So last night was a big night for Girls. The show and its writer and star, Lena Dunham, picked up a couple Golden Globes and the second season premiered on HBO. But even if you’re one of those people who “doesn’t watch tv” …

The Millions on “Ten Books to Read Now That HBO’s Girls Is Back”:

But while Dunham’s lady-centered wry comedy may be singular in today’s television line-up, the world of literature is home to a multitude of books with the same appeal as Girls, books that feature a certain kind of female protagonist (usually one coming of age) or a certain kind of female narrator (pointed, self-deprecating, and ultimately wise). These are books that — like Girls – explore what it is like to be young and hungry — hungry for love and hungry for sex, but most of all, hungry for recognition and hungry for adulthood. Ultimately, the girls in these books, like the girls of Girls, are hungry to become the women they will one day be.

And in case you missed it, Friday’s show was a Girls bonanza with Terry’s interview with Lena Dunham and David Bianculli’s review of the second season.

David Bianculli on the second season of Girls, which premieres on January 13:

Girls, without question, has the definite aroma of both honesty and originality. The four main characters — aspiring writer Hannah, art curator Marnie, free spirit Jessa, repressed spirit Shoshanna — have problems holding onto jobs, maintaining their intimate relationships, and even staying close to one another. The breakups are messy, but so are the less dramatic times. Sex, in this series, usually gets down to equal parts passion and awkwardness — which makes it seem all the more real, and, like the emotions displayed throughout, all the more raw.

Image courtesy of HBO

The HBO show Girls gets all dressed up in its Box Set Season 1 duds today. Included as an extra is the Fresh Air interview with Lena Dunham. We’re tickled!

We’re planning to rebroadcast the interview on Friday, but that is, of course, subject to change as plans often are. If you feel like listening now though, here ya go.

With both Lena [Dunham] and Kristen [Wiig] … you do get the sense that they approach all of the work differently than men. The things that they’re writing about are different, but it’s hard to say what it is … because everyone’s looking for love, everyone’s looking to be happy, everyone wants to be grounded. There are specific neuroses to their projects that are not exactly how men are. There’s more of a vulnerability to how they go about their lives. … [T]hey’re all willing to not worry about being liked. They will expose themselves and show all of their pain and frustrations and desires, and we never have a moment where they think, ‘I’ll look weird doing that,’ or ‘That makes me look bad.’ They just want to expose the truth, which is what I always want. And being around them has made me want to do that more in my work.

— Judd Apatow on the different working attitudes of men and women

There is something vulnerable about showing your tattoos to people, even while it gives you a feeling that you are wearing a sleeve when you are naked.

— Lena Dunham on tattoos.

It’s happened to me more than once, and my mom says it must be genetic because she has a couple of them in her past too. Our hope is that what it means is that we are a comfortable resting place for a guy who is figuring things out. Our fear is that we turn men gay.

— Lena Dunham (and her mom) have each dated several guys who have turned out to be gay. [full interview here]

This show isn’t supposed to feel exclusionary. It’s supposed to feel honest, and it’s supposed to feel true to many aspects of my experience. But for me to ignore that criticism and not to take it in would really go against my beliefs and my education in so many things. And I think the liberal-arts student in me really wants to engage in a dialogue about it, but as I learn about engaging with the media, I realize it’s not the same as sitting in a seminar talking things through at Oberlin. Every quote is sort of used and misused and placed and misplaced, and I really wanted to make sure I spoke sensitively to this issue. …

— On today’s Fresh Air, Lena Dunham addresses the criticism Girls has received about a lack of diversity in the cast

Lena Dunham on navigating the tricky boundaries with her parents: “I am a working woman out in the world, but I still live with my parents half the time. I’ve been taking this long, stuttering period of moving out. … I feel like I’m constantly asking them to please stay out of my work life, but also to please bring me soup. It’s this weird moment where you just don’t have a sense of what age-appropriate behavior is because there is no age-appropriate behavior.”

(via Lena Dunham Addresses Criticism Aimed At ‘Girls’ : NPR)

Today: Lena Dunham addresses all of the backlash surrounding her HBO show Girls and talks about how she came up with many of the story lines. (Other topics include her tattoos, her feelings about sex, college, parents, growing older, finding out former boyfriends are gay, and navigating post-college life.)

Monday: Lena Dunham

David Bianculli, on Lena Dunham’s new series Girls: “The voice Hannah the character, and Girls the series, comes closest to echoing, and emulating, is that of Louis C.K.’s character on the FX series Louie. He, like Hannah, seems to be fighting an uphill battle against life in New York, and questioning what it all means. And looking for love in a lot of the wrong places, and venting his frustrations in ways that sometimes are brilliantly clever, and other times are hilariously, helplessly nonverbal.”

24-year-old filmmaker Lena Dunham, on her character Aura’s low self-esteem in the movie Tiny Furniture: “It’s trite to say, but when you’re not sure about who you are, or what you’re worth, or what your purpose is, there’s a way that you’ll let people who you think have a clearer sense of those things [into your life] and be thankful for any attention those people will give you.”