I thought I'd start another interesting book-about-books-based thread. These entries are from 500 Great Books by Women: A Reader's Guide by Erica Bauermeister, Jesse Larsen and Holly Smith. From the back of the book: "Here is an artiiculate guide to more than 500 boos written by women, a unique resource that allows readers the joy of discovering new authors as well as revisiting familiar favorites..."

The book is organized by theme. I'll try to do a list each week, at least, or roughly 10-20 titles. If the thread gets too long, I'll start a part II, as necessary.

I think we're less interested in how many books on each list everyone has read than what we have to say about those you have read. Did you love one or more of the books? why? Did you not like one and why? Is the book worthy, iyo, to be listed as a "great book'?

Back in a bit with the first list...

Oh please do post. I'm interested to see what's on there, what I've ready & perhaps get some recommendations.

First category: Art.
From the category introduction: "What drives, pushes, pulls, and plagues people to make art?...In these works, art emerges as passionate self-definition, a need that clamors to be met, and a fulfillment that cannot be found elsewhere."

Artemisia, Anna Banti
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein
Black Women Writers at Work, Claudia Tate, ed.
Claiming Breath, Diane Glancy
Cosima, Grazia Deledda
Cry to Heaven, Anne Rice
Dancing on the Edge of the World, Ursula Le Guin
Daybook, Anne Truitt
Elizabeth Bishop: The Collected Prose, Elizabeth Bishop
Frida, Hayden Herrera
Margaret Bourke-White, Vicky Goldberg
One Writer's Beginnings, Eudora Welty
Portrait of an Artist: a Biography of Georgia O'Keefe, Laurie Lisle
The Road through Miyama, Leila Philip
Silences, Tillie Olsen
The Story of Avis, Elizabeth Stuart-Phelps
The Ultraviolet Sky, Alma Luz Villanueva
The Writer on Her Work, Vol. II; Janet Sternburg, ed.

I do want to add that all the editors come from the US and the book seems aimed at an American audience. Though individual categories may vary, the end list of 500 is very US-heavy (no surprise, I suppose).

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2007, 8:31pm.

The only one I'm SURE I've read is "Cry to Heaven" by Anne Rice, which is an interesting choice in the "Art" category. Not sure there really IS a category that would cover historical fiction about operatic castrati.

It is a fascinating read, and when Rice was interviewed on NPR about it years ago, they played a recording of one of the last castrati sopranos.

I MAY have read Grazia Deladda's Cosima--I read some of Deladda's books years ago when I went through women Nobel prize winners (it was a much shorter list then).

At the time, my thesis would have been that women Nobel prize winners had strong national identities and drew largely on rural life.

Several women have since won the literature prize (most recently Doris Lessing), and I don't know if that thesis still holds up.

Lessing's acceptance speech, btw, is online, easy to find using Google, and worth a read!

I've read the Le Guin and the Tillie Olsen. I don't remember much about Le Guin's at the moment but I recently rifled through Silences again looking for a quote I could use for a project. No luck, but it was a wonderful revisit!

nohrt4me, thanks for the notes on the Anne Rice, I wondered about that entry. Of course, I could've turned a few pages, they have paragraphs on each book. And thanks for the tip on Lessing's speech.

Here's the link for the Lessing speech.

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2007, 8:36pm.

I've read the Eudora Welty (how can she NOT touchstone??? -- One Writer's Beginnings. It was a gift from someone who knew I was interested in writing, and is a lovely book.

i thought Frida and Artemisia were very well done, and gave brilliant pictures of the artists and their struggles. However, I have other books with Kahlo paintings reproduced, and have seen some at MOMA (and have seen two films about her, and have read another novel about her, so I can't extract what I got from the biography. I am not sure that the Artemisia book that I read is this one, because I don't remember the author. However the one I read was terrific.
There was a film about her, also. (I don't remember the name of it)
I loved the Toklas/Stein book and have the same problem with it. I have read all of the Gertrude Stein I could get my hands on, and have seen a film of her opera (four Saints in Three Acts). I have also read Staying on Alone (the alice B. Toklas letters) which blended with the biography in my memory. I have read alice's cookbook with enjoyment including the recipe for hashish cookies. Alice was a very very serious cook and gardener, and grew their vegetables in France. Their tales of servant problems are hilarious.

Message edited by its author, Dec 14, 2007, 4:43am.

>6 how did I miss that one? I, too, have read the Welty ...back in the early 90s as part of a fiction-writing class, I believe. I agree, Rebecca, a lovely book about how her surroundings and family affected both her personality and her writing.

The only one I've read is Cry to Heaven, which is a fascinating book. It is flawed, plotwise (sometimes it seems like Rice gets a little fast & loose and needs to be reined in), but I'm glad it was included because Anne Rice has delved into some interesting subjects and obviously researches them passionately, the castrati being one of those subjects. The life of someone who is revered for his talent, yet has very little choice in what his life is going to be, makes a good subject. What effect does his sacrifice have on his relationships and sexuality? If he had had a choice, would he have chosen castration? Is the trade-off worth it? Could something like this happen today?

Thought-provoking book.

Next category: Choices (and, btw, if you have other suggestions that the book doesn't include that fit into each category, please share!)

"...The books and authors here explore a vast variety of decisions that face women, and how these decisions are affected not only by our individual personalities, but by the cultures we live in."

After Leaving Mr. McKenzie, Jean Rhys
Aquamarine, Carol Anshaw
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
Because it is Bitter, and Because It is My Heart, Joyce Carol Oates
The Convert, Elizabeth Robins
The District Governor's Daughter, Camilla Collett
The Dollmaker, Harriet Arnow
Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume One, Blanche Wiesen Cook
From the Lanai and Other Hawaiian Stories, Jessica Saki
The Garden Party and Other Stories, Katherine Mansfield
Hotel du Lac, Anita Brookner
Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner
The Magnificent Spinster, May Sarton
Miss Sophie's Diary, Ding Ling
My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin
Passing, Nella Larsen
So Long a Letter, Mariama Ba
Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain
Three: An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, and Scoundrel Time, Lillian Hellman
Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf
Two Women in One, Nawal El Saadwi
The Waiting Years, Fumiko Enchi

Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2007, 9:57pm.

