Both funny to read and also useful for any male writers looking to make a vague attempt at not writing terrible stereotypes. Also couldn't agree more with the question of why we're still being taught about male writers from 500 years ago and not female writers from the last 5 years.

This book is laugh out loud, pee your panties funny. The author has an amazing grasp on how poorly women are portrayed by so many male authors and brilliantly showcases it with wit and sarcasm. I could not believe how many obnoxious tropes exist out there, but she quotes actual authors and their books as evidence. Obviously I’m reading good books b/c I had never read any of those she mentioned so I hadn’t been scarred by such terrible and mysogynistic descriptions of women.

But Meg wanted to be sure women like me weren’t left out in the cold should we decide to become writers and need to know EXACTLY how to correctly write women. If you’re a fan of women with a wicked good sense of humor who are creative and intelligent writers, pick up this book. It won’t disappoint.

this was really fun! this would be a perfect pick for a “girls and gays” book club!

the satirical voice was entertaining and insightful, and the structure of this work was incredibly creative and engaging. I love the interactive elements of this and the sarcastic prompts.

the footnotes and margin scribbles were the highlights for me, and I found myself laughing out loud multiple times

as someone who wants to write but has felt a block in doing so, this was a very fun way to consider overcoming that and begin to brainstorm various methods of presenting feminine presenting people in my own writing

also just a poignant reminder to think critically about the ways in which women are written by male authors and the intention of including them

I now feel fully qualified to describe any character with a plethora of fruit-related metaphors!!

silly and an enjoyable read

thank you net galley for the uncorrected proof!

A Tale of Two Titties is a study on women's representation in literature and a satirical guide to learning how to "write women like bestselling male authors do-stereotypes, tropes, objectification, and all-so you can start dismantling the system from the inside." It includes literary analysis, interactive exercises, and commentary.

I enjoyed the expose on certain male authors and learned a lot about them. It was initially a funny read.

I'm not really the target audience for this book, but it sounded interesting. I think I would have rated it lower if it wasn't for the importance of the topic.

The people who need to read A Tale Of Two Titties, the ones it applies to and mainly refers to, are highly unlikely ti read it.

While it covers an important topic, it quickly loses its humor and becomes painfully repetitive. That repetition took away from the topic.

It took me forever to read, and I debated DNF'ing it a number of times. I decided not to because women deserve better representation in literature. We deserve more than to be basic tropes and poor stereotypes; only there to support male characters.

There are authors, of all genders, who write women in a positive way and give female characters leading roles. Same as there are non-white, non-male bestselling authors. Just as there are men who write women just the ways Meg Vondriska says in this book.

Hopefully one day soon, women will be more than a set of ripe cantaloupes to certain male authors.

I received an eARC of this book from @netgalley. This is my unbiased review.

Although I think the full effects of this book cannot be felt on a pdf (it is a workbook, after all), I think the sentiments come through clearly enough. The conversation it kickstarts is an important one, and I'm impressed by how Vondriska translated her viral Twitter profile onto the page.

This book is a lot of fun overall but does have some hits and misses. I liked the juxtaposition of the different ways of writing different genders. I think the book isn't sure what it wants to be and tries to be a humorous insight into writing, a personal memoir and also a guide to writing. It has a bit too much happening and makes it unnecessarily long.

It is still fun and if you like the subject matter and jokes about how men write women (spoiler: poorly), you will likely enjoy this one.

I first saw this book on Netgalley just after having had a conversation with a friend about how badly some of the male authors we’ve read write women. So I was quite excited to pick this up.

I feel like the subject matter isn’t new to me so I did expect that I wouldn’t find a whole lot of new information in this book. Nonetheless, it felt like a good compilation of both things I’ve known and new information (among other things, there were a few authors mentioned whose books I’ve had on my TBR for a while that I think I’ll now de-prioritise, if not remove altogether…), and I liked that there were references to back up the statements made in the book.

