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