In July, 2015 Time ran an article entitled 35 Books Everyone Should Read in Their Lifetime. There are tons of book lists all over the Internet. But this is Time, for crying out loud. An institution. So where did Time go for their list? Reddit. Oof. So it should come as no surprise that Time‘s list was severely lacking one thing: female authors. 35 titles, only three women. Really, Time?
I posted a link to the article on Facebook and asked my friends if we could do better. I listed 10 off the top of my head. Three hours and 87 comments later, we had a list. Whoa, Nelly, did we have a list. Over 100. The commenters were from a blend of male, female, and genderqueer authors, editors, and publishers within the Portland literary community.
What I loved most about pulling this list together (aside from how easily everyone could rattle off books/authors), is the number of authors for whom many of us said, “Anything and everything by her!” With that in mind, I will also post a list of just the authors. Because how in the hell is anyone expected to list just one title by Margaret Atwood or Ursula K. LeGuin or Barbara Kingsolver or Dorothy Allison or Lidia Yuknavitch or Judy Blume or—see what I mean? And I realize there are some author names missing, but they will go on the other list. Also note that some books are for younger readers (Magic Treehouse and Junie B Jones), but I felt it worthwhile to list because they are series, kids love them, and anything that will get kids reading chapter books belongs on the list.
Enjoy!
Books by Female Authors Everyone Should Read in Their Lifetime
- A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor
- A Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret, Atwood
- A House Divided, Pearl S. Buck
- A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
- A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
- A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
- All About Love, Bell Hooks
- Always Coming Home, Ursula K. LeGuin
- An Untamed State, Roxane Gay
- Anagrams, Lorrie Moore
- Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret, Judy Blume
- Artificial Things, Karen Joy Fowler
- Baby’s on Fire, Liz Prato
- Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill
- Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay
- Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
- The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo
- The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
- Beloved, Toni Morrison
- Blackbird, Jennifer Lauck
- Blood & Guts in High School, Kathy Acker
- Blood Gravity, Gayle Towell
- The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
- Call Me Home, Megan Kruse
- Carry the Sky, Kate Gray
- Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood
- The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch
- Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel
- Collected Poems of Anne Sexton
- The Color Purple, Alice Walker
- Compression Scars and Fat Girl Terrestrial, Kellie Wells
- Cunt, Inga Muscio
- The Dead and the Living, Sharon Olds
- Deathcats, Luisa Valenzuela
- Deenie, Judy Blume
- Democracy, Joan Didion
- Dirty Words on Clean Skin, Anita Finlay
- Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller
- Dora: A Head Case, Lidia Yuknavitch
- The Enchanted, Rene Denfeld
- The End of Eve, Ariel Gore
- The Face of War, Beryl Markham
- Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
- Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
- The Gaze, Elif Shafek
- The Girl on a Train, Paula Hawkins
- The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls
- The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
- Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
- The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
- Good Woman, Lucille Clifton
- Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh
- Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Monro
- Honored Guest: Stories by Joy Harjo
- The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
- Housekeeping, Marilynn Robinson
- How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez
- How to Make an American Quilt, Whitney Otto
- How We Become Human, Joy Harjo
- I Feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
- I Remember Nothing, Nora Ephron
- In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, Ellen Gilchrist
- In This Light, Melanie Rae Thon
- Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, Susanne Clarke
- The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
- Junie B. Jones (series), Barbara Park
- Just Kids, Patti Smith
- Landfall, Ellen Urbani
- The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver
- The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. LeGuin
- The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
- Lessons from a Dead Girl, Jo Knowles
- Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, Vendela Vida
- The Liars Club, Mary Karr
- Like a House on Fire, Cate Kennedy
- Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
- Little Miss Strange, Joanna Rose
- Lord of Misrule and Bogeywoman, Jaimy Gordon
- Love in Infant Monkeys, Lydia Millet
- The Lover, Marguerite Duras
- Machine Dreams, Jayne Anne Phillips
- Maddaddam Trilogy, Margaret Atwood
- The Madwoman’s Underclothes, Germaine Greer
- Magic Tree House (series), Mary Pope Osborne
- The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems, Diane Wachowski
- Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
- Music for Torching, A.M. Homes
- Notes from No Man’s Land, Eula Biss
- Olive Kitterage, Elizabeth Strout
- The Orchardist, Amanda Koplin
- The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean
- Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen
- The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton
- Parable of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler
- Plague of Doves, Louise Erdrich
- The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
- Possessing the Secret of Joy, Alice Walker
- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
- Ramona Series, Bevery Cleary
- The Real and the Unreal, Ursula K. LeGuin
- The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
- Rise, L. Annette Binder
- The Round House, Louise Erdich
- Ruby, Cynthia Bond
- The Sadeian Woman, Angela Carter
- Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life, Abigail Thomas
- Sexing the Cherry, Jeanette Winerson
- The Small Backs of Children, Lidia Yuknavitch
- Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
- Sons, Pearl S. Buck
- The Stories of Eva Luna, Isabel Allende
- Strange Things Happen Here, Luisa Valenzuela
- Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
- To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
- Trash, Dorothy Allison
- View with a Grain of Sand, Wislawa Szyborska
- West with the Night, Beryl Markham
- The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
- The White Album, Joan Didion
- White Oleander, Janet Fitch
- Why Did I Ever?, Mary Robison
- Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
- Wild, Cheryl Strayed
- The Will to Change, Bell Hooks
- Wise Children, Angela Carter
- Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros
- Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronté
Post Update:
Wow! I didn’t anticipate the amazing response! Here’s the deal. This list was created when a group of us were just randomly tossing out titles and authors one night on Facebook. We can’t possibly know every female author, and it’s only natural we left some out. It wasn’t intentional, that’s just how it went down. Yep, there’s more Lidia Yuknavitch than Jane Austen. My friends and I love really visceral, really intense writing, which is what you get with Lidia. Also, many of us know her personally, so it’s kind of natural her name comes up. The intent was not to slight anyone. We’re just humans rattling off book titles. But I’m more than happy to add to the list. If there is an author/books you feel passionately about, please leave it in the comments below, and I’ll get to it as quickly as I can.
Readers’ Additions:
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard
- The Black Prince; The Sea the Sea; The Philosopher’s Pupil (for more titles, see comments), Iris Murdoch
- A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
- Eat the Document, Dana Spiotta
- UnAmericans, Molly Antopol
- Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Possession, A.S. Byatt
- Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Grace Paley
- Middlemarch, George Eliot
- Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
- Last Things, Jenny Offill
- How to Build A Girl, Caitlin Moran
- Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
- Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kate Atkinson
- The Gathering, Anne Enright
- The Keep, Jennifer Egan
- I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
- On Beauty, Zadie Smith
- Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott
- The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, Louise Erdrich
- The Museum of Extraordinary Things, Alice Hoffman
- Nothing was the Same, Kay Redfield Jamison
- Love Medicine P.S., Louise Erdrich
- Two Serious Ladies, Jane Bowles
- The Artists’ Way, Julia Cameron
- The Harry Potter series, JK Rowling
- A Map of the World, Jane Hamilton
- Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
- The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
- Room, Emma Donaghur
- The Long Winter (The Little House series), Laura Ingalls Wilder
- The House on Coliseum Street, Shirley Ann Grau
- The Keepers of the House, Shirley Ann Grau (Pulitzer, 1965)
- The Black Prince and Other Stories, Shirley Ann Grau
- All my Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews
- The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
- February, Lisa Moore
- A Restricted Country, Joan Nestle
- Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Montgomery
- Far to Go, Alison Pick
- In Another Place, Not Here, Dionne Brand
- Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
- Bottle Rocket Hearts, Zoe Whittall
- The Diviners, Margaret Laurence
- Runaway, Alice Munro
- Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein
- Paris France, Gertrude Stein
- The Autobiograhy of Alice B Toklas, Gertrude Stein
- Wars I Have Seen, Gertrude Stein
- Oyster, Janet Turner
- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
- The Grass Is Singing, Doris Lessing
- Martha Quest, Doris Lessing
- What Alice Forgot, Liane Moriarty
- Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
- My Antonia, Willa Cather
- O Pioneers!, Willa Cather
- Dry White Season, Nadine Godimer
- Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozecki
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barberry
- The Man Who Loved Children, Christina Steed
- During the Reign of the Queen of Persia
- Art Objects, Jeanette Winterson
- Regeneration Trilogy, Pat Barker
- Boy Snow Bird, Helen Oyeyemi
- Kindred, Octavia Butler
- Wild Seed, Octavia Butler
- Zami A New Spelling of My Name, Audre Lorde
- Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy
- He, She and It, Marge Piercy
- A Weave of Women, E.M. Broner
- My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki
- The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd
- The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
- River Finger Woman, Elana Dykewomon
- Beyond the Pale, Elana Dykewomon
- The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
- Mother of Pearl, Melinda Haynes
- Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters
- The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Sue Monk Kidd
- The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd
- When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön
- America’s First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches, Maria W. Stewart
- Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, Bell Hooks
- In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Alice Walker
It would be awesome if you could add some Iris Murdoch to this list. I suggest The Black Prince, The Sea The Sea, or The Philosopher’s Pupil. Or The Unicorn, or The Sacred and Profane Love Machine…. or The Severed Head. She’s so good, I really can’t decide between these.
The Handmaid’s Tale is listed twice here. Looks like it was entered incorrectly the first time (which also has a comma after Margaret, i.e. “Margaret, Atwood”) and listed under A as “A Handmaid’s Tale.”
Thanks, Julie! This is one of those that more than one person added in our Facebook thread. When I put them all in the spreadsheet to sort them out and delete duplicates, I didn’t catch it because of “A” and “The.” oops! Thanks for spotting it. I deleted the incorrect one.
Shocked Annie Dillard isn’t on that list. Pilgrim At Tinker Creek?
Added, thanks 🙂
Not one Willa Cather book?!?
Like I said before, we were just rattling off titles. Can’t know all of them, right? Which ones would you like added? Let me know and I’ll make sure it goes up there. Thanks for you input!
O Pioneers!, My Antonia, and Death Comes For the Archbishop
(But all of them, really!)
Got ’em, thanks!
Great list! #13 is my completely unbiased favorite.
(Check the spelling on #50.)
Further nominations:
Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Good Squad (Pulitzer finalist! In a year nobody won!)
Eat the Document, by Dana Spiotta
and, although I’ve yet to read it, I’d bet that The UnAmericans, by Molly Antopol, will have staying power
likewise, either Half of a Yellow Sun or Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
In reverse order:
Additions: Again, thanks! Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is definitely someone everyone should read! I haven’t read the others, but I’m glad for the recommendations.
#50: thanks for the catch!
#13: unbiased. um… 😉
Typo – It’s “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” not “Good Squad.”
Favorites from my bookshelf in no particular order:
Possession, A.S. Byatt
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Grace Paley
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Last Things, Jenny Offill
How to Build A Girl, Caitlin Moran
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kate Atkinson
The Gathering, Anne Enright
The Keep, Jennifer Egan
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
On Beauty, Zadie Smith
Thanks, Elizabeth – added!
Isabel Allende? House of the Spirits, Daughter of Fortune, etc. Big miss.
#113, The Stories of Eva Luna. I’ll add those two, as well.
Alice Walker, Sandra Cisneros, Esmeralda Santiago, Diana Abu Jaber, Julia Glass, Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, Monica Drake, Carson McCullers, Sara Gruen, Geraldine Brooks, Anne Lamott, Julia Alvarez, Karen Karbo, Carson McCullers, Karen Joy Fowler…
Most of them are up there. Since you don’t have a specific title, how about I save it for the author list?
I see some of the women I named are on the list already. Happy to see that, and I agree with you on most of them. I rarely can get around to the men! Except for Sherman Alexie, Tanehisi Coates, and Anthony Doerr. 🙂
All awesome male writers. I’m especially a huge fan of Sherman Alexie. Thanks!
Anything by Elana Dykewomon!
Thanks. I’ll be sure and include her name when I put together the list of authors!
Jane Bowles – Two Serious Ladies
Got it 🙂
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman
Nothing was the Same by Kay Redfield Jamison
Love Medicine P.S. by Louise Erdrich
The artists way- Julia Cameron
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (how did we miss this???)
A Map of the World – Jane Hamilton
Bel Canto – Ann Patchett
The Night Circus- Erin Morgenstern
Room – Emma Donaghur
Added!
How about Laura Ingalls Wilder? Any book could go on the list, really, but the most definitive of the Little House series is often thought to be “The Long Winter”.
Holy smokes, Laura Ingalls Wilder. I didn’t read them growing up, but I’ve known a lot of girls/women who learned to love reading because of them. Thanks for the suggestion. Added!