Unfortunately, my enjoyment of the book was hindered by its formatting:
1. page turns between chapters took at least 8 seconds on both my e-reader as well as my computer, which made me not want to return to it for nearly two months
2. on any page with footnotes, displayed on the side in a grey box, my eyes were first drawn to them, which broke up the flow of the reading for me
3. though my e-reader has a stylus and usually PDFs can be annotated, this book could not - bit of a bummer given just how much space the writing exercises took up in the book
But these are (mostly) things that will not be a problem with a physical copy of the book once it’s out, and I could see myself buying a copy to gift to a friend in the future.

Thank you to Sourcebooks and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review

Honestly, this was really a mixed bag for me. I love an angry woman hardcore liberal feminist more than anyone, but I feel like the format that worked so well on Twitter did not translate well in this book. I enjoyed some of the content, including the section about the muses and how women over time have been written by men into different genres but overall felt that the pacing and organization of the book was a bit all over the place. I also enjoyed a breakdown of how the patriarchy has impacted the portrayal of women in novels and how that is reflective of both social values and men’s thoughts about women and their inherent value. The ebook format really didn’t work in the workbook format for this book, it was difficult to follow along with and slightly out of order. Overall enjoyable. I am interested to see who the primary audience for this book will become

This book, A Tale of Two Titties, by Meg Vondriska, is an absolute riot. As someone who enjoys writing, I found it to not only to be helpful, but also laugh out loud funny. It may technically be aimed towards literally anyone other than male writers, but I think even cishet men could enjoy the playfulness and education within this book. And if they can’t, they should. But I fear many men would be very disgruntled after reading just a handful of pages…

I think my favorite elements of this writing guide are the actual quotes from literature written by men she peppers through the book to illustrate her points. Not that I love the terribly worded scenes written about women, but the author is able to find some of the most horrifically funny examples of toxic masculinity EVER.

This book is also so much more than education and instruction; it’s a fully formed workbook for writers. Writing prompts, quizzes, and exercises are included throughout. There’s even a word search and multiple Madlibs to enjoy! So much fun. Very engaging and interactive.

I’d say the only potential issue I had with A Tale of Two Titties was the use of boobs, bra sizes, and other patriarchal stereotypes of what a woman should be and how she should dress. Does the author have to categorize the processes of her book in breast/bra sizes? She did speak to the fact that nonbinary and trans people need better representation. I’m guessing that the playful use of antiquated feminine tropes was just that…playful. Perhaps it was meant to keep things light and humorous while the content themes weighed heavy? Regardless, it would have been interesting to see how Vondriska could have worked in more creative, diverse terminology. But I get it, it’s all very intentionally sarcastic.

Overall, I got a kick out of this book. As I read my ARC, I knew I’d like to get my hands on a physical copy so I could fill out its blank pages lined for the writing prompts. It would certainly be a hilariously fun option for a book club!

A big thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for gifting me the opportunity to enjoy this ARC.

A Tale of Two Titties, by Meg Vondriska, is set to be published and available on July 23, 2024.

DNF at 12 %. The formatting is so abysmal I can’t continue and the content is not interesting enough for me to force myself through it.

A very humorous look at how men write women and how women can write women more like men. I especially enjoyed the exercises throughout the book.

I have seen the author on Twitter and was interested to see she had a book. The book makes a lot of great (and depressing) points about how male authors write female characters. I feel like the reader base of this book will vastly skew towards women readers, so most of the points are things they likely have already noticed in books. I feel like this book was just too repetitive and that made me lose interest.

I thought the workbook aspect of this book was fun and to be the most engaging part of the book.

A Tale of Two Titties is built on a vital—and true—premise: most men don’t know how to write female characters well. Vondriska built a following on Twitter (now X) with an account that shares quotes from male author’s books that painfully illustrate just how woeful (on the generous side) to awful (on the honest side) some of these depictions are.

So I was interested to see what she’d do with more words to discuss this problem. But what works well in short bursts doesn’t necessarily equate to the same level of success in a full-length book. After a while of reading this, I felt like saying, “yeah, I got it already” as Vondriska hammered her point home yet one more time.

The layout of this book—with exercises, quizzes, and more—helps keep up interest. I also loved some of her premises, like women falling into stereotypes she calls Muses. And her examples of all the problems she’s found in these depictions of women are amusingly crafted.