I read the Brookner when it first came out in 1981 and didn't care for it. I should probably read it again as I suspect being a new mother at the time, my concentration was limited to watching the wedding of Princess Diana. I have recently added So Long a Letter to my TBR pile and finished recently Woman at Point Zero, another novel by Nawal El Saawi, an Egyptian feminist novelist. I'd be interested in reading more from her, I think. The Awakening, I've read but interestingly, while I have read others by some of these authors, I have not read many of these particular titles.

Many of these are good! I haven't read any of the first category, but this one is more familiar.

I read The Awakening but wasn't particularly enthralled by it. However, I loved The Garden Party (Katherine Mansfield) and My Brilliant Career (Miles Franklin). I read So Long a Letter (Mariama Ba) for a French class (as Une Si Longue Lettre), but I think I'm long due for a reread on that one, perhaps in English this time because my French has grown rusty with disuse.

Passing is a fascinating book. I read it for a Women in Literature class. It's about blacks in ?1940s? who could pass for white and the moral, psychological, and social implications of doing so. I wish I could remember more of the book. I believe that Larsen was half-Danish and maybe eventually settled or spent much time in Denmark because the racial prejudice wasn't the same sort of problem as in the States at that time.

Hello everyone, I just joined this group today (thanks avaland!). I'm surprised how little I've read from these 500 (so far). Admittedly, art is not a major area of interest for me, but "choices," well, I thought I'd have more to say on those books. But I have only read Hotel du Lac which I really enjoyed.

Wow, I've read two of these! I read The Awakening in IB Senior English, and once I got into it and got the symbolism my teacher was throwing me out of my head, I was able to really appreciate it. I admit that I didn't enjoy So Long A Letter much in my IB Junior English class. I found that one a bit long and drawn out, without feeling attached to the characters.

citygirl, Passing does sound interesting, might have to add that to my wish list. Thanks for your recommendation.

added to say, "welcome" to lindsacl!

Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2007, 4:46pm.

This group makes the best lists. I can never keep up with them. But keep them coming!

If you can get hold of it, my Brilliant Career was made into a terrific film with the very young judy Davis and Sam Neill. Also the The Dollmaker with jane Fonda, Testament of youth (from the BBC), the Getting of Wisdom and Hotel du Lac were wonderful films.
What is "Three" by lillian Hellman? Is it a compilation of her plays?

Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2007, 8:07pm.

>18

I think it's a book with three of her shorter stories / memoirs - An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, and Scoundrel Time.

Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2007, 8:25pm.

sorry, almigwin, the list at the beginning of the section didn't have the subtitle to the Hellman. I'll edit the list to show it.

*I may get to the next section and list ("Conflicting Cultures") before the weekend, but then there will be a week or so before I add more.

Does anyone have any other titles they think would fit into either of these categories? Women's choices or Women and art.

Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2007, 10:00pm.

I would add to the first one, Women and Art, one of Emily Carr's books - her autobiography (which I haven't read yet but know a lot about her story) or Klee Wyck, a book of her essays about travels to Native American villages to paint totems and village life. She was remarkable and her stories and her drive to paint, especially when she found her passion in First Nation art, are very interesting and inspirational.

For women and art I would suggest my half Century by Anna Akhmatova,
Anna Akhmatova by Roberta Reeder, and Out of Africa by Karen Blixen. Also Charlotte Bronte by Elisabeth Gaskell.

I think the Akhmatova titles would qualify but the books on the list seem to be women writing about art or memoirs of artists, so I suspect the Blixen and Bronte will fall in another category (however, I haven't read the Blixen but if it's about her writing life, it would qualify, I think).

I would add Stravinsky's Lunch by Drusilla Modjeska, a biography of two Australian women painters.

avaland made it clear at the beginning that the list was mostly American/English authors.

I'd add Anna Karenina to that "Choices" theme. Seems like a no-brainer!

You could add A Room of One's Own to Art. Maybe it's listed in another category.

Conflicting Cultures cultures involved listed in parentheses. This book was copywritten in 1994, so it should come as no surprise that many of these books are from the 1980s.

The Abandoned Baobab, Ken Bugul (Senegal)
American Indian Stories, Zitkala-Sa
Blue Taxis: Stories about Africa, Eileen Drew
Castle Rackrent, Maria Edgeworth (England)
The Clay that Breathes, Catherine Browder (Japan)
Clay Walls, Kim Ronyoung (Korea)
Cleaned Out, Annie Emaux (France)
Coming Home and Other Stories, Farida Karodia (South Africa)
Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody (African-American)
Coonardoo, Katherine S Prichard (Australia)
Crick Crack, Monkey; Merle Hodge (Caribbean)
The Flame Trees of Thika, Elspeth Huxley (Kenya)
The Gates of Ivory, Margaret Drabble (England/Cambodia)
The Getting of Wisdom, Henry Handel Richardson (Australia/England)
Halfbreed, Maria Campbell (Canada)
Jasmine, Bharati Mukherjee (India/USA)
Juletane, Myriam Warner-Vieyra (W. Africa/France)
The Land of Look Behind, Michelle Cliff (USA/West Indies)
Letters of a Javanese Princess, Raden Adjeng Kartini (Indonesia)
Lost in Translation, Eva Hoffman (Poland/Canada)
Moccasin Maker, E. Pauline Johnson (Canada)
Nisei Daughter, Monica Stone (Japanese-American)
The Power of Horses and Other Stories, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (Native American)
Sans Souci and Other Stories, Dionne Brand (Trinidad/Canada)
The Scent of the Gods, Fiona Cheong (Singapore/USA)
Seventh Heaven, Alice Hoffman (USA)
Veils, Nahid Rachlin (Iran)
Yoruba Girl Dancing, Simi Bedford (Nigeria/England)

I have not read a one of these! Although, I have read books by Drabble and the two Hoffmans.

There has certainly been mounds of literature written by or about women on "Conflicting Cultures" since this book came out.

