022 I attempted to diversify my reading beyond books by written by white, American female authors.

In 2023, I set out to find “comps” or comparative titles, publishing speak for books I could use to describe my own book to agents and editors, e.g. “The English Patient meets Jurassic Park”, or “Normal People, but set in Amsterdam with Asians” (which sound awful and do NOT describe my book, okay?).

It was frustrating to discover that so many popular, traditionally published books with similar themes and topics to my own (female-led memoirs about open relationships or marriage in general) throwing me firmly back into the land I’d been trying to escape. Yep: back into white, American female author territory.

Landing a book deal with a UK publisher in September made me realize that my reading choices are sooooo heavily American-influenced. I don’t really know any UK-based authors apart from Neil Gaiman, Kazuo Ishiguro or Philip Pullman, and more recently, Sally Rooney and Katherine May. For shame, there were exactly zero UK authors on my 2022 list!

Who are your favorite UK authors? Let me know who I should be reading!

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Determined to remedy that in the second half of 2023, I dug into my massive book haul from my publishers’ meetings in London, where books upon books were piled into my arms as I left the conference room still aglow from lavish editorial lovebombing. “Would you like to take some books with you?” felt like the ultimate char feeling like I’d died and gone to heaven.

I’ve loved all the books I’ve been given. And I now have a much deeper appreciation of the arduous journey a book must make from author’s mind to reader’s heart, and of all the people involved in that process.

So, here’s my list.

Memoir

• In the Warm Shadow of Islam (Isabelle Eberhardt) - a Patti Smith recommendation, written in the 1930s by a woman masquerading as a man to travel through North Africa in 1904

• Body Work (Melissa Febos) - both a memoir and writing guide to writing memoir, which I found really useful for my own work

• How We Love: Notes on a Life (Clementine Ford) - warm, insightful, lighthearted essay collection from the Australian author of the feminist manifesto Fight Like a Girl

• Many Love (Sophie Lucido Johnson) - an illustrated memoir of polyamory, with warm, humorous drawings by a brilliant New Yorker illustrator

• Open (Rachel Krantz) - a reported memoir about an open relationship, written by one of the founding editors of Bustle

• Acts of Infidelity (Lena Andersson) - I seem to be reading one very depressing book about infidelity with a love-to-hate-her protagonist per year. Last year’s adulteress was the sex-addicted Parisian Adele by Leila Slimani; this year it’s a lovesick playwright living in Stockholm, who is beyond delulu but imaginably Scandi chic

• Worlds of Wonder: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments (Aimee Nezhukumatathil) - a beautifully illustrated essay collection that combines nature and science writing with memoir. And the author is Filipina-Indian like me!

• You Could Make This Place Beautiful (Maggie Smith) - I (tiny voice) really didn’t like this. Sorry.

• The Cost of Living (Deborah Levy) - if you want to read a divorce memoir, this is it. Sorry, not sorry.

These authors are also on Substack:

Sophie Lucido Johnson on Substack

Clementine Ford on Substack

My favorite memoir of 2023: Monsoon Mansion by Cinelle Barnes vividly renders the absurdity, joy and heartbreak of growing up in Manila, wrapped up in an incredible riches-to-rags, coming-of-age story.

Sometimes when I tell people what it’s like to have grown up in Manila, I am met with sheer disbelief. Like, are you making this shit up? Can that really happen? Onli in da Pilipins, as we say. Cinelle, who is also a wonderful human being as she is a writer, captures that perfectly.

Nonfiction

• Black Hole Survival Guide (Janna Levin) - Astrophysics, but make it literary, in a tiny-but-mighty-volume. Patti Smith had this in her coat pocket during a live performance and I can’t resist anything that woman does.

• Conversations on Love (Natasha Lunn) - very enjoyable collection of interviews with writers and thinkers on different aspects of love

• Sex and Lies (Leila Slimani) - like The Sex Lives of African Women, but featuring the stories of Moroccan women

• Love Isn’t Color Blind (Kevin A. Patterson) - on race and representation in polyamorous spaces (and alternative lifestyle communities in general). This really informed how I think about how public I would like to be leading up to the publication of my book.

• Before & After the Book Deal (Courtney Maum) - I highly, highly recommend this to anyone trying to get traditionally published.

