Book Review: King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes

Virginie Despentes’ King Kong Theory is a fierce and foundational text of modern feminism, a Molotov cocktail in book form. Part memoir, part punk manifesto, it is a raw, unapologetic, and deeply personal exploration of gender, power, and sexuality in our modern world.

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Genre: Non-fiction, Memoir, Essays, Feminism

Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK, 2020), The Feminist Press (US, 2010)

Review in one word: Joyful

Originally published in French in 2006, this classic feminist work is now available in English. Despentes is a punk iconoclast, rebel writer and confrontational filmmaker. Arguably her most famous book is her first novel Baise-Moi, was later adapted for the screen. She is the author of more than fifteen works, including the acclaimed Vernon Subutex trilogy. Always seeing life from the outskirts, Despentes draws from her own experience as a former sex worker and rape survivor for her scathing and excoriating analysis of surviving in a world mired in misogyny and misandry.

Far from being depressing in nature, this book is irreverant, hillarious and cheeky in its analysis of our world.

There’s a whole range of taboos that are exploded in this book. As she states in the explosive opening, “from the realms of the ugly, for the ugly, the old, the bull dykes, the frigid, the unfucked, the unfuckable, the hysterics, the freaks, all those excluded from the great meat market of female flesh”.

The essays in this book are provocative, explosive and generous in their philosophical reach and insight. Despentes examines concepts of rape, prostitution, pornography and the myth of the ideal woman. She strongly rejects victimhood and refuses to apologise or explain her reasons for doing anything she has done.

The book shows its age in the discussion about the ultimate waif-like beauty of the 90’s – Kate Moss. Despentes joyfully aligns herself not with the unreachable ideal of Kate Moss but instead with the mythological monster – King Kong who is beyond male and beyond female. He is a potent symbol of polymorphic sexuality and raw power before he is captured and destroyed by society.

The overarching themes are of railing against oppressive forces of sexual and societal control in our world are refreshing and interesting. I particularly enjoyed the ethos so closely intertwined with rebelious culture, art and music which showed in her amazing Vernon Subutex series. Despentes argues for a “new punk feminism” that embraces and loves what society deems monstrous or unacceptable in women and any one else who feels marginalised.

She challenges the binary thinking that pits “good” women against “bad” ones, virgins against whores, and victims against aggressors. Her style is blistering, direct, and brutally honest, characterised by precisely phrased rage and a refusal to soften her message for the comfort of the reader.

Despentes’ tone is provocative, warm and unapologetic. King Kong Theory is an essential work that rejects polite discourse in favour of a raw truth about sex and power that is as uncomfortable, liberating and joyful. I cannot tell you how much this book means to me, it is foundational, liberating and life-changing in every way.

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Book Review: Endling by Maria Reva

Maria Reva’s debut novel, Endling is immensely ambitious and credit where credit is due this is a vast, sweeping novel that rocked me to my core in its first few chapters.

Rating: 🌟🌟

Genre: War fiction, Ukraine, Metafiction, Literary Fiction.

Publisher: Virago (Hachette UK)

Review in one word: Confounding

Goddamnit I really wanted to love this book so much…I really did.

All of the ingredients were there! A lone female protagonist who cares deeply for endangered mollusc species. Driving through Ukraine and looking to mate molluscs together to prevent them being “Endlings” in other words the final individuals of their species.

Maria Reva’s debut novel, Endling is immensely ambitious and credit where credit is due this is a vast, sweeping novel that rocked me to my core in its first few chapters.

It’s set against the harrowing backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yeva lives in a mobile laboratory, dedicating her solitary existence to collecting and sheltering endangered snails. Her most prized possession is Lefty, the last known individual of his species—an “endling”.

To fund her strange mission, Yeva works for a Canadian firm specialising in “romance tours” to Ukraine, a euphemism for the mail-order bride business. Through this work that Yeva crosses paths with two other women entangled in the romance industry: the stunning Nastia and her brilliant sister Sol, daughters of a famous feminist activist who has mysteriously vanished. Disheartened by her inability to save the snails and desperate for a way out, Yeva is drawn into Nastia’s audacious plan to abduct a dozen of the foreign men who have come to Kyiv in search of wives.

Endling tackles profoundly difficult themes of our time – war, extinction, the trafficking and exploitation of women and does this in a confronting and emotionally raw way.

There are self-conscious moments in this that I thought were totally unnecessary and cringey. The novel shifts back and forth in time in a jarring way and in some parts Reva herself narrates in the first person. This distracts from the story itself and slows it down massively. There’s also the not inconsequential thing of having 12 grown men jammed into a tiny van being driven around Ukraine for days to weeks at a time. Apparently none of the guys were aware of there being a war happening outside the van. Nobody mentions needing to go to the loo in the novel but this seemed like too much of an obvious omission. How on earth would this situation occur in reality?

I wanted so badly to love this novel but it seems to get bogged down in its own meta-narrative style. Hugely ambitious and filled with glorious moments of genius writing, I just wish Reva had made it simpler to follow and it would have been far more enjoyable.

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Book Review: How to Be Resilient by Gail Gazelle

In an increasingly scary, unpredictable and challenging world, Dr Gail Gazelle’s How to Be Resilient is a practical and compassionate guide that will empower you to find inner strength and inner calm needed to navigate life’s tough times.

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Genre: Self-Help, Personal Growth, Psychology, Mental Health

Publisher: Callisto

Review in one word: Empowering

Self-help books and books about resilience in particular are a dime a dozen nowadays. And so I almost rolled my eyes when I came across this book. But I was naturally drawn to it anyway and wanted to give it a go.

I was absolutely delighted to find that this book is not cliched or filled with overwrought and trite advice. Instead this is an indepth and extensive collection of theories all masterfully brought into the real world of actionable insights. collection of abstract theories but a roadmap filled with supportive advice and actionable exercises designed to help readers weather difficult times with courage and wisdom.

A physician at Harvard Medical School and a certified life coach, Dr Gazelle brings both medical expertise and a deep understanding of the human spirit to this accessible book.

This is a collection of wisdom from many difference evidence-based approaches that are packaged together in an accessible and helpful way. ‘How to be Resilient’ is structured to empower you step-by-step and begins by demystifying the concept of resilience, explaining the psychology behind it and the science of neuroplasticity, the brain’s remarkable ability to rewire itself in response to new habits and experiences.

From this foundation, Dr Gazelle guides the reader through a series of practices rooted in evidence-based fields such as positive psychology, mindfulness, and gratitude research. The book is organised very well and is not overly long-winded either, each chapter has clear takeaways that reinforce the main points.

The overarching theme is that resilience is not an innate trait possessed by a lucky few, but a flexible pool of strength that anyone can consciously cultivate and fortified with continued and dedicated practice.

Dr Gazelle focuses on several core pillars for building this strength: learning to be more adaptable in the face of change, cultivating meaningful connections with others, staying mindful of one’s thoughts and feelings without being overwhelmed by them, and prioritising self-care.

Her style is clear, encouraging, and direct, making complex psychological concepts easy to understand and apply. The tone is deeply supportive, caring and non-judgemental, acting as a trusted guide on the journey toward greater well-being.

How to Be Resilient provides readers with the techniques—from meditation and journalling to strategies for deepening relationships—to not just survive challenges, but to heal, move forward, and continue to enjoy life to the fullest.

I found this book to be one of the best I’ve ever read (and I have consumed 100’s of self-help books over the years), I cannot recommend this book more strongly to you!

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#BookTag: Great British Bake Off Challenge

I absolutely love the Great British Bake Off so, when I saw this book challenge I though 'yeah, sign me up for that one.' ON YOUR MARKS – A Book You Can’t Wait To Read I can't wait to read The Last Mandarin, a fast-paced, all-too-real thriller co-written by #1 New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny and award-winning journalist Mellissa Fung, global politics become personal for two unlikely heroines.

https://alexwolfe.ca/booktag-great-british-bake-off-challenge/

Book Review: Sexographies by Gabriela Wiener

Sexographies is by famous Peruvian “gonzo” journalist Gabriela Wiener who dares to go where nobody has gone before – into the decadent, gritty and amusing sexual underworld of South America in a series of mind-blowing essays, published in English for the first time.

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Genre: Non-fiction, Essays, Memoir, Sex, Gonzo Journalism.

Publisher: Restless Books

Review in one word: Adventurous

Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener has carved out a solid name for herself as a Gonzo journalist and lifelong adventurer in Latin America. She is bold and unafraid of pulling back the curtains on underground worlds most people don’t know exist.

Sexographies is a collection of short, evocative and darkly funny essays published for the first time in English and what an absolute treat it is to read!

