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Do whatever you want, try not to be tempted to read The Luminaries. Booker prize or not, the book is too big, the plot is too ambitious and flawed which overshadow the excellent characterization and style.
Somebody mentioned Donna Tartt. I enjoyed The Secret History. The Goldfinch and The Little Friend are sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. I will definitely read the latter but don't feel much excitement for The Goldfinch.
sorry, double post!
Hilary Mantel?? 2 Booker Prizes in consecutive years. Anita Brookner.? Lionel Shriver?
So far this year the only female authored book I have completed is I hear them cry by Shiho Kishimoto.
I am working on two short story collection at present. Dear Life by Alice Munroe and A Most Ambiguous Sunday by Jung Young Moon. If you are looking to read something by a Korean female I will personally vouch for at least the first story in the collection.
For African literature by females there are a few I'd highly recommend.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheFifthElement
So Vast the Prison ~ Assia Djebar
Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade ~ Assia Djebar
Our Sister Killjoy ~ Ama Ata Aidoo
Nervous Conditions ~ Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Book of Not ~ Tsitsi Dangarembga
Half of A Yellow Sun ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Efuru ~ Flora Nwapa
Faceless ~ Amma Darko
So Long a Letter ~ Mariama Ba
The Icarus Girl ~ Helen Oyeyemi
The Slave Girl ~ Buchi Emecheta
The Bride Price ~ Buchi Emecheta
Another two books I'd highly recommend, but out of Eastern Europe are:
Primeval and Other Times ~ Olga Tokarczuk
The Museum of Abandoned Secrets ~ Oksana Zabuzhko
The first of those two might just be my favourite novel written by a female author. It's just brilliant.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Donna Tartt as a contender. Her latest book "the Goldfinch" has generated a lot of excellent reviews and as it is concerned with Art might be something that St Luke's Guild would be interested in.
sorry I see it has been mentioned,though the writer seems not to be interested in the prospect. I intend to start it next week.
Stella GIBBONS, Cold Comfort Farm
Sylvia PLATH, The Bell Jar
Alice WALKER, The Temple of My Familiar
Jane AUSTEN, Persuasion
Iris MURDOCH, The Bell
Zadie SMITH, On Beauty
Marivi SOLIVEN, The Mango Bride
Isabel ALLENDE, La Maison aux Esprits
Elizabeth BOWEN, The Last September
Edna O'BRIEN, The Country Girls
Kate CHOPIN, The Awakening and Other Stories
Edith WHARTON, Summer
Jean RHYS, Quartet
Willa CATHER, The Professor's House
Muriel SPARK, The Public Image
Nadine GORDIMER, Burger's Daughter
Pat BARKER, The Ghost Road
Joyce Carol OATES, Them
Siri HUSTVEDT, What I Loved
Toni MORRISON, Sula
Margaret ATWOOD, The Blind Assassin
Rebecca WEST, The Thinking Reed
Susan HILL, I'm the King of the Castle
Anne BRONTE, Agnes Grey
Let's see how many female authored books I have read in 2014.
Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse
Shazaf Fatima Haider - How It Happened
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Leila Aboulela - Minaret
Uzma Aslam Khan - Trespassing
Anne Enright - The Gathering
Anita Desai - Fire in the Mountain
Rukhsana Ahmad - The Gatekeeper's Wife
Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows
That's 9 of 62 books I read in 2014. That's less than 15%. Not good. I'm disappointed, and my list doesn't even feature many top female writers.
I read Elisabeth Gaskell (Mary Barton), George Elliot (Middleman) and Ursula Le Guin (Left Hand of Darkness)
Edit: I think I read a Doris Lessing book too (A Proper Marriage). I will have to look back over the books I read in 2014, because I am surprised I did not read more female authors. I do intend to read a Jane Austen and a Charlotte Bronze in 2015, and a Daphne du Maurier. Otherwise I think my TBR list is mostly male.