Almost anything by Gish Jen would qualify, I would recommend her most recent, The Love Wife. Also The Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo is quite good at pointing out cultural differences between East and West.

Castle Rackrent is a very funny book, and a satire on the irish landlord in the 19th century. It is considered by many to be a masterpiece. She wrote it while her overbearing editor/father was away. i was so impressed, i bought a complete set of her fiction, but nothing else was as good. The Absentee came close. Her father oversaw and edited all her other novels (all didactic) and collaborated with her on educational works. When he edited, all the juice came out of her work. It was like Jane austen edited by mr. Collins! She and her father, the educator,taught the large brood of children in the family from more than one marriage. One of her father's wives was the same age as Maria, but they were great friends.

The Bharati mukherjee Jasmine is very good and so are her short stories in The Middleman and other stories

The elspeth Huxley is about growing up in Africa, and it was made into a fine film.

I have mentioned the getting of wisdom elsewhere, and it is a bildungsroman, and very fine. There was also a good film of it. I also liked her Fortunes of Richard Mahoney.

Message edited by its author, Dec 19, 2007, 6:26pm.

The Moccasin Maker by E. Pauline Johnson is a collection of stories, autobiogaphical, in which she tells her story (and that of her mother and father). Her mother was English and her father was First Nation (Canadian) - I think he was the son of the native leader, Joseph Brant.

Pauline also wrote This is the Song my Paddle Sings, a book of poetry not unlike Emily Dickenson's poems in their simplicity but hidden power.

ETA Castle Rackrent IS funny, Almigwin, isn't it! I haven't read any of her other works though.

And I absolutely love Hotel du Lac. A brilliant book.

Message edited by its author, Dec 19, 2007, 10:58pm.

Wow, I've read none from the conflicting cultures section! That kind of surprises me.

Two interesting lists so far, in that I haven't read many of the entries.

I did read "Coming of Age in Mississippi" when I was 14 or 15 (nigh on 40 years ago, now), and loved it.

I not only gained first-hand perspective about the civil rights movement we'd been watching on TV every night, but I was surprised by how much I identified with Moody's experience growing up in a divided community.

I was a white girl in a mostly white town, but there was a big class divide between the union and professional families.

When I meet people who grew up in my hometown, I can ask what street they lived on and tell you exactly where they fit in the pecking order.

*using hands and fingers to do the math there* Why, that makes you *** old, nohrt4me! Maybe a wee bit older than I am:-)

You will be interested to know the next category is "Ethics" There are some interesting titles listed. I probably won't get to that list until next week sometime.

Tiffin, that Patricia Johnson poetry book sounds interesting, I may scrounge around for it.

#29

I like all of your suggestions. thanks

And at the cusp of the New Year what better category than Ethics?!

From the introduction: "The authors in this section consider issues of what is right, fair, or just, for individuals and society as a whole. . . .In a multitude of countries, in a variety of genres, these authors explore their societies and their souls to determine a path toward fairness and justice, and call upon us to do the same."

The Bell, Iris Murdoch
Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan
Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot, Pearl Cleage (essays)
Evelina, Fanny Burney
Grey is the Color of Hope, Irina Ratushinskaya (memoir)
Hope Leslie, or Early Times in Massachusetts, Catharine Sedgwick
Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories, Rebecca Harding Davis
The Lottery and Other Stories, Shirley Jackson
Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell
Possessing the Secret of Joy, Alice Walker
The Potter's Field, Ellis Peters
Requiem, Shizuko go
Silent Spring, Rachel Carson (nonfiction)
A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid (essay)
The Story of an African Farm, Olive Schreiner
Strange Fruit, Lillian Smith
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
A Voice from the South, Anna Julia Cooper (essay)
Walls: Resisting the Third Reich, One Woman's Story, Hiltgunt Zassenhaus (memoir)

Do you have any particular recommendations from this list? Are there any contemporary books by women that you would add to this list that deal with 'ethics'?

Ethics: Message 35: This is an interesting list. Would A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood fit ?

Message edited by its author, Dec 26, 2007, 11:00am.

Hmmm. I'm not sure I would put Bonjour Tristesse in that category. I read it a few months ago and found it to be a very personal (to the protagonist) story. It's about a 17-year-old French girl who summers with her playboy father in the French Riviera. Her mother died long ago, and since getting out of boarding school she and the dad live a carefree, hedonistic life. The father gets serious with a woman his own age who sets out to remake Cecile into a serious young woman with goals. Cecile sets in motion a plan to break the pair up so that her carefree life goes on. The result is tragic, but, from my point of view, not directly her fault. Perhaps the ethical question is whether she should have meddled in her father's affairs. But she is only 17 years old, and, to her, her actions were in self-defense.

>36 I suspect most dystopian literature, which is usually a criticism of something during the time it is written, might qualify. The Handmaid's Tale was about the dangers of totalitarianism, according to Atwood.

Joyce Carol Oates's novella or short novel, Rape: A Love Story asks the question, "What is justice?" The novel has a pretty horrible rape scene but is necessary, imo, to put the reader in a place where one will question their ideas of justice. I found it a profoundly disturbing book, but in a powerful way - it forced me to think.

Hello, everyone! I'm new to this group, which was suggested to me by avaland. Lots of interesting threads and posts here for a reader like me.

I've read more in the "Ethics" group than in the others: The Lottery and Other Stories, Mary Barton, Possessing the Secret of Joy, Silent Spring, and To Kill a Mockingbird, and Evelina is on my TBR shelf.

Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth might fit well there, too.

Hi Cariola! Looks like we are in a few groups together!

Cariola, hi again! I just left the Virago Modern Classics thread and here I find you again!!!!
:-))

I've read Life in the Iron Mills and other stories, The Lottery and other stories, and To Kill a Mockingbird. I would love to reread Mary Barton.

Speaking of which, Mary Barton makes me think of Gaskell's Ruth and the theme of 'the fallen woman' in 19th century literature. Seems everyone had something to say on the subject. There was, of course, Tess of the D'urbervilles by Hardy, No Name by Wilkie Collins, and Adam Bede by George Eliot (now wouldn't this be an interesting group of books for a book group to read, eh?) And I seem to remember Susan Douglas in Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media discussing a similar theme in 1950's movies... Oh, bother, I gone off topic, haven't I?