Weiner puts her mind, body and soul on the page for all readers to bare witness to and the result is a deeply compelling, vulnerable and yet totally funny depiction of a variety of crazy sexual underworlds that exist in Latin America in parallel to the vanilla existence of the mainstream.

The book features a series sumptuous, decadent, gritty and colourful worlds that exist on the far margins of society. Wiener chronicles her experiences infiltrating a dangerous Peruvian prison to understand its tattoo culture with hardcore criminals, participating in weird and amusing orgies in swingers’ clubs, and walking the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris alongside trans sex workers.

She undergoes a complicated egg donation process and takes part in an ayahuasca ritual in the Amazon jungle and is coaxed for a while into joining a sex cult. What makes these essays so much more vivid is how each adventure is profoundly personal and all about her own inward journey.

“Mercedes teaches me to look at myself in the mirror, to confront my sensuality, to seduce with my gaze, to reveal my belly as I swing my hips to the rhythm of “The Girls of Alexandria.”

Badani enters and, without asking, takes a picture of me in the middle of a hip-swinging trance. La Gatita has graciously pronounced me a natural. I lap it all up.

By the end of the night, I want to be like these women. I want to be lavished with heart-shaped sweets and chocolate roses. I want my work to be a hobby. I want to live with all of my best friends and play amorous games together.

I want to embroider panties and bras. I want to cook for my man. I want to wear Arabian fantasy clothes. I want to love the present. I want a god.

“For this she handed me the flogger, a whip with a leather handle and several strips. “I want to see your grip. Test it on your hand.” I took the flogger, combed it with my fingers and brought it down on my hand putting on a “bad girl” facial expression. Monique told me to flog the wardrobe.

I hit so hard I thought I nearly dismantled it. Monique laughed at me. “If that was a slave you would’ve destroyed his kidneys. What matters is not to hit hard, it’s to hit intoxicatingly.”

They say cruelty is a purely feminine virtue. I looked at Monique and asked her what was the most essential thing for me to know.

“Believe in yourself, love yourself, and know that you’re the best. You need to be self-aware, honorable, know your limits, and know the human body. Otherwise, it’s like handing a revolver to a monkey.”

“Some people think you’re a woman but when they find out you’re not they don’t care. They’re often really into it. They tell me it’s their first time and ask me if they can touch me. Before you know it, they’re down on their knees acting out their repressed fantasies. Everyone’s got their own drama.”

Vanesa can be vulgar but dreams of being treated like a sensitive girl. Everyone’s got their own drama.”

She is not taking in the mayhem from an anthropological distance, instead she is forever changed by intense experiences that challenge her ideas of monogamy and polyamory, immigration, motherhood, her fear of death and loads more.

The biggest theme is arguably the identity, gender and the human body and likewise how she feels about her own body. Her journeys into the far edges of human experience are thrilling and enjoyable and her writing style is deep, unflinching and totally addictive. I would highly recommend this book!

About the Author

Gabriela Wiener is a Peruvian writer and journalist, living in Madrid, Spain. She is considered a leading voice in “gonzo” journalism in the Spanish-speaking world. Her work explores themes of sexuality, identity, and migration with a unique, first-person, immersive style.

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Book Review: Plant Magick: The Library of Esoterica by Taschen

Plant Magick is a collectors item of sublime and exquisite beauty. This is a treasury of art and plant history for lovers of nature, art history, folklore, witchcraft and magic. Psychonauts, spiritual seekers and shamanic explorers will find a lyrical home here as well.

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Genre: Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Spirituality, Esoterica

Publisher: Taschen

Review in one word: Esoteric

Divided into thoughtful sections and chapters, Plant Magick features visionary and universal wisdom from a broad range of scholars, witches, sorcerers and mystics about different aspects of plant magick, lore and practice.

There’s a diverse and broad exploration of magical practices using plants and fungi and how this is reflected in art across all ages and cultures. This is an ambitious ask and Taschen have delivered 100% with this stunning book.

If you or someone you know is a gardener, plant enthusiast, hedge witch or practising pagan or you simply revere and respect nature and plants – then this book will embolden and deepen your love and respect for these other-than-human beings.

The importance of plants as a part of religious and pagan rites, ritual, medicinal and transcendental spiritual purposes is explored through eye-popping and mind-bending art.

