Books to Read If You Love “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”
Can’t get enough of Miriam “Midge” Maisel’s comedy antics? While you wait for the season 4 premiere, keep the laughs going with some literature that has a similar vibe. And if you’re just tuning in, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel follows an aspiring female comic in the late 1950s and early 1960s in New York City. Created by Amy Sherman-Palladino (best known for Gilmore Girls), you can expect snappy dialogue, lush period costumes, and a poignant exploration of what it means to be a woman and a comedian before the age of the Netflix special. Channel that energy while you wait for season 4 coming February 18!
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Add to BookshelfThe Best of Everything
by Rona Jaffe
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel opens in 1958, which is also when Jaffe’s game-changing book about five young women working at a Manhattan-based publishing house first hit the shelves. Both stories are about women struggling to rise to the top of competitive industries during a time when women weren’t encouraged to pursue particularly challenging career paths.
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Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus
This blockbuster debut set in 1960s California, features the singular voice of Elizabeth Zott, a scientist whose career takes a detour when she becomes the star of a beloved TV cooking show. Like Midge Maisel, these two women are making a name for themselves in a male-dominated field, and will stop at nothing to achieve their dreams—and change the status quo.
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$29.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Chelsea Girls
by Fiona Davis
For a look at the New York art scene in the ’40s through the ’60s, check out The Chelsea Girls. It follows the friendship between Hazel Riley and Maxine Mead, a playwright and an actress, as they inhabit the famous Chelsea Hotel and attempt to land a show on Broadway over the backdrop of the Red Scare.
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Tacky
by Rax King
Tacky is an irreverent and charming collection of deeply personal essays about the joys of low pop culture and bad taste. Rax King’s sharp, insightful, and laugh-out-loud commentary on everything from the Cheesecake Factory to the Jersey Shore will make you feel nostalgic for the early 2000s.
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$17.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.
by Samantha Irby
Blogger-turned-essayist Samantha Irby is one of the best voices in modern comedy, and something tells us Midge Maisel would appreciate the perceptively hilarious autobiographical essays included in this collection. Irby offers spot-on insights about her own life as well as pop culture, illuminating the truth about what it means to be human.
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The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters
by Julie Klam
Since she was a girl, Julie Klam was fascinated with the family lore of the Morris sisters, cousins of her grandmother. But the more she dug into their stories, the more she realized that the tales were almost completely untrue. This fascinating portrait is a great meditation on the ways that family shapes us, and how by learning more about our ancestors, we learn about ourselves.
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$16.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Diary of a Mad Diva
by Joan Rivers
Midge Maisel appears to be at least partly based on the late Joan Rivers, who helped blaze a trail for women in comedy. Check out her diary (no, really! It’s her actual diary!) with daily musings on celebrity culture, family life—well, the Joan Rivers version of family life—fashion, and more.
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$24.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Enough Rope
by Dorothy Parker
Known as the wittiest woman in America and founder of the fabled Algonquin Round Table, Dorothy Parker was one of the Jazz Age’s most beloved poets, famous for her verbal dexterity and cynical humor—a clear influence for Mrs. Maisel. The poems in Enough Rope range from lighthearted self-deprecation to acid-tongued satire, all while gleefully puncturing sentimental cliches about the relations between men and women.
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Funny Girl
by Nick Hornby
This modern classic from the author of High Fidelity is about Sophie Shaw, a young ingenue navigating the tough waters of showbiz in 1960s London. It chronicles her meteoric rise to television stardom, and while the setting is different from Mrs. Maisel, the snappy, witty voice is pretty similar.
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In Such Good Company
by Carol Burnett
Comedy legend Carol Burnett pulls back the curtain on her iconic show, The Carol Burnett Show. This weekly variety series made television history, and now readers can get a front-row seat to all of the comedy magic. Mrs. Maisel might not do Tarzan yells and pratfalls, but both showcase women who were not afraid to make a name for themselves.
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Recipe for a Perfect Wife
by Karma Brown
Journalist Karma Brown takes her keen eye to fiction. Her first novel follows a present-day publicist-turned-writer named Alice Hale who discovers an old 1950s cookbook filled with letters and notes from the previous owner, housewife Nellie Murdoch. Reading through the pages, Alice begins to piece together the clues that Nellie left behind about her life.
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In On the Joke
by Shawn Levy
Throughout The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Midge is constantly trying to make people take her stand-up career seriously. This hilarious and moving account is about the trailblazing women who broke down walls so they could stand before the mic. Here readers will learn the stories of the original queens of comedy including, Moms Mabley, Joan Rivers, Elaine May, Phyllis Diller, and more!
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Modern Girls
by Jennifer S. Brown
Midge Maisel’s Jewish-American identity is a major focus of the show, and Brown’s Modern Girls is set in a community of Jewish immigrants in 1935. It follows Dottie Krasinsky and her mother, Rose, both of whom find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. This is a story about identity, motherhood, faith, and tough choices.
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Mazie
by Melanie Crowder
An eighteen-year-old aspiring actress trades in starry Nebraska skies for the bright lights of 1950s Broadway in this show-stopping novel from award-winning author Melanie Crowder. Like Midge, Mazie is the story of a girl caught between two lives—and two loves—as she navigates who she is, what matters most, and the cost of following her dream.
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Park Avenue Summer
by Renée Rosen
This novel features the real-life former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, Helen Gurley Brown, responsible for transforming the magazine to appeal to the modern woman. In Park Avenue Summer, wannabe photographer Alice Weiss lands a coveted position at the publication and moves to New York from her small Midwestern hometown to make her dreams come true.
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$19.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
by Elyssa Friedland
In season 2 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, we followed the Maisels and the Weissmans to their beloved summer resort in the Catskills. Last Summer at the Golden Hotel takes readers back into this world as business and pleasure clash in this fast-paced, hilarious, nostalgia-filled story. Fans of Dirty Dancing will also appreciate that the book’s setting feels a lot like Kellerman’s Resort.
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Why Not Me?
by Mindy Kaling
Comedian Mindy Kaling’s second essay collection digs into her experience as a woman of color climbing the ranks in Hollywood. Though her story isn’t exactly the same as Midge Maisel’s, there are certainly shared themes of struggling to find a place in an industry that isn’t exactly welcoming you with open arms. Plus, Kaling is laugh-out-loud funny.
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The Fran Lebowitz Reader
by Fran Lebowitz
A New Yorker to her core, Fran Lebowitz is famous for her unwavering opinions about the city and its occupants—not unlike Midge’s manager Susie Myerson. Here, Lebowitz limns the vicissitudes of contemporary urban life—its fads, trends, crazes, morals, and fashions. By turns ironic, facetious, deadpan, sarcastic, wry, wisecracking, and waggish, Fran Lebowitz is always wickedly entertaining.
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I Feel Bad About My Neck
by Nora Ephron
This collection of delightful essays about life, love, great apartments on New York City’s Upper West Side, and growing older showcase filmmaker and writer Nora Ephron at the height of her powers. Her comedic voice is not too different from what we’ve seen of Midge’s on the show—sharp, smart, and self-deprecating.
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