Hope to have another list for you all later in the day...

Category: FAMILIES

Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
Bone, Fae Myenne Ng
Cantora, Sylvia Lopez-Medina
Clear Light of Day, Anita Desai
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Crossings, Chuang Hua
Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina Garcia
Family Pictures, Sue Miller
Fortunate Lives, Robb Forman Dew
Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
Jubilee, Margaret Walker
The Last of the Menu Girls, Denise Chavez
Little Altars Everywhere, Rebecca Wells
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
The Loom and Other Stories, R. A. Saaki
Maud Martha, Gwendolyn Brooks
Owls Do Cry, Janet Frame
Paradise of the Blind, Duong Thu Huong
Princess, Jean P. Sasson
Queen Lear, Molly Keane
The Rector's Daughter, F. M. Mayor
The Revolution of Little Girls, Blanche Boyd
Rituals of Survival, Nicolasa Mohr
Road Song, Natalie Kusz
Singing Softly/Cantando Bajito, Carmen de Monteflores
Six of One, Rita Mae Brown
A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley

As I was typing this list I realized that I had read Fortunate Lives. I certainly can't remember much about it except that it was about a privileged family in New England. Little Women is, of course, enchanting although I tried reading it a couple of years ago and found it 'juvenile.' And there will always be Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm, a delightful read.

I would add under the theme of 'familes', The Position by Meg Wolitzer - a delicious family story that is both witty and insightful. Also, witty and absorbing with this theme are Julianne Baggott's Girl Talk and Miss America Family. The former is a bit more of a coming-of-age story, the latter a tale of a bizarre, dysfunctional family. Guess I prefer my 'family' novels with a bit o' humor. . .

Gotta love those Starkadders. "I saw something nasty in the wood shed!"

It may be a little off the track of the other books listed, but I would add The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. I don't usually get all melty when reading books, but there were a number of moments in this one where the relationships, particularly that of the father and son, really moved me.

Cariola, I just happened to see the movie of The Namesake last night (I had not read the book) - it happed to parallel nicely with the book I'm reading (Pillar of Salt) and the protagonist's teen years - much the same kind of thing going on.

Is The Corrections a family story? (haven't read it, but much, of course, was said of it)

The Corrections is a family story (by a man), but I didn't like it at all and found it to be quite overrated. Just my two cents. :-/

There are soooooooo many family stories, how do you choose a couple of dozen?

I'm not sure what kind of family stories the list is tying together, but for a portrait of dysfunctionality among women family members, I would recommend the (fairly) recent publication, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. And I might go with Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood over Little Altars Everywhere, but they kind of blend together in my head.

Message edited by its author, Jan 2, 2008, 3:56pm.

Just starting with this group, too much to catch up with.

I've read Clear Light of Day, Cold Comfort Farm --HOW could I have missed it until last year?, Dreaming in Cuban, Little Women, and A Thousand Acres.

And I could add Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford and probably others if my mind weren't such a sieve these days.

>47 ack! obviously I was thinking 'family' stories and the condition that it be written by a women just slipped my mind. Thank you, citygirl, for pointing my error out.

Just stumbled on this list. In the Families category Bone by Fae M. Ng is moving, complex story about a Chinese immigrant family, and Smiley's A Thousand Acres retells the King Lear story on a midwestern farm -- it was made into a film a while ago -- but the book is much better. I must have read Little Women at least 10 times when I was a kid, but haven't revisited it in at least 30 years. Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child is a fascinating story of a happy family torn apart by their youngest child -- a genetic throwback with sociopathic tendencies.

Message edited by its author, Jan 3, 2008, 12:20pm.

What about all those family novels by Amy Tan? The Joy Luck Club, The Bonesetter's Daughter, etc.?

and those by Gish Jen. The Love Wife was a great family story.

And Anita Rau Badami: Tamarind Mem, The Hero's Walk, Have You Heard the Nightbird Call? - excellent writing.

I've read several of these, but A Thousand Acres stands out.

It's essentially the King Lear story, but takes place on an Iowa farm, and the Regan/Goneril characters are the sympathetic ones.

I liked the book for two reasons: It was fun to see how Smiley used the same plot elements in King Lear to make a perfectly good modern family tragedy.

I also liked the fact that Smiley tries to take the Lear story to a more psychological plane.

WHY are Regan and Goneril so hateful to Lear? What kind of father is so self-absorbed that he feels he can rearrange everyone else's lives to feed his own needs? Why is Cordelia so different from her sisters?

It's one of the grimmest books I've ever read.

One of the most uplifting is Little Women, though I hated it as an adolescent. I thought the book was preachy, and I found the March girls pretty contrived, especially Jo, who was just too spunky by half, and Beth, who was such a wimp.

I wanted to kick some ass, but dressing up like a man and writing books, or dying of rheumatic fever by taking care of the neighbors who had too many kids wasn't in my stars. The one I really liked was old Aunt March who bossed people around.

Time and a better sense of history turned me around completely. After my grandmother died, I read her copy of the book, and I think the book helps girls understand something about American women's history.

My grandmother saw kids she went to school with die of childhood illnesses, chafed at dresses, didn't think it was fair her mother couldn't vote even though she managed the farm and her money better than most of the men neighbors, and saw the need for an independent income.

I also appreciate the fact that the book is realistic about life in the mid-19th century. But it's optimistic, too. A lot of the things Alcott wanted to achieve WERE achieved by the time my grandmother was a young woman.

Friendships & Interactions

"All of these books explore the instances of reaching out and pulling away that make up the extraordinary and ordinary lives of human beings." (last sentence of the intro to this topic).

Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood (novel)
Circe's Mountain, Marie Luise Kaschnitz (short stories, trans.from the German)
Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales, Bessie Head (short stories)
Copper Crown, Lane von Herzen (novel)
Cordelia and Other Stories, Francoise Maillet-Joris (short stories, trans. from the French)
The Country of the Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett (short stories)
The Group, Mary McCarthy (novel)
Heartwork, Solveig von Schoultz (short stories, tran from the Swedish)
Hitchhiking: Twelve German Tales, Gabriele Eckart (short stories, trans. from the German)
Later the Same Day, Grace Paley (short stories)
The Lover of Horses, Tess Gallagher (short stories)
Middlemarch, George Eliot (novel)
The Mixquiahila Letters, Ana Castillo (novel)
Rain of Scorpions and Other Stories, Estaeler Portillo Trambley (short stories)
Rich Like Us, Nayantara Sahgal (novel)
A River Sutra, Gita Mehta (novel/folk tales)
Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories, Hisaye Yamamoto (short stories)
Twilight and Other Stories, Shulamith Hareven (short stories, trans. from the Hebrew)
A Weave of Women, E. M. Broner (novel)

Wow, that sentence probably describes just about every book I've ever read! And yet I've only read a few on the list: Cat's Eye, Middlemarch, The Country of the Pointed Firs. I'm surprised to see so many short story collections there. One I would definitely add is Joan Silber's Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories.

Cariola, I noticed the emphasis on short fiction in this category also. Wonder why. I have not heard of most of these, but have read the same three you have. Middlemarch is a masterpiece, imo.

I have not been a big short fiction reader in the past, but in the last few years I have started to pay more attention to them. I did read Silber's Ideas of Heaven and can second your recommendation.

Second that designation of "Middlemarch" as a masterpiece.

I enjoyed reading "Cat's Eye" and "The Group," but felt they were light weights. The characters weren't as nuanced as they might have been.

"The Group" can, perhaps, be forgiven, because it was an early, serious attempt to look at relatively privileged American women, and how their education did (or did not) help them become fuller people.

"Cat's Eye" was really just a fun melodrama.

Recently "This American Life" did a segment on the "mean girls" in high school. The interviewer went back to visit three or four snotty rich girls from high school, and most of them admitted they got a kick out of being mean and looked back on that time in their lives fondly.

After hearing the segment, I didn't think Atwood hit quite the right notes in "Cat's Eye."

Geesh, I really need to reread from my Atwood collection. But, I'd rather reread Middlemarch again:-)

>59: After reading your list yesterday, that's exactly what I thought! So, Middlemarch got to take the commute with me today. :)

GROWING OLD

The Dangerous Age: Letters and Fragments from a Woman's Diary, Karin Michaelis (novel, trans. from the Dutch)
Frangipani House, Beryl Gilroy (novel, Caribbean)
Islanders, Helen R. Hull (novel)
Limbo, Carobeth Laird (memoir)
Look Me in the Eye, Barbara Macdonald/Cynthia Rich (essays)
Memory Board, Jane Rule (novel)
Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively (novel)
On the Golden Porch, Tatyana Toystaya (short stories, trans. from the Russian)
The Pavilion of Women, Pearl S. Buck (novel, China)
Sister Age, M. F. K. Fisher (short stories/essays)
The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence (novel, Canada)
The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, Madeleine L'Engle (journal)
Tirra Lirra by the River, Jessica Anderson (novel, Australia)
The Twilight Years, Sawako Aroyoshi (novel, trans. from the Japanese)
Two Old Women: an Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival, Velma Wallis (novel)

ack! where did the touchstones go! fi!

To the book's list I would add:

Moral disorder, Margaret Atwood (short stories, Canada)
Love, Again, Doris Lessing (novel)

I've heard many recommendations for the Margaret Laurence but have not read it yet. I read the Pavilion of Women at about the age of 12 when I went through all the books in the house, so my memories of it are vague, at best.

I'd like to add Love medecine by Louise Erdrich (and all her other books are wonderful too); A Family and a Fortune by ivy Compton-Burnett and all of her others, too;
Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict and Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead, and
all of the books of Martha C. nussbaum the philosopher and ethicist,

GROWING UP

Allegra Maud Goldman, Edith Konecky (novel, US)
The Changelings, Jo Sinclair (novel, US)
Childhood, Nathalie Sarraute (memoir, trans. from the French)
Circle of Friends, Maeve Minchy (novel, Ireland)
Cold Sassy Tree, Olive Ann Burns (novel, US)
Daddy was a Number Runner, Louise Meriwether (novel, US)
Early Spring, Tove Ditlevsen (autobiography, trans. from the Danish)
Ellen Foster, Kaye Gibbons (novel, US)
Fifth Chinese Daughter. Jade Snow Wong (memoir, US)
Floating in My Mother's Palm, Ursula Hegi (novel, US, set in Germany)
The Floating World, Cynthia Kadohata (novel, US)
Gorilla, My Love, Toni Cade Bambara (short stories, US)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou (autobiography, US)
Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset (novel, trans. from the Norwegian)
The Lamplighter, Maria Susanna Cummins (novel, US)
Lives of Girls and Women, Alice Munro (novel, Canada)
The Lover, Margaret Duras (novel, trans. from the French, set in Vietnam)
Mama Blanca's Memoirs, Teresa de la Parra (novel, trans. from Spanish, Venezuela)
The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers (novel, US)
My Friend Annie, Jane Duncan (novel, Scotland)
Paradise, Elena Castedo (novel, US, Chile)
Rich in Love, Josephine Humphreys (novel, US)
The Road from Coorain, Jill Ker Conway (autobiography, Australia)
Silent Dancing, Judith Ortiz Cofer (memoir, US/Puerto Rico)
Sweet Summer, Bebe Moore Campbell (autobiography, US)
Tahuri, Ngahuia Te Awekotuka (short stories, New Zealand)
There Never Was a Once Upon a Time, Carmen Naranjo (short stories, trans. from the Spanish, Costa Rica)

Message edited by its author, Jan 15, 2008, 9:28pm.

Just a reminder that this book is aimed at an American audience; that said, I think this category unnecessarily US-heavy. Comments? Other Recommendations?