• Enchantment (Katherine May) - a follow-up to Wintering, which I loved, about rediscovering the magic and wonder of everyday life

• Mother (Land): What I’ve Learnt About Race, Motherhood and Identity (Priya Joi) - the author’s background as a science journalist informs this memoir-in-essays, making it unique and insightful

• Dear Dolly: On Love, Life & Friendship (Dolly Alderton) - a compilation of advice from the bestselling author’s weekly column as an Agony Aunt. I found Dolly incredibly likeable, no wonder she was a huge hit in the UK with her memoir Everything I Know About Love.

Subscribe to these authors on Substack:

Courtney Maum on Substack

Katherine May on Substack

Priya Joi on Substack

My favorite nonfiction of 2023: a tie between Unbound: A Woman’s Guide to Power (Kasia Urbaniak, who funded her studies to become a Taoist nun by working as a professional dominatrix), and The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.

Aargh but This is Your Mind on Plants (Michael Pollan), on opium, caffeine and mescaline was soooo good! Especially after going on a plant medicine retreat.

Fiction

I don’t read much fiction. But wow, what I read this year really blew me away! Rich, immersive and transporting, these novels filled me with awe for writers who can plot conjure up such rich characters and worlds from nothing.

• Neruda on the Park (Cleyvis Natera) - I met the author very briefly in Marrakech early this year and was immediately intrigued by her work. I loved the speculative

• The Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller) - epically gorgeous love story that had me swooning and sobbing. As you probably know, a massive BookTok hit.

• My Name is Leon (Kit de Waal) - I LOVED this novel written from the perspective of 9 year-old Leon, a Black boy growing up in London who is taken into foster care. That’s two books this year that made me cry!

• Queenie (Candice Carty-Williams) - oh, what a heroine. Twenty-six year old Queenie from Brixton is EVERYTHING. All her misadventures and sexcapades had me both LOLing and in tears. I’m going to be starstruck when I finally meet Candice in person (we have the same agent!)

My favorite novel of 2023: a toss-up between The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Shehan Karunatilaka), set in Sri Lanka, where the narrator is a gay ghost, and The Island of Missing Trees (Elif Shafak), set in Cyprus where one narrator is a fig tree!

Poetry

• Divisible By Itself And One (Kae Tempest)

  Share Letters by Deepa

This January I’ve already finished the lyrical, luminous Small Worlds by my (ehem) fellow Viking Books UK author, Caleb Azumah Nelson. This rhapsodic novel of Black joy, music, discovery and heartbreak comes with an equally gorgeous playlist that I’ve had on repeat for days.

Signing with a Dutch publisher made me set a new goal for 2024: to read five books in Dutch! Alongside all the books I’m going to read in English, of course. Recommendations are welcome—but keep them short and easy please, my reading level in Dutch is at about Jip and Janneke.

Now, you. What was your favorite book of 2023? What is your first book of 2024?

Here in Amsterdam, the days are sharp and bitterly cold, but clear and brilliantly sunny. I prefer the deep freeze to the gloom and incessant rain of December. I hope the bright blue skies are a sign of a good year yet to unfold, and that it’s started out well for you.

Best of all, I’ve defrosted from a creative freeze and am writing again. So see you soon.

I read 30 books in 2022, five more than the year before. I achieved this by completely losing my taste for TV, which means I still haven’t watched White Lotus, or the bad Marilyn biopic, or any of the hyped-up series everyone’s been talking about. I might never get around to them; there are too many books I still want to read.

Memoir is still my genre of choice, and will probably always be my first love. I kicked off the year with the incandescent, tender Just Kids by Patti Smith, which made me a lifelong fangirl and sealed 2022 as the year of Patti. Free Money from her seminal Horses album became one of my most-played songs of the year. I got to see her perform live at the Paradiso, Amsterdam’s most iconic live music venue, and it was the most emotional and spiritual rock gig of my life.

Patti was my most-read writer this year with four books on my list, and hers is my most beloved Substack. Sheepish confession: I didn’t know she was a rockstar before she was a writer.

On this list you’ll find a couple of books that I disliked except for their sex scenes. In 2021, I was determined to read as many books on sex as I could, to learn how to write sex scenes for my own book and figure out my own language for writing about sex. In 2022, I got all sexed out. No more sex! I mean, only on the page.

Halfway through the year, it occurred to me that the majority of books being hyped by the literary types I followed on Twitter, presented to me by various algorithms, or that reached me via word of mouth, were all by white female American authors. Why is that? Just because I’m a woman who consumes English content?