But ultimately, I wonder who the audience for this book is. The men who truly need it either won’t admit they do or will be put off by the constant denigrating tone Vondriska employs. And if women pick up this book, it almost seems like the result is preaching to the choir. There’s a good lesson to be learned here for the male writer willing to explore it, even if they only use a chapter or two. But I’m not sure most of them will get even that far.

Meg Vondriska, the creator of the viral Twitter account, Men Write Women, wrote this tongue-and-cheek guide to "Conquering the Most Sexist Tropes in Literary History."

It's cleverly written, but ultimately far too long. It was full of worksheet pages to "help" you become a successful writer of women, which were cute but added with no intention of the reader actually using them. Perhaps the physical book, as opposed to the digital copy, would make these parts more enjoyable. Also, I had hoped for more actual quotes from badly written books (I imagine they couldn't get the rights?). However, Vondriska does make great points about the depiction of women in both print and film, and it's real-world impacts on policy and understanding.

I loved this!

The book was funny and enlightening, also rather depressing when you actually think about what you're reading.

It was well written, had fun and attention seizing activies throughout. I must say, I learnt a lot from this book. Highly advise!

This is a funny, irreverent book. While it makes some interesting points, I think the overall feminist take could be strengthened by not being so one-sided. The bottom line is that rhetoric is stronger when you address counterarguments. It was funny and true, but needs balance to make it more widely read and accepted.

Have you ever pondered, how can I reduce a female character in my story to a wonderful, bouncing, pair of breasts?

Well, does Meg Vondriska have the answer for you! Follow along in her book for an invigorating lesson in tropes, reductive language, and misogyny! Now with wordsearches, madlibs, and quizzes! How Fun!

In all seriousness, this book is a hilarious (but also depressing bc, wow... real) look at women in literature and the extensive amount of misogyny male authors have gotten away with in history. It's wild to think of all the media we have consumed in life at face value and just accepted that these characters and prejudices are ok! When shown through humour it really hits different. Recommend to basically anyone who enjoys media studies, feminism, and madlibs.

A simultaneously humorous-yet-sobering look into how male authors so frequently write female characters. The book was interesting and engaging, written in a workbook format so the reader could, uh, experiment with writing like famous male authors. As a fan of both Vondriska’s Twitter account and the subreddit of the same name, I knew a bit of what to expect, but I definitely learned a lot more about The Basic Bro Code for Writing Women, and Meg’s writing style really helped make the book less depressing. My only gripe with this book is that it gets a bit repetitive, although to be fair that’s mostly because the way men write women tends to be so repetitive! Probably not a book you would read through it one sitting, partly due to this and also due to its exercise-like format. Overall, I enjoyed the book.

I would not consider this a funny text, but a pure and realistic criticism. And I can't imagine who could laugh at this (well, yes, maybe a group of men who seek to dismiss, as often happens, women's experiences), but many moments in which one could feel a kind of helplessness when reading about these situations, which is what happened to me. While it's true that some of the exercises can be a bit fun, when I started to analyze a little further I could only get a bitter feeling. Not exactly because of the writers, but some go three miles, but because, as the author says, these situations are not really isolated to literature. It happens in real life.
So when she talked about rape depictions I was so outraged. Yes, as women we are taught that there is nothing more horrible than rape and, at the same time, we are taught never to retaliate against men, because we must be domestic and docile to them. Every time I read about this I get a little angrier. And the fact that it is treated so lightly in the works of some authors sulphurs me.
There are quite a few topics that this book touches on and I very much agree with a lot of the author's point of view. Maybe not with the term "girlboss", but we differ in little else.
While the exercises seemed too much to me, that is perhaps due to the format of the ARC, which was a PDF and was not organized very well on Kindle. But if I could have it in physical form, I think I might enjoy filling in those blanks more. It's a fact that I'm going to get it, because I don't pretend to be the only one reading it, there are some people who would benefit from approaching these topics.

A humorous look at the misogynistic and stereotypical way that male authors tend to write female characters. I liked the inclusion of games and activities it made the book very engaging! An entertaining coffee table sort of book. The only thing is that it's really only humorous to people who are already aware of this issue, I can't imagine it would actually succeed in creating awareness in the people who need it but maybe that's more their issue than the books