I would recommend:
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe)
The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria)
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (also Nigeria)
Bear Daughter by Judith Berman (a mix of Native American myth, fantasy & folklore)

Hmmm. Perhaps I'm suggesting the coming-of-age novel, which may not be exactly the same thing.

avaland, I'm not sure there's really a difference between "growing up" and "coming of age" . . . is there? I haven't read many of the books on the llist, but those I have read deal with adolescence (e.g., Circle of Friends, The Lover).

I'm having a problem with the literary quality of some of the selections on the list. Cold sassy Tree, Circle of Friends and Ellen Foster are not in the same class as Kristin Lavransdatter, The Lover, or The Lives of Girls and Women. The light, popular novels are hardly "Great Books" imo.

>67 That may be so but those three are still selling (at the moment) so there must be something of enduring quality within them. It's possible they won't be around in another decade or two. I have not read any of those three so I can't really comment further. I think 'great' is with a small 'g' here:-)

Cariola, you are right, of course. It was getting late (for me) when I posted that, the thought came up and I was too lazy to think about it then. All of the ones I listed are coming of age stories with the exception perhaps of the Joys of Motherhood which covers her whole life to some extent.

Message edited by its author, Jan 16, 2008, 8:30am.

#67I have read Cold sassy tree & The lives of girls & women Also read Circle of friends & Kristin Lavransdatter I 'm preparing to read the new translation of Kristin Lavransdatter which won the Nobel prize. Not all books can be Nobel prize winners.(though I would give one to Alice Monroe if I could). Maeve Binchy's books, like Circle of friends are well written & an enjoyable & worthwhile read for those unable to spend the time & energy on longer, more intricate works. If you have some kind of "scale of quality" in mind, I suppose Sigrid Undset & Kaye Gibbons would be at opposite ends but that does not mean that "less classic" works like those of Maeve Binchy, Olive Burns , Jane Duncan are not worthwhile reading.

Heritage

Alicia: My Story, Alicia Appleman-Jurman (memoir, Poland)
The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine de Pizan (nonfiction, trans. from the French)
The Book of Ruth, Jane Hamilton (novel, US)
Bread Givers, Anzia Yezierska (novel, US)
Burger's Daughter, Nadine Gordimer (novel, South Africa)
Confessions of Ladi Nijo, Lady Nijo (diary, trans. from the Japanese)
Dear Departed, Marguerite Yourcenar (biography, trans. from the French)
The Dust Roads of Monferrato, Rosetta Loy (novel, trans. from the Italian)
Efuru, Flora Nwapa (novel, Nigeria)
The Fountain Overflows, Rebecca West (novel, England)
Ganado Red: A Novella and Stories, Susan Lowell (short stories, US)
How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, Julia Alvarez (novel, US/Dominican Republic)
The Keepers of the House, Shirley Ann Grau (novel, US)
Loving in the War Years, Cherrie Moraga (nonfiction, US)
Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston (novel, US)
My Place, Sally Morgan (autobiography, Australia/ aboriginal)
Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangarembga (novel, Zimbabwe)
Obasan, Joy Kogawa (novel, Canada)
Once Upon an Eskimo Time. Edna Wilder (biography, US)
Praisesong for the Widow, Paule Marshall (novel, US/Caribbean)
Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family, Pauli Murray (nonfiction, US)
The Roots of Ticasuk: an Eskimo Woman's Family Story, Tiscasuk (autobiography, US)
The Seventh Garment, Eugenia Fakinou (novel, Greece)
Spring Moon, Bette Bao Lord (novel, China)
Talking Indian: Reflections on Survival and Writing, Anna Lee Walters (essays/short stories, US)
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldús (essays, US)
Tracks, Louise Erdrich (novel, Native American)
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Maxine Hong Kingston (autobiography, US)

I've read a number of these and several quite recently.

Burgher's Daughter is about a young woman who is the daughter of anti-Apartheide activists and what that means for her life.
Nervous Conditions is a young woman's coming-of-age story set in Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia.

I'd recommend both of these but the Gordimer novel is much 'heavier' than the Dangarembga. I'm reading My Place currently and am finding it a good read, although, I suspect, a small novel I read not so long ago, Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch accomplished the same thing in fiction and about 250 pages. We'll see.

Working at the bookstore we sold a lot of Alicia and the Alvarez novel. The first because the author always spoke in the area, the second because it is a staple of the local high school's multi-cultural awareness program (perhaps program is not the word I want there...).

What? No Amy Tan? No Louise Erdrich? No Zadie Smith? No Alice Walker?

The book Avaland is drawing the lists from was published in 1994 and I don't believe any updated editions have been issued. Zadie Smith didn't publish her first novel, White Teeth, until 2000, so there's no way she could be included. Louise Erdrich novel, Tracks is listed in this category (one up from the bottom).

The omission of the others, particularly Tan, is harder to explain. Walker features in other categories in the book, so likely she was left off to give space to lesser known writers/books, but I'm not certain how often Tan shows up in these lists.

The Dust Roads of Monferrato and The Fountain Overflows are both excellent, the latter one is the first in a trilogy, which also includes (in order) This Real Night and Cousin Rosamund, very good as well.

Again, I was almost embarrassed by the number of US titles as I was transcribing the list. I reminded myself that it was published for US audience but still, it doesn't reflect the way I read (I like to think of myself as more 'global' in my reading).

I also think there has been an explosion of literature written and sold here in the US by non-Western authors and immigrants from non-European countries. One has to wonder what a similar list would look like now.

It may be that Tan and Walker will show up elsewhere in the book. . .

Yep, message #51. I wondered why Tan wasn't in the "Families" group.

OK, I posted just above #76, but for some reason it didn't show up (which is why #76 sound odd). What I had said was:

That explains Smith, and somehow I missed the Erdrich. I seem to recall asking why Amy Tan wasn't on an earlier list.

I believe Walker's already featured at least once in the Ethics category with Possessing the secret of joy.

I could look in the book's index, but then that would be cheating;-)

Another list tomorrow. I'm going to try to pick up the pace a little.

#78 I'm pretty sure some authors are represented more than once, although I'd have to troll the lists to be sure. And several of Walker's books are more about family and heritage than ethics.

Message edited by its author, Jan 20, 2008, 10:44am.

>80 definitely some have been mentioned more than once. I have noticed that as I have been transcribing.

>79 "I could look in the book's index, but then that would be cheating;-)"

Ha ha! I thought of doing that too but since my copy is squirreled away in a box somewhere sheer laziness rather than any, er, "ethics" kept me from doing this ;-)

I have read only a few books on these lists and am wondering how I missed them all!

I have read "The Garcia Girls." It was part of a community read by a nearby library.

I liked the shifting POV, but I didn't find it as engaging as I thought it would be. Can't really put my finger on what it was that didn't "grab" me, though.

Also read "The Woman Warrior" and liked it, but am durned if I can recall anything else about it.

Indentity Women ....share a common struggle to find and live a life they believe in. Sometimes learning who you are is a battle; sometimes knowing who you are is a release. Always it is a journey of searching and discovery, for both author and reader. (from the intro to this section, p. 159)

Black Ice, Lorene Cary (memoir, US)
Breakthrough, Mercedes Valdivieso (novel, Chile, trans from the Spanish)
Corregidora, Gayl Jones (novel, US)
Disappearing Moon Cafe, Sky Lee (novel, Canada)
Dora, Doralina, Rachel de Queiroz (novel, Brazil, trans. from the Portuguese)
Emma, Jane Austen (novel, England)
The False Years, Josefina Vicens (novel, Mexico, trans from the Spanish)
Fiela's Child, Dalene Mathee (novel, South Africa)
HERmione, H. D. (novel, US)
The Jailing of Cecelia Capture, Janet Cambell Hale (novel, US)
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte (novel, England)
Jerusalem Plays Hide and Seek, Ariella Deem (novel, Israel, trans from the Hebrew)
Lover's Choice, Becky Birtha (short stories, US)
Margins , Terri de la Pena (novel, US)
Nampally Road, Meena Alexander (novel, India)
The Odd Woman, Gail Godwin (novel, US)
The Pegnitz Junction, Mavis Gallant (short stories, Canada/France)
Rebellion: Essays 1980-1991, Minnie Bruce Pratt (essays, US)
The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick (novella/short story, US)
Solitude, Victor Catalá (Caterina Albert i Paradís)(novel, Spain, trans. from the Catalan)
The Street, Ann Petry (novel, US)
Talking to High Monks in the Snow, Lydia Minatoya (memoir, US/Asia)
Weeds, Edith Summers Kelley (novel, US)
The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall (novel, England)
The Worry Girl, Andrea Freud Loewenstein (short stories, US)

I'm with nohrt4me ~ I thought I was well-read and that books by women made up at least 3/4 of my reading, but I don't even recognize most of the authors/titles in the above lists! Sheesh! I feel so inadequate!

Of the titles in the Identity list, I've read only Jane Eyre; Emma is in my TBR pile.

The only others I've read on any of the lists are:

Heritage: Spring Moon by Bette Bao Lord

Families: Little Women

Ethics: To Kill a Mockingbird

Resolution for 2008: Read at least one book from each of the lists on this thread.

Storeetllr, I think you will be busy as I'm still less than halfway through the book!

Yes, I suspect we have all read less on these lists than the lists on the "Masterpieces" thread, which make the ones we have read all the more interesting, imo.

Other than Jane Eyre and Emma, and H. D.'s poetry, I think I have only read The Shawl but to be quite honest, I don't know where I read this. I'm sure it wasn't in an Ozick collection. Actually, I think it may have been a class . . .

I think since this book was written, there has been a real explosion of literature made available from other parts of the world not mentioned much on these lists - i.e. Africa, India, the Middle East, and South America.

Wow, my reading on this list is pretty shabby: Jane Eyre, Emma, and The Street.

(hanging head in shame . . . )

Joining the shame club ... have read only Jane Eyre and Emma. All of these lists have made me feel like I've been living under a rock!

Quite a number of these books were written in the 80's and very early 90's. Picking a category at random (Friendships), the picks are 45% prior to 1980, 29% 1980s, and 16% in the first three years of the 90s.

Well, I know what I was doing in the 80's and 90's (children born '79, '82, '84). . .

These lists do have some interesting titles on them though.

Imagined Worlds

The Amber Gods and Other Stories, Harriet Prescott (short stories, US)
A Bag of Stories, Edla Steen (short stories, Brazil, trans. from the Spanish)
Eve's Tattoo, Emily Prager (novel, US/Germany)
Family Album, Claribel Alegria (novellas, Nicaragua/Spain, trans. from the Spanish)
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (novel, England)
The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende (novel, Chile, trans from the Spanish)
I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, Maryse Condé (novel, Barbados/US, trans from the French)
The Iguana, Anna Maria Ortesé (novel, Italy, trans from the Italian)
Kindred, Octavia Butler (novel, US)
The Lowenskold Ring, Selma Lagerlof (novel, Sweden, trans from Swedish)
The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from Around the World, Ethel Johnston Phelps (short stories, US)
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley (novel, US)
Mrs Vargas and the Dead Naturalist, Kathleen Alcalá (short stories, US)
New Islands and Other Stories, Maria Luisa Bombal (short stories, Chile, trans from the Spanish)
Out of Time, Paula Martinac (novel, US)
The Painted Alphabet. Diana Darling (novel/folk tale, Indonesia/US)
Saints and Strangers. Angela Carter (short stories, England)
The Ship of Fools, Cristina Peri Rossi (novel, Uruguay, trans from the Spanish)
Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Karen Tei Yamashita (novel, Brazil)
The Wall, Marlen Haushofer (novel, Austria, trans from the German)
Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy (novel, US)

Message edited by its author, Jan 21, 2008, 8:30pm.

In identity, i have read Dora Doralina
Emma
jane Eyre
The odd Woman
The Shawl
The street
Weeds
The well of loneliness
or 8 out of 23

i did very poorly in Imaginings:
i have only read:
Eve's Tatoo, Frankenstein
The House of the Spirits
Woman on the Edge of Time
or 4 out of 21

Message edited by its author, Jan 21, 2008, 10:58pm.

