Required Reading is a series in which we invite people we love to recommend five of the books that have defined their journey as a reader. Consider it your new favorite book club.
Comedian Jacqueline Novak’s 90-minute opus Get on Your Knees, a frenetic meditation on fellatio, comes with quite the syllabus. “I know what you’re thinking: Does she even read?” Novak jokes in the show, which landed on Netflix late last month. “I do, I do. And yet how can I, when I’m just a girl with a ponytail lusting after the common shaft?”
Throughout Get on Your Knees, Novak cites multiple books and authors, including Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and the works of Tony Robbins. (She also offers musings on the stoicism of vaginas, so it’s safe to assume she’s read some Marcus Aurelius too.) Longtime fans won’t be surprised by the conceptual depths she plumbs in the special—from the linguistic indignities of the word penis to the psychological profundity of declaring oneself “the blow-job queen.” (Novak cohosts the podcast Poog with Kate Berlant, a medium in which both women’s untamable intellects shine.)
However, pushing the boundaries of language is central not only to Get on Your Knees but also to Novak’s philosophy more generally. “I did study linguistics a bit in college and found it life-changing to look at everything through the lens of language—the meaning baked into the grammar of a given language,” she tells Vogue over email. “The realm of words, no matter the subject matter, can be beautiful, and that fact impresses me and makes me want to run the vulgar through the language machine and see what comes out.”
In addition to her fruitful stand-up and podcasting pursuits, Novak is also the author of How to Weep in Public: Feeble Offerings on Depression From One Who Knows, a memoir-meets-self-help book. So it follows that, when asked for a list of books that carry special meaning for her, she waded into those waters. “I read a lot of books with a promise to the reader of imparting some specific lesson. I’m very susceptible to titles that promise you to achieve outrageous excellence if only you read the book, like How to Win Arguments Like a Hostage Negotiator,” she reflects. “You can find your way [with literature], but nonfiction, self-help, personal-development, and psychology recommendations are huge.”
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