and movies have on our society and psyches. She investigates why pop culture matters deeply, from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Seinfeld, to Sex and the City and Mean Girls, to Beyoncé, Taylor, and Barbie. She has written eight books, including the New York Times bestseller Seinfeldia, When Women Invented Television, Sex and the City and Us, and So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed with It).
[My Book, The Movie: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted; The Page 99 Test: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted; The Page 99 Test: Seinfeldia; The Page 99 Test: Sex and the City and Us; The Page 99 Test: Pop Star Goddesses; The Page 99 Test: When Women Invented Television; The Page 99 Test: So Fetch]
At Lit Hub Armstrong tagged ten of "the best books about 'mean girls,' from classics to modern tales, fiction and non." One title on the list:
Edith Wharton, The House of MirthRead about the other entries on the list.
Want to go more classic to get your mean girls fix? Wharton’s 1905 novel follows Lily Bart, a beautiful socialite struggling to maintain her place in wealthy New York circles of the Gilded Age. She lives with her aunt and longs for lawyer Lawrence Selden, but feels she must pursue someone wealthier to improve her situation; she lost her parents at age twenty, and has gambling debts but no inheritance.
Things heat up when she discovers that Lawrence used to be romantically involved with mean girl Bertha Dorset, and many North Shore High-like machinations follow from there.
The House of Mirth is one of Kate Christensen's six favorite food scenes in fiction, Anna Murphy's ten "most inspiring fictional women [Lily Bart] you may never have heard of," Anna Quindlen's five best list of novels about women in search of themselves, Jay McInerney's five essential New York novels, Megan Wasson's five novels that explore the dark side in New York City, Rachel Cusk's five best books on disgrace and Kate Christensen's six books that she rereads all the time; it appears on Robert McCrum's top ten list of books for Obama officials.
Also see D.W. Buffa's Third Reading of The House of Mirth.
--Marshal Zeringue