So I decided: enough of that. My attempt to diversify my reading led me to some real gems, so I’ll be keeping it up in 2023.

Here’s my list.

Memoir

• Just Kids (Patti Smith) - a buoyant, moving account of Patti’s early artistic life in late 60s New York, as well as her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Winner of the National Book Award.

• M Train (Patti Smith) - after the heft and responsibility of Just Kids, Patti wanted to write something light and fun. Meandering, irreverent, and interwoven with dreams and symbols, this is the story of Patti’s ramshackle beach hut in Queens and its transformation into a writer’s sanctuary.

• Wounds of Passion (bell hooks) - a personal account of the acclaimed Black writer-activist’s early life, career and toxic, abusive relationship with another Black writer. The crystalline precision of her language captivated me.

• Whip Smart (Melissa Febos) - a vivid, smartly written memoir of a professional dominatrix. I liked it so much that I’m now reading Body Work, a memoir-slash-manifesto on why women must write our personal stories, by the same author.

• Anything but a Wasted Life (Sita Kaylin) - a memoir written by a professional stripper. I’m ashamed to admit I got sucked into buying this by a racy Instagram account with lots of boobs on it. I thought it would be like Whip Smart, but no. It wanted to be daring and titillating, but ended up being dull and repetitive. Salaciousness is no replacement for a compelling narrative; I just couldn’t get invested. Account unfollowed, book unfinished.

• On Writing (Stephen King) - a memoir-slash-writing masterclass by the King of Horror. Entertaining and inspiring, especially for writers who are more commercial than literary in their orientation.

• Fierce Attachments (Vivian Hornick) - an intimate, honest glimpse into a complicated mother-daughter relationship, both of them strong, opinionated Jewish New Yorkers.

• Slow Days, Fast Company (Eve Babitz) - colorful and carefree episodes from a glitzy Hollywood life full of rich bores, drugged-out desert nights, and Southern California realness from Joan Didion’s saucier socialite contemporary. For me, Eve over Joan any day.

• The Body Papers (Grace Talusan) - a poignant memoir of immigrant family secrets by a Filipina-American writer.

• Goodbye to Berlin (Christopher Isherwood) - a collection of six novellas set in Berlin in the Roaring Twenties, said to have inspired the musical Cabaret. Love the period, didn’t love the book.

• A Book of Days (Patti Smith) - 365 days of photographs by Patti, inspired by her daily posts on Instagram. I love everything she does, so this catalogue of her life, inspirations and references was a real treat.

Best memoir of 2022: need you ask? Just Kids.

A close second: Wounds of Passion.

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Nonfiction

• Upstream (Mary Oliver) - contemplative essays on nature by a favorite poet.

• Daring Greatly (Brene Brown) - research on vulnerability as an aid to living life with greater courage. I don’t belong to the cult of Brene Brown, Glennon Doyle, Elizabeth Gilbert and the like, but I appreciated the insights in this book.

• The Sex Lives of African Women (Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah) - a collection of interviews of African women describing their sex lives in honest, straightforward detail. Thoughtful, diverse, eye-opening, insightful, and SO. MUCH. FUN. When is someone going to write this book for Asian women?!?!

• An Inventory of Losses (Judith Schalansky) - a meticulously researched inventory of 12 things lost to mankind, from a submerged island to Bette Davis’ smile, each written according to the rules of a different genre. Inventive, beautifully written, but challenging to read at times.

• The Body Keeps the Score (Dr Bessel van der Kolk) - this book on the relationship between body, mind, brain, trauma and healing was my lifeline throughout the six weeks that I underwent EMDR therapy to resolve trauma responses surfaced by my writing and relationships. By transforming my understanding of how the brain works, this bestseller gave me greater compassion for why I’m wired the way I am, and how people become the way they are. Highly recommended.

• Holding Change (adrienne maree brown) - a handbook on facilitating group dynamics for social justice, but was also helpful during a period in which I was navigating change in an intimate relationship. I’m a big fan of a.m.b.’s work; if you haven’t read Pleasure Activism, start there.

• Sexologies (Gabriela Wiener) - sharp, smart essays on sex, ranging from the raw and revealing to the witty and investigative, by a brilliant Peruvian journalist. Her essay Three on nonmonogamy really spoke to me.

