Sloane Crosley has written for most of the magazines you can name off the top of your head (The New Yorker, Elle, Playboy, Vanity Fair, GQ, among many others). Her subjects range from Bond bombshells to the conservative crusade against the Girl Scouts to the death of the department store Henri Bendel. Since her first essay collection, I Was Told There Would Be Cake, debuted in 2008, she’s regularly landed on best-seller lists. She’s even played a writer on TV; in 2007, she did a brief cameo on Gossip Girl. She turned the experience into an essay for The Believer.

Crosley is a fiction writer, too, and her second novel, Cult Classic, publishes on Tuesday. The book centers on Lola, a hesitant fiancée who keeps bumping into ex-boyfriends in downtown Manhattan. Here, Crosley answers our Take Five questionnaire, sharing the movie she’s seeing, the book she’s reading, the gadget she relies on, and more. —Jensen Davis

1.

The Movie She’s Seeing

Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman

2.

The Book She’s Reading

The Copenhagen Trilogy, by Tove Ditlevsen

3.

The Series She’s Watching

What We Do in the Shadows, on FX

4.

The Podcast She’s Listening To

Blank Check with Griffin & David

5.

The Gadget She Relies On

Scissors

Sloane Crosley is the author of several books, including the essay collection Look Alive Out There and the novel The Clasp. Her latest book, Cult Classic, will be published on June 7 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux