A Year of Reading Women

[systemcrasher]

Originally published at Fiction. You can comment here or there.

I ran into this reddit post the other day where folks suggested classic and awesome books by women. I pitched in a few friends of mine: Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Brenda Cooper, Monica Byrne, etc.

But the longer I thought about the list the more uncomfortable I felt.

I’m ashamed to note how few of the books I myself had read.

It’s important to me to read diversely, partially to develop my own writing, but frankly also just for my development as a person.

I know it’s not intentional, but it bugs me how much I unthinkingly default to male authors most of the time. So I copied the whole damn thing, cut out everything I’d already read, and made a giant list of my own. I’ve decided to only read women authors for the next year, and I’m tasking myself to read at least twelve books.

I started yesterday with N.K. Jemisin’s “The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.” I’m not a huge fan of epic fantasy, but her world-building is astounding.

Next I’ll read Ann Leckie’s “Ancillary Justice” and then maybe Nnedi Okorafor’s “Who Fears Death?”
Anyway, here’s the extended list. It’s by no means exhaustive. Feel free to add books in the comments.

1. Octavia Butler - Kindred
2. Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle
3. Monica Byrne - The Girl in the Road
4. Toni Morrison - Beloved
5. Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake
6. Karen Russell - Swamplandia!
7. Virginia Woolf - A Room of One’s Own, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves and to the Lighthouse
8. Willa Cather - O Pioneers!, My Antonia, The Professor’s House
9. Joyce Carol Oates - Them, The Falls
10. Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights
11. Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
12. Pat Cadigan - Tea From an Empty Cup, Mindplayers, Synners -
13. Wilhelmina Baird - Crashcourse -
14. Connie Willis - Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Blackout, All Clear
15. Lauren Beukes - Zoo City -
16. A.S. Byatt - Possession
17. Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God
18. Alice Munro - Runaway (short story collection)
19. Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
20. Carson McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
21. Flannery O’Connor - Good Country People, The Life You Save May be Your Own
22. Amy Tan - The Joy Luck Club
23. Alice Walker - The Temple of My Familiar, The Color Purple
24. Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness
25. Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
26. Isabel Allende - The House of the Spirits
27. Maria Luisa Bombal - The House of Fog
28. Judy Blume - Forever…
29. Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca
30. Elizabeth Gaskell - North and South
31. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - The Yearling
32. Florida. L.M. Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables
33. Anais Nin - Three Little Birds, A Spy in the House of Love
34. Annie Proulx - The Shipping News
35. Louise Erdrich - Love Medicine
36. Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, House of Mirth
37. Kate Chopin - The Awakening
38. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) - Middlemarch
39. Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
40. Clarice Lispector - The Hour of the Star
41. Penelope Lively - Moon Tiger
42. Joanne Harris - Chocolat
43. S.E. Hinton - The Outsiders
44. Susanna Clark - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
45. Djuna Barnes - Nightwood
46. Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
47. Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible
48. Marilynne Robinson - Housekeeping
49. Isabel Allende - The House of the Spirits
50. Donna Tartt - The Secret History
51. Doris Lessing - The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook
52. Agatha Christie - And Then There Were None
53. Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind
54. Aung San Suu Kyi - Letters from Burma
55. Anne Sexton - Transformations
56. Joan Jacobs Brumberg - The Body Project
57. NoViolet Bulawayo - We Need New Names
58. Nell Freudenberger - The Newlyweds
59. Jesmyn Ward - Salvage the Bones
60. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah
61. Candice Millard - Destiny of the Republic
62. Jennifer Egan - Look at Me
63. Elizabeth Strout - Olive Kitteridge
64. Cheryl Strayed - Wild
65. Ruth Ozeki - A Tale for the Time Being
66. Katherine Dunn - Geek Love
67. Malorie Blackman - Noughts and Crosses
68. Philippa Gregory - The Other Boleyn Girl
69. Jacqueline Susann - Valley of the Dolls
70. Lois McMaster Bujold - Shards of Honor, Falling Free
71. N.K. Jemisin - The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms -
72. Nnedi Okorafor - Who Fears Death -
73. Ekaterina Sedia - The Alchemy of Stone, -
74. Jo Walton - Tooth and Claw, Farthing
75. Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice -
76. Joanna Russ - The Female Man -
77. Leigh Brackett - The Long Tomorrow -
78. Kate Wilhelm - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang -
79. Anna Seghers - Transit -
80. Tricia Sullivan - Someone to Watch Over Me -
81. Justina Robson - Silver Screen -
82. Gwyneth Jones - Escape Plans -