However! (You knew it was coming, right? I wouldn't write a blog just to tell you I don't post quiz results to my FB wall.) Last week I took Buzzfeed's Greatest Books by Women quiz. I got a 35/102. This is sad, as I read a lot and I taught Women's Studies for years. However, even sadder is the fact that having read a mere 34% of these books put me in the top 7% of those 18,000 or so people who had taken the quiz. I assume quizzes like this also skew towards readers, and those who feel as though they've read a lot of women writers--like myself, which makes it an even more potentially depressing statistic.
There was also something...odd about the list itself. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it feels super haphazard, like someone googled "books by women" and then made a quiz of all the ones they had heard of before and thus labeled them "great." Following the quiz (which I DID post to FB) we had a brief discussion of the number we had read, and one friend asked me to cull down the list to 90 or so of the "greatest" books by women. Now, my list may not be any better, but I'm going to include some rationale and organize it a bit better than the Buzzfeed list. If you were looking for books to read after my last blog post, maybe this is a good place to start!
YA: If you want 2 books that have significantly altered our popular culture landscape over the last 20 years, look no further than:
1) Harry Potter...ah, just read them all. But my favorite is probably Prisoner of Azkaban. J.K. Rowling, naturally.
2) The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins. Worth engaging with the first-person narrative even if you have seen the movie. It's a very different experience.
Other "Greats"
3) Anne Frank: the Diary of a Young Girl. Don't read it as a "Holocaust book" but instead as fascinating portrait of girlhood in extraordinary circumstances. If you haven't read it since Jr. High, give it another read.
4) Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea. Read these with an eye to what Margaret Atwood suggests: that the novels are more about the transformation of Marilla than Anne herself.
5) A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L'Engle. You know it blew your mind in grade school. Admit it.
6) Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein. One of my favorite recent WWII novels. Great storytelling and characters.
19th Century Novels: this isn't really my area of expertise, but if you think 19th century novels are boring (like I used to) then you should read these. Not at all boring!
7) Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen. And don't you dare go reading that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies junk. The saddest thing about that book is that people will read it instead of Austen and miss the amazing humor and delight that Austen has and the Zombies version tries for but fails.
8) Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte. Mad woman in the attic, anyone? Follow this with its adaptation,
9) Wide Sargasso Sea. Then follow that with I Walked With a Zombie, for an early film adaptation. WSS is not from the 19th Century, but the 20th. It lives here anyway, next to it's inspiration.
10) Frankenstein, Mary Shelly.
11) Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte. I put this one here because it is on the original list but not because I particularly like it. Although it does feature the word "snoozle" so that's worth something. Really though, I find WH to be a slog.
Gothic Novels, a category which could also contain many of the above, but this list expands into the 20th century, so here you go:
12) Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier. Check on one of Hitchcock's favorite authors in such a great book.
13) Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson. Or We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Or better yet, both! They're short. Who's up for a HHH book club around Halloween?
14) Interview With the Vampire, Anne Rice. Followed by
15) Sunshine, Robin McKinley for a perspective on a more monstrous vampire. He doesn't sparkle one bit.
16) Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, Suzanna Clarke. Aren't they working on an adaptation? Where's that?
17) The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe. The OG of Gothic novelists.
Crime Fiction. There was no real crime fiction on the Buzzfeed list outside of Gone Girl which is totally a shame. There's so much great crime fiction by women, and here's some to check out.
18) The Blood Spilt, Asa Larsson. Yeah, yeah, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. But there's a lot more to Scandanavian crime fiction than that. Sure, you can check out Mankell and Larson and Nesbo (actually, don't do Nesbo. Bleh). However, the one that has stuck with me the most is Blood Spilt. Its so intense and you should read it.
19) A Great Deliverance, Elizabeth George. The introduction of Inspector Lynley and DS Barbara Havers. Such great character development.
20) Dark Places or Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn. Smart and super fast reads.
21) In the Woods, Tana French. Totally compelling and interesting introduction to the Dublin Murder Squad books.
22) The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey. Anglophiles and Richard the III lovers should check this out.
23) Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie. Can't leave out our most famous detective fiction author!
24) Cover Her Face, P.D. James. Another classic British detective fiction author. This one introduces her main detective.
25) Kindred, Octavia Butler.
26) Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood. Yep, I did it. Put Atwood in the Sci-Fi section. Of course, Blind Assassin from the original Buzzfeed list is also great and everyone should read Handmaid's Tale. But Oryx and Crake is the one that ranks highest on my list today.
27) Brothers in Arms, Lois McMaster Bujold. Not the first book in the Vorkosigan saga, but one that always sticks with me. I think of Bujold as more "traditional" sci-fi than some of the others here, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
28) The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger.
29) Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin. And after you read this one follow it with
30) Ammonite, Nicola Griffith which is heavily inspired by LeGuin
31) To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis. What I love about Willis is her ability to perfectly represent the frustrations of dealing with a bureaucracy while writing really great time travel novels.
32) Among Others, Jo Walton.
33) The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russel. An amazing look at linguistics and faith in a sci-fi setting.
Non-Fiction.
34) Fun Home, Alison Bechdel. This could also go in a graphic novels category. The last 2 pages of the novel never fail to make me cry.
35) Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard. From the Buzzfeed list, but makes mine because who doesn't love her "Shitty First Drafts?"
36) Bossypants, Tina Fey. I haven't read it, but also from Buzzfeed, and we love Tina Fey.
37) Feminism is for Everybody, bell hooks. Yep, it totally is.
38) A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit. I've only read Savage Dreams, but this one looks great so it makes the list.
39) Persepolis. Marjane Satrapi.
40) Wild, Cheryl Strayed.
41) Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us, Kate Bornstein. I don't think Bornstein is the best writer always, but she's a foundational author on transgender rights and worth a read.
42) Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde. She's such a fundamental part of my work, and a great author to teach.
43) The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Wolf. Her concept of disaster capitalism is worth engaging with.
44) The Stranger Beside Me, Anne Rule. Such a fascinating portrait of Ted Bundy.
45) Girl, Interrupted, Susana Kaysen. A terrible film adaptation, and why did Angelina Jolie win an Oscar for this?
Early 20th Century, a category that I'm also only marginally familiar with. The Buzzfeed list really loved Edith Wharton for whatever reason. Here she only gets one entry.
46) House of Mirth, Edith Wharton. I hated the movie adaptation until I'd had enough wine and then I loved it. Do with that what you will.
47) The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gillman. Technically a short story, but whatever. It's a classic.
48) Nightwood, Djuna Barnes.
49) Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf.
50) Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights, Gertrude Stein. There's a lot of possibilities when thinking of Stein, but I love the humor of this one.
51) The Awakening, Kate Chopin. Fun short book to teach and great descriptive language.
52) Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston.
53) My Antonia, Willa Cather.
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| Image from the film adaptation of WISE BLOOD (1979) |
Mid-20th Century
54) The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith. I haven't read this, but it's long been on my list after the film, which was so upsetting.
55) To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee.
56) Wise Blood or the Complete Stories, Flannery O'Connor. She made me think of tattoos and muvsems in a whole new light.
57) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou. Well, maybe a stretch for mid-20th century, but this is my list and thus a-ok.
58) The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath. Oh, fine, whatever. I've never liked this book, but you just might.
59) Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. I heard that she was willing to take no money for at least one of her books in order to get her message out there which is...somewhat contradictory to the message, no?
Late 20th Century, more my home territory. Starting with four classic L of the LGBT novels,
60) Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Alison. It's not a happy book, but you should certainly read it.
61) Fear of Flying, Erica Jong.
62) Rubyfruit Jungle, Rita Mae Brown. That grapefruit scene prepared me for many a day of reading Dan Savage later in life.
63) Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson.
And moving onto some other great novels,
64) The Color Purple, Alice Walker.
64) In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez. You should also read Junot Diaz's Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao as a companion to this one.
66) Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood. Oh, look, I snuck her in a second time. She's just so great!
67) Housekeeping, Marilynn Robinson.
68) Birds of America, Lorrie Moore.
69) Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich. I TA'd for a class that read this book, but it was the semester I had foot surgery and taught 10 small group sections and thus I never actually read it. Don't worry, I was in charge of teaching writing, not discussions on readings.
70) Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan. This feels really book-clubish, but I remember liking the book.
Contemporary
71) Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold. Skip the movie though, why doncha.
72) Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl. So good. I make everyone read this if possible.
Three from the Buzzfeed list I haven't read:
73) White Teeth, Zadie Smith.
74) Half a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
75) Notes on a Scandal, Zoe Heller
76) Wyoming Stories, Annie Prolux. Being from Wyoming, I've always identified with these stories. Read the Brokeback Mountain novella and see the lovely, lovely film (that Heath Ledger should have won an Oscar for, if not for homophobia of the Oscar voters). Shipping News is also great, but I didn't like Accordion Crimes at all.
77) Hild, Nicola Griffith. Man, this was some amazing historical fiction.
78) The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield. I suppose this should go in the Gothic section, but I'm too lazy to go renumber everything now. Nice, moody, good twist ending.
79) Swamplandia!, Karen Russel. Slippery book where I couldn't decide on the un/reality of it often.
Nobel Prize, Booker, or Pulitzer Award Winners, of which there are many more than I have listed here. Still, these are some favorites or representatives from the original Buzzfeed list.
80) God of Small Things, Arudathi Roy
81) Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri. I love teaching these short stories.
82) The Luminaries, Elanor Catton. I thought this was pretty long for not a lot of payoff, but I know many of my friends loved it.
83) A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Eagan. Great, creative interwoven tales.
84) The Goldfinch, Donna Taratt. Currently sitting on my nightstand!
85) The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison. The book I've taught the very most times. Such a great story and a good chance to challenge an automatic pity reaction to Pecola's story.
My gosh, we're nearly there!
86) The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing.
87) Runaway, Alice Munro.
88) Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel. I'm also dying to watch the PBS adaptation of this. Why is Henry VIII so darn fascinating?
Okay, I made it to 88, not 90. I need to go cook dinner so I can eat, so I can get on the road to Nashville for the weekend. I wish I could have linked to all these books so it would be easy for you to find out more about them, but again, running low on time. I'd love to hear what additions or subtractions you would make to this list, if you made it through this whole long-ass blog post.
My count on this list? 58/88. Better, but not perfect. Looks like it's time to get reading.
