Lena Dunham

#JusticeForElijahMcClain

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Book Recommendations:

LD

Recommended by Lena Dunham

This video of Naya Rivera singing Songbird is perfect. She shone so bright and was also unflinchingly honest (her book is really ballsy and wise.) This is such a cruel twist. Sending deepest love to her people and respect to her memory. https://t.co/vCz5ZPbRVr (from X)

Funny and deeply personal, Sorry Not Sorry recounts Glee star Naya Rivera's successes and missteps, urging young women to pursue their dreams and to refuse to let past mistakes define them. Navigating through youth and young adulthood isn't easy, and in Sorry Not Sorry, Naya Rivera shows us that we're not alone in the highs, lows, and in-betweens. Whether it's with love and dating, career and ambition, friends, or gossip, Naya inspires us to follow our own destiny and step over--or plod through--all the crap along the way. After her rise and fall from early childhood stardom, barely eking her way through high school, a brief stint as a Hooters waitress, going through thick and thin with her mom/manager, and resurrecting her acting career as Santana Lopez on Glee, Naya emerged from these experiences with some key life lessons: Sorry: -  All those times I scrawled "I HATE MY MOM" in my journal. So many moms and teenage daughters don't get along--we just have to realize it's nothing personal on either side. -  At-home highlights and DIY hair extensions. Some things are best left to the experts, and hair dye is one of them. -  Falling in love with the idea of a person, instead of the actual person. Not Sorry: -  That I don't always get along with everyone. Having people not like you is a risk you have to take to be real, and I'll take that over being fake any day. -  Laughing at the gossip instead of getting upset by it. -  Getting my financial disasters out of the way early--before I was married or had a family--so that the only credit score that I wrecked was my own. Even with a successful career and a family that she loves more than anything else, Naya says, "There's still a thirteen-year-old girl inside of me making detailed lists of how I can improve, who's never sure of my own self-worth." Sorry Not Sorry is for that thirteen-year-old in all of us.

LD

Recommended by Lena Dunham

My most favorite thriller. (from Amazon)

You: A Novel book cover

by Caroline Kepnes·You?

*Soon to be a Lifetime drama series* “Hypnotic and scary.” —Stephen King “I am RIVETED, AGHAST, AROUSED, you name it. The rare instance when prose and plot are equally delicious.” —Lena Dunham From debut author Caroline Kepnes comes You, one of Suspense Magazine’s Best Books of 2014, and a brilliant and terrifying novel for the social media age. When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card. There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting. As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder. A terrifying exploration of how vulnerable we all are to stalking and manipulation, debut author Caroline Kepnes delivers a razor-sharp novel for our hyper-connected digital age. You is a compulsively readable page-turner that’s being compared to Gone Girl, American Psycho, and Stephen King’s Misery.

LD

Recommended by Lena Dunham

What you get from this book that you can’t get anywhere else isn’t the rags-to-riches story but rather the honest and arresting way she details her slow drift into a different kind of emotional poverty, the sort that only decades of tabloid harassment and unchecked trauma can alchemize. She narrates, with the precision of a butcher’s knife, her divorces, addiction, and eventual isolation, but from this she pulls forth her most potent character yet: a fully formed, gives-no-fucks woman of wisdom. (from Amazon)

Inside Out: A Memoir book cover

by Demi Moore·You?

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Daily Mail, Good Morning America, She Reads Famed American actress Demi Moore at last tells her own story in a surprisingly intimate and emotionally charged memoir. For decades, Demi Moore has been synonymous with celebrity. From iconic film roles to high-profile relationships, Moore has never been far from the spotlight—or the headlines. Even as Demi was becoming the highest paid actress in Hollywood, however, she was always outrunning her past, just one step ahead of the doubts and insecurities that defined her childhood. Throughout her rise to fame and during some of the most pivotal moments of her life, Demi battled addiction, body image issues, and childhood trauma that would follow her for years—all while juggling a skyrocketing career and at times negative public perception.  As her success grew, Demi found herself questioning if she belonged in Hollywood, if she was a good mother, a good actress—and, always, if she was simply good enough. As much as her story is about adversity, it is also about tremendous resilience. In this deeply candid and reflective memoir, Demi pulls back the curtain and opens up about her career and personal life—laying bare her tumultuous relationship with her mother, her marriages, her struggles balancing stardom with raising a family, and her journey toward open heartedness. Inside Out is a story of survival, success, and surrender—a wrenchingly honest portrayal of one woman’s at once ordinary and iconic life.

LD

Recommended by Lena Dunham

As people, but especially as women, we have to be our own medical advocates. Whether it's my friends making their way through the birth industrial complex or the ones deciding how to handle a chronic illness like Lyme, educating ourselves is power. Plus (and I'm a broken record on this), our pain ― especially if it's located between belly button and ass crack ― is often not treated with the seriousness we would hope. My particular journey to navigate has been endometriosis, and Tamer Seckin's The Doctor Will See You Now: Recognizing and Treating Endometriosis, written with sensitivity and spirit, is an amazing primer if you or someone you love is suffering. In a world where information is everywhere yet answers are hard to come by, Dr. Seckin offers comfort and guidance. (from Amazon)

Endometriosis materializes when the endometrium – the tissue that lines the inside of the uterus – sheds, but does not exit a woman’s body during her period. Instead, it grows outside of the uterus, spreading to organs and nerves in and around the pelvic region. The resulting pain is so physically and emotionally insufferable that it can mercilessly dominate a woman’s life. The average woman with endometriosis is twenty-seven years old before she is diagnosed. It is one of the top three causes of female infertility. The pain it emits can affect a woman’s career, social life, relationships, sexual activity, sleep, and diet. It is incurable, but highly treatable. Unfortunately, though, it is rarely treated in a timely manner, if at all, because of misdiagnoses and/or a lack of education among those in the medical community.This book gives hope to everyone connected to endometriosis. That includes every woman and young girl who has it, and the women and men in their lives – the mothers, fathers, husbands, children, and friends – who know something is wrong, but do not know what it is or what to do about it. This book is written at a level that everyone with ties to this disease can relate to and understand, but it is also for doctors with good intentions who lack the knowledge of how to diagnose or treat it. The Doctor Will See You Now is for women determined to let the world know their stories so that every woman with this disease – from the thirteen-year-old girl who is being told that her pain is “part of becoming a woman” to the woman who has been misdiagnosed for decades – knows she is not alone. Yes, her pain is real. No, she is not crazy. Yes, there is hope.