Just BOLD those you’ve read, ITALICIZE the ones you’ve been meaning to read and ??? the ones you have never heard of (or wish you had never heard of? Or the ones about which I wonder, “Why is this book on this list?”)
Alcott, Louisa May–Little Women Hasn’t every girl read Little Women?
Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Atwood, Margaret–Cat’s Eye
Austen, Jane–Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters ??
Barnes, Djuna–Nightwood ??
de Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret
Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.–Possession
Cather, Willa–My Antonia
Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street??
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History?????????
Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South??
Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory??
Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics???????????
Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day??
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
Eliot, Geroge–Middlemarch
Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen??
Erdrich, Louise–Tracks??
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper??
Gordimer, Nadine–July’s People??
Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence
Hamilton, Edith–Mythology
Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
Hooks, Bell–Bone Black??
Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road??
Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl??
Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House
Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them)
Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy??
Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella–Passing??
L’Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time
Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness (I’ve read the Earthsea books, but not this one.)
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger
Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals??
Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series Blah!
McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts??
Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve
Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones??
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables
Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost??
Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji??
Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women??
Murdoch, Iris–Severed Head
Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day??
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller’s Wife Blah, also.
Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys
O’Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time??
Picoult, Jodi–My Sister’s Keeper
Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools
Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead
Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats??
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping I read Gilead.
Rocha, Sharon–For Laci??
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones
Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie–White Teeth??
Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle??
Steel, Danielle–The House
Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah–You’re Wearing That??
Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife’s Tale
Urquhart, Jane–Away??
Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora–One Writer’s Beginnings
Wharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One’s Own
THere are an awful lot of books and authors on this list that I’ve never read or never even heard of. Can you recommend any of the ones I’ve not read? Are any of them “can’t miss” books as far as you’re concerned?
Interesting list — including some rather odd inclusions! 🙂
I’d class A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN by Betty Smith as a “can’t miss.” It’s not always an easy read in the sense that some of it is on the “gritty” side (those aspects went right over my head the first time I read it), but it’s very meaningful for someone who loves books, and it’s ultimately uplifting.
Best wishes, Laura
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Anne McCaffrey wrote the Pern books… And she should be on the list!
Of course, Anne McCaffrey wrote Dragonriders and the rest. LeGuin wrote the EarthSea trilogy.
Possession is superb. A must read, in my opinion.
I would say The Poisonwood Bible is wonderful, and The Lovely Bones was very very good also. Poisonwood can be hard to finish, and the end section isn’t as good, but the first part is well worth the effort. The Lovely Bones is sad and a bit disturbing, but very well written and unique.
The Tale of Genji is recognized by most historians as the first novel ever written…and that was back in the 12th century! So there you have it, folks, a Japanese noblewoman invented the novel.
The Mary Wollstonecraft book is genius. It’s what feminism should be, but has since devolved from.
My recommendations for your List: Fried Green Tomatoes (a sweet story that made me smile), The Yellow Wallpaper (oh so creepy, but she’s an awesome writer–you might like Herland), A Good Man Is Hard To Find (or any Flannery O’Connor–her short stories are amazing), A Room of One’s Own (you’ve already read my lavish praise of Virginia Woolf), and of course Possession.
Most of the ones you hadn’t heard of were strangers to me, too, but I happened to notice the Rachael Ray at B&N–it’s a cookbook of a year’s worth of recipes (she does a cooking show). Interesting, but hardly worth inclusion on this list! Fannie Farmer or Julia Child would make a lot more sense…
When I saw that the list was women writers a book popped into my head that I read last summer. Sure enough it’s on the list. I read “House of Spirits” by Isabele Allende during banned book week at our library. It was an excellent book but extremely disturbing, a bit coarse in places and not easily forgotten.
Oh – and of course Ayn Rand’s “The Fountain Head” is a must read. It is indeed a long, long book but will provide lots to think about even if you disagree with her philosophy.
What a MAGNIFICENT list of books you have here. If ya don’t mind I am copying it to a file to keep it before me as I chose some reading for myself and my daughter. I really enjoy your site, btw!!!
Hi Semicolon,
I’ve been a reader of yours since ‘way back in the earliest days of Barbara Curtis’ MommyLife.net. And now commenting on this obscure and expired post … but I am nearing the end of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” and it has fast become a favorite, so was checking in to see if you had read it also.
My heartiest recommendations to give it your time. It does have some gritty aspects (as commented above), but mercifully they were written pre-1950 and therefore not as crude as modern literature would present them. The sweetness and courage in this story is its’ saving grace.
Deb Meyers, aka floorplan