• Women and Power (Mary Beard) - a compilation of lectures on ancient and modern attitudes toward female speech. Heavy on British politics so mostly unrelatable for me, but a quick pocket read with some insightful points.

Best nonfiction of 2022: The Body Keeps the Score

A close second: The Sex Lives of African Women

Fiction

• Smaller and Smaller Circles (F.H. Batacan) - the first true Filipino crime detective novel, about a serial killer on the loose in Smokey Mountain, the world’s largest open garbage dump. Two Jesuit priests investigate the child murders, playing detective in a system rife with corruption. A fast-paced, brilliant study of crime in the corrupt and often absurd Philippine context.

• Luster (Raven Leilani) - a career-launching, critically acclaimed, multi-awarded, heavily hyped debut novel that I really wanted to like…. but didn’t, in a way that made me feel bad because maybe am I just too dumb for literary fiction? I found the premise laughable and flimsy: twentysomething literary type starts dating a man in an open marriage, whose wife then moves her into their home to take care of their adopted daughter. Like, what?! If Marlon brought home a casual hookup to start co-parenting our child after two dates, best believe it would be the END of us. I found the writing relentlessly intelligent, like it had something to prove, but tiring and overwrought at times. Some excellently crafted sex scenes though.

• The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt) - an intimidating volume but once you get into it, unputdownable. The story of a priceless painting that disappears from a museum and ends up in the possession of an orphaned boy, and how it changes his life, is vivid, entertaining and highly enjoyable.

• Circe (Madeleine Miller) - the myth of Circe, the witch who captivates a shipwrecked Odysseus on a deserted, magical island, retold from her point of view. I loved everything about this book, from marvellously compelling characters to lush, voluptuous writing. Highly recommended, a joy to read.

• My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante) - late to the party, I know. I enjoyed the writing and characters in this richly described novel of girlhood in a poor, post-war neighborhood in Naples, but am somehow not driven to pick up the next novel in the series any time soon.

• The Sword and the Scimitar (David Ball) - THE novel to read if you’re traveling to Malta. Two siblings’ destinies are forced apart by medieval Christian-Islamic conflict, unfold in rich detail in 7th-century Valletta and Sultan Mehmet’s court in Constantinople, then converge at the Ottoman Empire’s historic siege of Malta. Cheesy at times, but entertaining, and I loved being able to picture all the settings in the book so clearly after visiting Malta.

• Adele (Leila Slimane) - the story of a Parisian wife and mother whose secret life as a sex addict is exposed by unexpected events, written by a critically acclaimed French-Moroccan author. Maybe I just read it at the wrong time, but I found it utterly depressing. Again, some excellently written sex scenes, which I admired for their raw, almost brutal honesty.

• Moth (Melody Razak) - set in Delhi leading up to India’s Independence and the Partition of 1947, this stunning debut novel follows a family torn apart by one of the biggest forced migrations in history: the creation of the Hindu state of India and Muslim state of Pakistan, resulting in the displacement of 10 million Indians.

I have a personal interest in this last novel—my grandparents lost everything when they were expelled from (Muslim) East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, and forced to migrate to (Hindu) West Bengal on foot. I was shocked to realize they did this when my grandmother must have been heavily pregnant with my father, who was born only two months shy of Independence.

The scope of the violence and anguish that occurred on the back of Independence is staggering. I am ashamed to admit I don’t know much about the Partition; my grandmother never wanted to talk about it. I had a good cathartic cry after this novel, and now want to dive into that dark rabbit hole of Indian—and family—history. This book was a fantastic end to 2022.

Best fiction of 2022: Circe

A close second: Moth

Poetry

• The New Jerusalem (Patti Smith) - dreamy meanderings and musings by my favorite, in Dutch and English. Got this signed at her Paradiso gig.

• Your Wound, My Garden (Alok Menon) - also got this at a live spoken word gig, by the Malaysian-Indian-American writer and performance artist known for their flamboyant, colorful, gender non-conforming style and queer activism.

• Earth-Based Poems (Larry Robertson) - a self-published collection of earthy, rhythmic, flowing poetry by an American poet, designer, and multi-talented creative I had the pleasure of meeting at a Berlin cafe years ago.

I hope this inspires you to stock your shelves with a few new picks. I’ve already devoured my first book of 2023: In the Warm Shadow of Islam, a sublime North African travelogue by Isabelle Eberhardt, who disguised herself as a man to study Sufism and travel through Tunisia and Morocco in the early 1900s. My kind of escape, and my kind of lady. Thanks, Patti, for suggesting her to me.