Edit: Now I am back at home and can look at my shelves, I see I also read North & South by Mrs Gaskell, Up the Junction by Nell Dunn, and a non-fiction book called The Drugs Don't Work: A Global Threat by Professor Dame Sally C. Davies. In addition to those, The Odd Women by George Gissing had a feminist theme. I am also reading a biography of Florence Nightingale. I am virtually a new man.
9 of 62 books I read in 2014 (were by female authors). That's less than 15%. Not good. I'm disappointed, and my list doesn't even feature many top female writers.
How many great female authors can you name prior to the 20th century? The mid-19th century? My library houses literature across the centuries. For reasons we are all certainly aware of there were not many female authors, artists, or composers of great merit until recently.
As I have stated elsewhere, I don't read with a political aim. I don't read in order to rectify the imbalance between male and female writers... black and white writers... Western and Non-Western writers. I read for personal pleasure. Quite honestly I don't spend a lot of time reading late Modern/Contemporary literature, and I spend far more time reading poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction/essay than I do reading novels so I'm not likely to be delving into the latest "flavor of the month" whether it be Donna Tartt or Deepak Chopra or Yann Martel. On the other hand, I have spent time recently reading Anne Carson, Marina Tsvetaeva, Yosano Akiko, Sappho, and a few other women writers.
If we are talking about quality literature across the centuries and even most of near-contemporary or contemporary literature, then without doubt it is male authors we'd be reading. Which is fine by me because I make no attempt to read female authors as a duty to find some sort of parity between genders but as a way to diversify my reading to hear female voices directly, especially female voices from non-white, non-Western background. You may notice the female authors I listed above come from said backgrounds. Sometimes it gives me valuable insights on life but it can equally be a waste of time. Despite laudatory reviews and prizes, quality literature is just not produced very often. So yes...Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Uh I read Daniel Deronda, three books of short stories by Alice Munro, The Waves and The Years for the first time and reread To the Lighthouse...
So 7 of something like eighty.
Edit: Oh and I probably read an entire volume of Dickinson once or twice throughout the year, though not every poem. There are probably a few other female poets I'm forgetting right now as well.
Dickinson is indeed a pleasure. She was almost ruined by my grade-school teachers who played up the image of the Virginal woman in white locked in her bedroom... and then again by college professors who tried to turn her into a Patron Saint of Lesbian/Feminist Lit & Crit. It was only when I sat down with a heft volume of her work and read it through on my own terms, that I came to appreciate her so.
First poet I actually liked when I was still a poemaphobe whose eyes glazed over even looking at poetry, actually I liked Auden too but that was pretty much it. Her poems are easy to memorize as well, at least I've memorized probably a few dozen without ever consciously trying to do so.
2014 was not a good reading year for me but almost half of the authors I read turned out to be female (even though I was not trying to concentrate on female authors in particular): 17/36.
17. Mrs de Winter by Susan Hill (N21/W17) ~ 4/10
16. We The Living by Ayn Rand (S4/W16) ~ 6/10
15. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (N18/W15) ~ 9/10
14. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (S3/W14/P) ~ 9/10
13. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (W13/N14) ~ 7/10
12. After Leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys (W12/S1) ~ 7/10
11. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (W11/R1) ~ 7/10
10. Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina ~ (W10/SO4) ~ 6/10
9. Penelopiad by Atwood ~ (W9/SO3) ~ 7/10
8. Anthem by Ayn Rand (N13/W8) ~ 6/10
7. An Accidental Man by Iris Murdoch (N10/W7) ~ 5/10
6. Death Comes to Pemberley by PD James (W6/N7/SO2) ~ 4/10
5. MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood (W5) ~ 4/10
4. The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers (W4) ~ 9/10
3. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (N3/W3) ~ 8/10
2. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (N2/W2/SO1) ~ 8/10
1. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper (N1/W1) ~ 7/10