7 Books for Fans of Broad City

Part of Broad City’s appeal is its depiction of female friendship—Abbi and Ilana are inseparable and they know each other better than they know themselves. Their on-screen chemistry is what makes the show. In Friendship, the protagonists are (spoiler!) also best friends, also in New York, and also struggling with things like money and acting like an adult. People magazine calls the book “a wry, sharply observed coming-of-age story for the post-recession era.”

Penned by another comedian with another wildly successful television series ("The Mindy Project"), Mindy Kaling’s hilarious memoir is about growing up the obedient child of immigrant parents and going on to write and act for shows like "The Office." If you think "Broad City" is funny, you will think Mindy Kaling is funny.

Oprah is Abbi’s hero. She has a tattoo of Oprah’s face on her lower back and an enormous Oprah poster hanging above her bed. So we feel pretty confident recommending a collection of Oprah’s beloved “What I Know For Sure” columns that she wrote monthly for O, The Oprah Magazine. Oprah’s reflections on joy, resilience, and gratitude all in one volume? Yes, Abbi would definitely have this on her bookshelf.

Sloane Crosley is different from Abbi and Ilana in a lot of ways. She can uphold a professional career, for one. She calls Manhattan home, whereas the Broad City stars reside in grungier Gowanus. But even when she’s being a bridesmaid or volunteering at the American Museum of Natural History, Crosley’s experiences always have an amusing twist and usually end in disaster. She’s also really funny.

Nora Ephron is funny, honest, fearless, and an icon for American women. This volume celebrates all of her major works: her novel Heartburn; the screenplay for When Harry Met Sally; and her magazine journalism from the 1970s, with razor-sharp profiles of figures such as Helen Gurley Brown, Dorothy Schiff, and Julie Nixon Eisenhower. And did we mention that she's funny?

In Broad City’s interview with Sleater-Kinney on NPR Music, Carrie Brownstein recommended Miranda July’s new novel, The First Bad Man. We’d like to draw attention to July’s acclaimed short story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You. July’s stories and films are known for their whimsy and awkwardness, and Broad City’s colorful, chaotic, absurd version of New York has a degree of that as well.

Sheila Heti’s novel is a raw, startling, genre-defying novel of friendship, sex, and love in the new millennium—a compulsive read that Bookforum calls “like spending a day with your new best friend.” You could also use that same exact sentence to describe Broad City. You had us at genre-defying!