Which books did you read (and love) in 2022?

What’s on your TBR list for 2023?

Here in Amsterdam, today’s morning light—gentle, glowing, rosy—feels like a balm after too many days of pouring rain and lashing wind. It also feels like the promise of spring… or is that still too far away? I shall cherish it anyway; I was always good at long-distance relationships.

In the last issue of Letters by Deepa, I turned to my little community of subscribers, Instagram followers, and readers who like to creep, but won’t subscribe ;) to help me compile a reading list by answering the question: “What is the sexiest book you’ve ever read?”

My interest is in learning about how different writers approach sex, so that I can figure out my own personal language for writing about sex in my own memoir. *gulp* Which, in case you don’t already know, is about being in an open marriage.

What I was looking for

The good stuff. Memorable, sophisticated writing about sex, whether a scene, an entire book, or a whole series. In the case of nonfiction: honest, real, and powerful.

The book doesn’t have to be entirely about sex. If it’s a great book overall, but only really has one good sex scene, I’ll still want to read it.

No bodice-rippers, drugstore paperbacks, or adolescent smut. You won’t find Jackie Collins or Danielle Steele here. No self-help or how-to books—having said that, I’m currently working with The Yoni Empire on an awesome how-to on anal sex for women. Subscribe to Elena’s newsletter to stay updated!

What I learned (anecdotal, unscientific, and statistically unsound observations only)

1. It’s still really, really hard for grown-ass women to talk about sex. One reader, a mother of two, confessed she still skips sex scenes in books and fast-forwards them in series and movies. Several women opted to send me their recommendations via private message rather than post them on Instagram, lest the world see that they… gasp… read sexy books. Another reader, after having shared a gem of a fan fiction site, said, “Now you know my dirty little secret.”

2. Many women I asked were hard-pressed to name a single sexy book. Why is that? Do we avoid them? Find them boring? Feel guilty about them? Did we only seek them in our hormone-crazed teen years, when we wanted to know everything about sex? When did that curiosity dry up and why—or has it ever? I don’t think it has: people expressed curiosity about this list, which is why I’m sharing it.

3. Personally, I was dismayed that I couldn’t think of any Filipinos who are writing about sex and pleasure. I find it so sad that all Filipina women have is Dr. Margie Holmes, the Philippines’ singular celebrity sex and relationship therapist for over 25 years, and starlets/models—often raised in a Western country, which made them marginally more willing to talk about sex—turned “sex columnists” in now-defunct men’s magazines like FHM. Does anyone still remember Asia Agcaoili?

Out of curiosity: who writes about sex and pleasure where you come from? What are they saying about it ?

What I found: the list

First of all: thank you!

You have helped me compile a sexy reading list that includes over 30 books, which I’ve organized into the following categories: the classics, contemporary fiction, personal essay and memoir, Filipino and Asian writers, poetry, series, and the lone Dutch recommendation.

This is by no means a comprehensive list: we are book lovers and we are legion, but we haven’t read everything out there. Far from it. Please help me expand the list!

I’ve written briefly about my top five picks, which are all nonfiction except for one. The rest of the list comprises about 80% reader recommendations so I can’t comment on them. I’ve left personal notes on the few I have read and feel very enthusiastic about.

Leave a comment below if: 1) you have a book to add to the list, and 2) you’ve read any of these books. I would love to know what you thought of them. Please feel free to contribute, discuss and share!

Share

I’ve provided Kindle links because I’m a Kindle user, and Amazon affiliate links because this newsletter is free and I hope you won’t mind if I get a little something back for what I put into it.

If you would like to share a link to any of these books via an independent bookseller, leave a comment below. I’ll do my best to keep this list updated.

Finally, if you quote or republish any part of this list, kindly remember to link back to Letters by Deepa as a courtesy and thank-you for my effort. Be nice!

Okay, so here’s the list.

My Top Picks

Warning: these are not light books. But who ever said sex was easy and uncomplicated?

1. Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (adrienne maree brown) - a powerful collection of essays on pleasure as a means of liberation, healing and happiness. The topics range from sex as you’ve probably never thought about it before (e.g. trans sex, disabled sex) to food, drugs, music, and more. I read this over the summer, and it completely blew my mind and gave purpose and meaning to my humble effort to write my own memoir. If you truly want mind-opening perspectives on sex, particularly on how pleasure can be a force for social justice, READ THIS BOOK.

