The 100 Most Influential Books by Women

[laura0218]

I've seen this on a couple of different blogs today:  A Work in Progress, and Back to Books.  I'm not sure of its origin, and it appears to be all 20th-century authors.  The ones I've read are in bold purple (only 23, I'm afraid).  In some cases, I've read the author but not the specific book mentioned (Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Iris Murdoch

Comments

[raidergirl3]

LM Montgomery, Maeve Binchy, Charlaine Harris, Jean Auel, Elizabeth George, Agatha Christie, Ellis Peters, Enid Blyton, Bernice Morgan, Kate Atkinson, Sarah Vowell, Lois Lowry, Miriam Toews, JK Rowling, Phillipa Gregory, Jodi Picoult, Ann Marie MacDonald,

I'm not completely impressed with that list of female authors; a lot more accessible authors could have been listed.

[anonymous]

I posted this on my blog: The Lists Books for the Obsessive Reader some time ago...I got it from a site called Listology. Several readers I think picked it up from my ssite and it has made the blog rounds and generated some conversation (many people don't like it because of its limitations!). Anyway, thought you'd be interested in where it started :)

Wendy

[laura0218]

Ah, that shouldn't surprise me Wendy! I do subscribe to your Books for the Obsessive Reader blog but the list didn't really "hit" me until I saw it a few times! And then of course I forgot where I'd seen it FIRST!

[mrstreme]

Was there a time period on this particular list? It looks like they missed some influential female wrtiers of earlier centuries: Jane Austen (as you mentioned), the Brontes, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others.

While I disagree with some of the books listed, I like the premise. Perhaps it would have been more inclusive to include a list of authors and not her works.

Would make for a great reading challenge though, huh?

[anonymous]

Exactly what I was thinking, Jill - which was why the list appealed to me when I fist saw it :) Even though it seems to leave out quite a few of the big names, it would be a fun list to read from...Listology is a site where people create lists, so it is quite possible this was a personal list - nothing official but her preferences. I'm a little amused at how some readers seem to be almost angry at the names left off!

[anonymous]

Exactly what I was thinking, Jill - which was why the list appealed to me when I fist saw it :) Even though it seems to leave out quite a few of the big names, it would be a fun list to read from...Listology is a site where people create lists, so it is quite possible this was a personal list - nothing official but her preferences. I'm a little amused at how some readers seem to be almost angry at the names left off! Wendy

[mrstreme]

Aahh, I never heard of Listology, so you're probably right about it being someone's person list. Even the term "influential" is open to interpretation. Why Margaret Mitchell is very influential to me personally, I could definitely see how other women writers, such as Alice Walker or Joyce Carol Oates, probably had a larger influence on the literary world as a whole.

[juliette_m_m]

Hello ladies! This is very interesting and yes I have been following some of the conversations regarding the influential nature of the women or not. Personally I think a number of extremely significant authors were missed - as Jill suggested. It was the very fact that they are little less predictable that excited and enticed me to tak eon the list