You're listening to Reading Glasses, a show about book culture and literary life designed to help you read better.

I'm author and book devour, Mallory Omero.

And I'm Brea Grant, filmmaker, and e-reader.

This episode, we're taking off another box in the 26 Reading Glasses Glasses Challenge.

Participate in a readathon. Plus, we give tips on finding novellas, and we recommend romance with protagonists

that use wheelchairs.

Before I'm Brea, what are you reading?

I am listening to a book that I believe you recommend it. I think it's called Reinventing

Love How the Patriarchy sabotages heterosexual relationships.

Did you recommend this book to me? This feels like a you book. I feel like when you were going through your

singledom, you were reading, you were listening to that. Mona Shollet, Shollet, C-H-O-L-L-E-T.

I read the Bell Hooks book. I read the Sean Faye book. I read a bunch of sad single-lady books, but I did not read this one. Please, tell me more. She also wrote in defense of witches, which I did not read. But basically it takes feminist- Oh, I did read that, but I haven't read. Okay, it takes feminist principles, and it's like, okay, we live in this, obviously, we live in a patriarchy. Can you have a successful heterosexual relationship when you're living in a patriarchy and there's going to be a power imbalance? And like, it goes through, but you get really strong so no one can take you. I think there's still a power imbalance, Mallory. I'm sorry, you can be the strongest woman in the world and they still will tell you that you can't direct a movie. That's true. It's true. Or they'll explain to you how to direct a movie while you're directing a movie. That's right. While you're directing a movie. Yeah. It's like she's drawing up and everything from like pop culture to literature to theorists. There's actually a lot of bell hooks in, maybe that's'm thinking of up. There's a lot of bell hooks in this book. I think you'd really like it. It's not prescriptive. It's just sort of like, here's kind of where we've been, and even goes into, like, there's this part right now that's about relationships with men in prison who have like murdered their wives and then how

they end up getting married to other women while they're still in prison and like like things like

what leads women to like make those decisions and like the question of like you know just things that

we talk about all the time like you know if you praise the man on the relationship, if he does some of the cooking, whereas the woman is, like, expected to do the cooking and, like, what, and if that power imbalance is always going to be there, what does that mean for the relationship as a whole? It's not anti-heterosexual relationships. Obviously, you and I are both in heterosexual relationships, but it is sort of like how there are things that just automatically sabotage those relationships

and make those relationships inherently difficult in a lot of ways. Yeah, this sounds, as someone who I found

my future husband, this seems like a perfect thing. This seems like a kind of perfect book to read

right when you get into a

new relationship, but also when you've been in a relationship for a really long time. Yeah. And it's

about like how to continue creating like a healthy relationship as you like to think about these

broader things because I think a lot of times we think it's about us. But really it's like we're

dealing with these much broader systems

...