2. Three Women (Lisa Taddeo) - an epic masterwork of journalism, these three intertwined tales of women and desire reads like a gripping novel. MUST READ.

3. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Roxane Gay) - early in the book, Gay (one of my favorite contemporary writers) references her childhood experience of sexual assault, which fundamentally shaped her relationship to her body and led to a lifelong struggle with obesity.

4. The Kiss (Katherine Harrison) - complex and courageous memoir about a young woman’s incestuous affair with her pastor father.

5. Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides) - Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the coming of age of Callie, who is intersex. Touching, tender, awkward and real.

The Classics

1. Fear of Flying (Erica Jong)

2. Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller)

3. Delta of Venus (Anaïs Nin) - you might also be interested in Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love," The Unexpurgated Diary (1931–1932), Nin’s journals from the period in which she and Miller, who were both in open marriages, were lovers.

4. The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton) - no sex, but lots of longing

5. The Story of O (Anne Declos, writing as Pauline Reage)

Contemporary Fiction

1. Normal People (Sally Rooney)

2. Call Me By Your Name (Andre Aciman)

3. Luster (Raven Leilani)

4. Like Water for Chocolate (magic realism, Laura Esquivel)

5. Written on the Body (Jeanette Winterson)

6. Verity (psychological thriller, Colleen Hoover)

7. The Museum of Innocence (Orhan Pamuk) - more longing than sex, but still beautifully written

8. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (Taylor Jenkins Reid)

9. Eleven Minutes (Paolo Coelho)

10. Promise Me Forever (Debbie Macomber)

11. American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis) - mega explicit and brutal, but hey, maybe some of us like that. This novel is a work of genius.

12. The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro) - also no sex, but exquisitely restrained longing. Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro’s novel about clones who experience puberty and explore their budding sexuality, is also worth a read.

Personal Essay and Memoir

1. Kink: Stories (anthology, edited by Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon) - or is this short fiction?

2. Hooked: The Secrets of a High Class Call Girl (memoir, Samantha X)

3. Wild (memoir, Cheryl Strayed)

4. Sister Outsider (essays and speeches, Audre Lorde) - Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power is one of the most powerful essays I’ve ever read.

5. Eve’s Hollywood (essays, Eve Babitz) - my pick for most fun and compelling narrator, Eve Babitz had a string of lovers that included Jim Morrison, Ed Ruscha, Steve Martin and Harrison Ford.

Asian and Filipino Writers

1. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Haruki Murakami)

2. The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy)

3. Ermita (historical fiction, F. Sionil Jose) - copies are super mega rare, apparently. Sorry about the price.

4. America is In The Heart (fiction, Elaine Castillo)

5. Tropical Gothic (short fiction, Nick Joaquin)

6. Ladlad: An Anthology of Philippine Gay Writing (edited by Danton Remoto)

7. Tingle: An Anthology of Philippine Lesbian Writing (edited by Jhoanna Lynn Cruz)

I’m sure Salman Rushdie has written some good scenes somewhere, but I can’t think of any specific book.

Poets

1. Sappho, ancient Greek poetess

2. Rumi, ancient Sufi poet

3. Audre Lorde, Black lesbian radical feminist

4. What Kind of Woman (poetry collection, Kate Baer)

5. Milk and Honey (poetry collection, Rupi Kaur)

My knowledge of poetry is woefully inadequate. Please educate me.

Series

1. Outlander (historical/fantasy fiction by Diana Gabaldon)

2. A Court of Thorns and Roses (fantasy/young adult fiction by Sarah J. Maas)

3. Throne of Glass (fantasy/young adult fiction by Sarah J. Maas)

Websites

1. Literotica (free erotica online)

2. Archive of Our Own (fan fiction) - and you thought you were the only one who’d ever imagined having a sex with a celebrity, fictional character or historical figure. The categories are truly mind-boggling!

Dutch

1. Louter lust: erotische verhalen voor vrouwen (short fiction, Lydia Rood)

Thanks for confessing, contributing and sharing.

Here in Amsterdam, the trees are starting to turn gold and the rain is basically nonstop. Autumn is in full swing; I hope these books turn up the heat and help you keep warm during the long, cold nights ahead. See you in two weeks!