Each artwork is tactfully placed to add colour and depth to the informative essays that make up each chapter. The essays rather than being filler or less important than the artworks are a complement to them. The words are not wasted or superfluous but are instead brimming with lush and vivid detail about artists, movements and cultural phenomena throughout the ages. These allow you to understand the artworks in a much more profound way.

The sheer range of historical context explored in this book is exciting. Even if you casually flip through it, I guarantee that the hours will melt away and you will still be sitting on your sofa eyes glued to the pages, carefully turning them savouring every detail.

Bound in high quality hardcover and featuring gold inlay, Plant Magick is a part of a larger four part series by Taschen called the Library of Esoterica. Other books that might tickle your fancy in the series include Tarot, Astrology and Witchcraft. Personally, the only other one I simply had to own was Witchcraft and the review for this one is coming up on Content Catnip very soon.

Would I recommend this book to you? If you love nature, art history, folklore, paganism…then this book is a must for your collection – 5 stars!

Do you have this book or do you plan on getting it? let me know below!

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Book Review: A Hymn to Life: Shame has to change sides by Gisèle Pelicot

An immensely powerful biography from one of the bravest women in history Gisèle Pelicot, who dares to unmask rapists and a misogynistic legal system in France and do so with her own softly spoken steely courage. One not to miss!

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Genre: Biography, True Crime

Publisher: Penguin 

Review in one word: Powerful

You no doubt would have heard of the case of Gisele Pelicot in recent years, an elderly Frenchwoman and a grand-mère whose monstrous husband was, for decades, drugging her and filming her being raped by dozens of men.

The story that shocked the world and led to all manner of salacious, sexist and rumour-filled tabloid news stories. In amongst it all Gisele refused to be reduced to a rubble of fear and horror.

Most women with lesser strength would have been broken to learn that their husbands were doing that. Instead Gisele, a softly spoken, gentle, traditional (as are many women of her generation) reveals her fierce emotional strength as she explains in her own words her own story.

The media throughout the case cast doubt upon her, as did the judiciary, which wanted to seed suspicion that she must have known what was happening to her. That she somehow consented.

Her husband Dominic or as she affectionately called him Doume was drugging her and meanwhile gaslighting her and their children that their mother was having memory lapses, possibly signs of early dementia.

In the meantime this monster was orchestrating men of all ages and backgrounds via the dark web to rape his own wife, hundreds of men, over decades.

It all sounds like a really confronting read! But honestly this book was profound in its ordinariness, the first chapter opens showing Gisele going through her daily cleaning and cooking routine, laying the dining table.

The power of this book lays in the fact that these were people who have the same values and ideas about life as most other people in western nations. These are likely your neighbours, friends, people you may know.

A lot of the book dissects Dominic and Gisele’s marriage and goes deep into their respective childhoods. Both came from working class backgrounds but where Gisele had loving parents and a mother who died tragically when she was only eight years old; Dominic had a deeply sadistic father who sexually abused Dominic’s disabled foster sister, later marrying her once his wife died (under highly suspicious circumstances).

Throughout the whole ordeal, many other people – her self-motivated first lawyer, the media, her neighbours, her children and their partners and the court-appointed psychologist – all wanted to impose upon her their own perception of who she was. A victim of domestic abuse, a subjugated woman and a slave, an emotionless enigma. Yet here in the book, we learn how Gisele feels about Dominic, her life and what happened to her – the only answer to the media circus that ever mattered!

After several years of hiding away in a remote village following the revelations, she is introduced to another man by mutual friends, who has also endured heartbreak as well (losing his wife to cancer), and miraculously, despite the huge betrayal she endured, Gisele is able to find love again with a new man Jean-Loup. She goes towards love, connection and light despite all that has befallen her, a sign of her inner strength.

“I know my story has fuelled disgust for men, but it has not done that for me. I know that the image the world had of me at that point was nothing more than of a woman who had been horrifically abused; if I had any memories of the ordeal, I’m sure that is what I would have been reduced to, and it probably would have killed me. But I was forged in a different time and place. The way I think about life was wrought at the moment of my mother’s final breath, when Papa leaned over her and whispered her name, and I squeezed her shoulder and begged her to wake up. In that instant I felt a wave of infinite love wash over me, far stronger than death. That sensation saved me, carried me through, and no doubt also blinded me and warped my judgement, considering everything I endured with Dominique. And yet the feeling persists: love is not dead. I am not dead. I still have faith in people. Once, that was my greatest weakness. Now it is my strength. My revenge.”