If you haven’t read anything by Shirley Ann Grau I hope you will look for her books. She won the Pulitzer in 1965? for The Keepers of the House. Also, wroteThe House on Coliseum Street, The Black Prince and other Stories, and others. She is too little known these days. At one time her books were mostly out of print, but I don’t think that is the case anymore.
A Pulitzer? Wow! How did that not make the Time list? Holy smokes! Thanks for your input. Added 🙂
We need a shared Google doc, Edee, where people can add books in alpha order by author or title. Or a FB group where there’s a post for each book so we can discuss them under the book title post as we read them. Or… we’ll you know, a clubhouse!
Great list! I’d like to add:
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
February by Lisa Moore
A Restricted Country by Joan Nestle
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Far to Go by Alison Pick
In Another Place, Not Here by Dionne Brand
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall
The Diviners by Margaret Laurence
Runaway by Alice Munro
I could go on and on… 😉
Got ’em, thanks!
A million thank yous. Not a novel but could not be happy without Mary Oliver….especially “A Summer’s Day”I hope my book club will hit this list! We are reading Handmaids Tale at present
Gertrude Stein:
Tender Buttons
Paris France
The Autobiograhy of Alice B Toklas
Wars I Have Seen
etc.
Added, thanks!
My additions would be
Janet Turner Hospital for Oyster
Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre
Doris Lessing Martha Quest and The Grass is Singing
Liane Moriarty What Alice Forgot
(So many times there, but these are from a list I made where the criteria was how much they’d influenced my thinking, or just plain stuck in my thoughts. Oyster came top on that list)
Added, thanks!
Nadine Godimer dry white season
Got it, thanks! 🙂
Ruth Ozecki – Tale for the Time Being
Muriel Barberry – The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Christina Steed – The Man Who Loved Children
Joan Chase – During the Reign of the Queen of Persia
Jeanette Winterson – Art Objects
Pat Barker – Regeneration Trilogy
Helen Oyeyemi – Boy Snow Bird
Octavia Butler – Kindred
Octavia Butler – Wild Seed
Audrey Lorde – Zami A New Spelling of My Name
Marge Piercy – Woman on the Edge of Time
Marge Piercy- He, She and It
E.M. Broner – A Weave of Women
Ruth Ozeki- My Year of Meats
Sue Monk Kidd- The Invention of Wings
Sue Monk Kidd- The Secret life of Bees
Elana Dykewomon – River Finger Woman
Elana Dykewomon – Beyond the Pale
Mary Doria Russell – The Sparrow
Melinda Haynes – Mother of Pearl
Got ’em, thanks!
Audre Lorde…my iPad autocorrected…
No problem. I have a love/hate with autocorrect 🙂
Sarah Waters – Tipping the Velvet
Added. And thanks for all the wonderful additions!
Here are my must reads, just off the top of my head. I’m sure if I looked in my library, I’d find a dozen more.
Spiritual Journey books:
“The Dance of the Dissident Daughter” Sue Monk Kidd
“The Mermaid Chair” Sue Monk Kidd (read “Dance…” first, this one isn’t exactly a sequel but sort of)
“When Things Fall Apart” Pema Chödrön
Black Feminist Books:
Maria W. Stewart, America’s First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches
“Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black” bell hooks (I’ve read 5 of her books)
“In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” Alice Walker
Those sound awesome, Jennifer. Added!
Amy Greene – Bloodroot
(A relatively new southern author)
Betty Smith – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Stephenie Meyer – The Host
(Couldn’t put it down, and I was on vacation in Italy!)
Catherine V Forrest – anything she wrote
Anya Seton — Devil Water, Katherine, Green Darkness, Foxfire …
Georgette Heyers — Devil’s Cub, Infamous Army, Lady of Quality…
Barbara Mertz (aka Barbara Michaels– Be Buried In The Rain, Elizabeth Peters — Street of Five Moons…)
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns; The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler; Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy
Please add to your list: Jeanne Cordova’s “When We Were Outlaws”. Any of Jeanne’s books are great read.
H is for Hawk, by Helen MacDonald
Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson
Tell The Wolves I’m Home, by Carol Rifka Brunt
Are some favorites I read in the past couple of years. Thank you for this list. I will print out and give to my mother to share with her book club – they are always looking for good books. And I need a good list to read from, as well!