Gisele was buoyed up and given courage throughout the trial by the presence of hundreds of women who came every day to the court and gave her letters about how much they admire her courage in speaking out. This was truly a remarkable book, that both chronicles the darkest parts of human nature and the celebrates the courage to love in spite of it all.

I highly recommend this book.

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Book Review: An Honest Woman by Charlotte Shane

An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work by Charlotte Shane contains some juicy insights into what it’s like to be a sex worker but lacks a certain emotional honesty and vulnerability to the telling.

Rating: 🌟🌟

Genre: Memoir, Non-fiction, Feminism, Sexuality

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review in one word: Juicy

An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work by Charlotte Shane is an electrifying insight into the hidden world of being a sex worker. Shane is an exceptional writer who manages to paint some incredible paintings with her words.

The book traces Charlotte’s origin story being a young woman who preferred the company of boys rather than girls. I get that this is a counter to a lot of the man-bashing, man-hating varieties of feminism out there.

“Many men gravitate toward the security and domesticity of long-term relationships. Lots of clients will re-create their primary relationship in the field that’s supposed to be their escape from the same. They orchestrate it, because when it’s not there, they ache for it. They may need to feel and act as if they’re relationally unencumbered. They may make a show of how horribly the collar chafes or how brazenly they yank it off, but they still want the tether of home. Carousing and womanizing aren’t the same without it. A leashed dog feels the frenzy for a squirrel just out of reach, then returns to a full bowl and a fleece bed that smells of himself. An unleashed dog follows a scent into new woods, wanders exhausted into an empty field, lies down in the friendless dark.”

There’s quite a lot of internalised misogyny in her descriptions of other women. Women are depicted as dumpy old women and whiney pains who deserve their husbands and boyfriends to cheat on them or they are younger, winsome and bitchy competition for male attention. It’s a misconception and a deep stereotype that seeks to divide women – as old as the hills.

There are other women too, the ones who are neither and who are just relaxed, easygoing and just want the best for everyone?

There seemed to be no camraderie with other women at all, rather just a cold competitiveness and this shone through quite clearly in the book. Shane’s way of seeing sex as a teenager as firstly puppy-like and “innocent” exploration with her male friends translates very quickly into being about transactional value once she reaches college age. At this point she quits her Women’s Studies major and becomes a sex worker full time, raking in a lot of money. Something happens in between there for such a dramatic shift, but we don’t hear about it.

“The boys extended to me what the artist Hannah Black calls “the collegiate, unpretentious sexual warmth” characteristic of gay men that’s usually withheld between straight men and women. And in doing so, they invited me inside a sort of hedonistic Eden, a space of inclusion and innocence that existed alongside feral vulgarity. How miraculous that I’d been a part of that. Their generosity gave me something far more precious than sexual pleasure, and I would yearn to feel it again for the rest of my life.”

I don’t quite know what I was expecting from this book but it felt like there were large parts of Shane’s life that were omitted. She doesn’t quite get as vulnerable and personal as I would have hoped. Instead, there’s a lot of descriptions of all the men she’s shagged – these parts are vividly beautiful and we see the men in all of their vulnerability, loneliness and humanness in how they long to connect with her. We also get to see the ugly side of men too, the way they try all kinds of possessiveness, control, threats and stalking.

I just wished she would have extended that level of vulnerability to her reflections on own evolving self in her writing. Her relationship with ‘Roger’ a wealthy senior man who treats her exceedingly well in terms of manners, polite requests for sex and giving her financial freedom. These parts of the memoir started off compelling, but became repetitive and tiring after a while.

It is clear that despite all of the talk about only caring about money, Shane deeply desires connection, intimacy and long-lasting love. Towards the end of the book in a rather rushed conclusion, she finds her soulmate and she knows right away that he’s the one. This is a pleasing conclusion to the book, and you feel very happy for her but this felt like a sudden event tacked onto the end rather than a gradual evolution of inner life. As a result this is a patchy, inconsistent memoir.

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The Firsts of 2026 enthüllen meine ersten gelesenen und rezensierten Bücher. Lass dich von meinen Leseerlebnissen inspirieren. #BookTag #TheFirstof2026

https://theartofreading.de/the-firsts-of-2026-book-tag/