Mothers and Mothering

Anywhere but Here, Mona Simpson (novel, US)
The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver (novel, US)
The Big Mama Stories. Shay Youngblood (short stories, US)
The Bridge of Beyond, Simone Schwartz-Bart (novel, Guadeloupe)
Child of Fortune, Yúko Tsushima (novel, Japan, trans. from the Japanese)
Child of Her People, Anne Cameron (novel, Canada)
Fierce Attachments, Vivian Gornick (autobiography, US)
The Fifth Child, Doris Lessing (novel, England)
I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots, Susan Straight (novel, US)
In My Mother's House, Kim Chernin (biography, US)
The Kitchen God's Wife, Amy Tan (novel, US/China)
Mary O'Grady, Mary Lavin (novel, Ireland)
A Mom's Life, Kathryn Grody (memoir, US)
Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Adrienne Rich (nonfiction)
The Other Mother, Carol Schaefer (autobiography, US)
Praxis, Fay Weldon (novel, England)
Pride of Family, Carole Ione (autobiography, US)
Riding in Cars with Boys, Beverly Donofrio (autobiography, US)
Virginia, Ellen Glasgow (novel, US)
Why Not Me? The Story of Gladys Milton, Midwife, Wendy Bovard and Gladys Milton (oral history, US)
The Woman Who Was Not All There, Paula Sharp (novel, US)

I am surprised at how many I read in this category - all before I became a mother!

Anywhere but Here
The Bean Trees
I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All The Pots
The Kitchen God's Wife
Riding in Cars with Boys
The Woman Who Was Not All There

Funny, I don't seem to own any of them anymore except Bean Trees. What happened to all of my books?

I'm surprised how many I have read! I've only read the Amy Tan. Admittedly, nowadays the shelves seem full of books about pregnant young women and new mothers (some of this I have read is loosely referred to as "yummymummy" lit). It's my age, I know, but I'm just not attracted to the subject of pregnancy and young motherhood any longer:-) The last one I can think of that features a pregnant young women is Banishing Verona by Margot Livesey - which was very good, btw. Certainly I will think of others after I leave the computer!

read Anywhere but Here
The Bean Trees
I Been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots
The Kitchen God's Wife
Mary O'Grady
Praxis
Riding in Cars with Boys- saw the movie, didn't read the book
Virginia and
The Woman Who Was Not All There

One they missed is The Good Mother by Sue Miller. Devastating.

Was very glad to see The Bean Trees; would include Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott.

Wonder if the editors would've included We Need to Talk About Kevin, if the book were being put together now?

Yes, I wondered about Anne Lamott being overlooked.

Though I really cannot get through her self-obsessive riffs on life, as if it were all about her. She writes like she was the only woman ever to have a baby, be a single mom, struggle with religion, etc. etc.

But I can't really say that except here under cover of anonymity because so many of my dearest friends have lent me their Anne Lamott books, sure that I will click with her sense of humor and take on life.

And if you're one of my friends who's tricked out my cover, please don't be offended. I love you anyway.

OBSERVATIONS "Whatever we study, we see through the lens of our own histories and passions. The authors in this section play with the concepts of observation and subjectivity in a variety of ways." (excerpt from intro to this section)

After Henry, Joan Didion (essays, US)
And the Bridge is Love: Life Stories, Faye Moskowitz (essays, US)
Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Elizabeth Keckley (autobiography, US)
Cora Sandel: Selected Short Stories, Cora Sandel (short stories, Norway)
A Country Year: Living the Questions, Sue Hubbell (essays, US)
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara W. Tuchman (nonfiction/Europe)
Distant View of a Minaret, Alifa Rifaat (short stories, Egypt, trans . from the Arabic)
Excellent Women, Barbara Pym (novel, England)
Fifty Russian Winters, Margaret Wettlin (autobiography/USSR)
Flowering Judas, Katharine Anne Porter (short stories, Mexico/US)
A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Connor (short stories, US)
Guests of the Sheik: an Ethnography of an Iraqi Village, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea (memoir, Iraq/US)
The Little Hotel, Christina Stead (novel, Switzerland {Australia})
The Little Virtues. Natalia Ginzburg (essays, Italy, trans. from the Italian)
May You be the Mother of a Hundred sons: a Journey Among the Women of India, Elizabeth Bumiller (nonfiction, India)
Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie (novel, England)
The Nocturnal Naturalist, Cathy Johnson (journal, US)
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard (essays, US)
The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker (short stories/poems/reviews, US)
The Time of the Doves, Mercé Rodoreda (novel, Spain, trans from the Catalan)
Various Miracles, Carol Shields (short stories, Canada)
Women of Sand and Myrrh, Hanan al-Shaykh (novel, Lebanon, trans from the Arabic)
The World and the Bo Tree, Helen Bevington (essays, US)

Wow - only the Carol Shields on this list! Although I did just pick up Excellent Women on the recommendation of many LT folks.

>101 I hope you love Excellent Women, alphaorder. I certainly did! I've never head of Carol Shields (is that a horrible thing to say?)--is Various Miracles her best?

I've also read A Good Man is Hard to Find, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and the Agatha Christie. I've read Dorothy Parker but don't think I've got that one.

The short story collections of Dorothy Parker, Katherine Anne Porter & Flannery O'Conner.
Nature essays by Sue Hubbell & Anne Dillard'sPilgrim at Tinker Creek Barbara Tuchman historical Distant Mirror.
All classics in their respective fields.

I have read the Barbara Tuchman, Barbara Pym, Katharine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, Christina Stead, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Parker, Merce Rodoreda. I have read many if not most of each of their books. I may have missed one or two of the Christie, and one or two of the Stead. I love Carol Shields, but I missed that one.
Edited to mention that I haven't read any other book by merce Rodoreda, and am quite unfamiliar with other books besides hers, translated from Catalan.

Message edited by its author, Feb 1, 2008, 11:38am.

I think I read the Tuchman ~ maybe only part of it ~ long years ago. I know I read the Dorothy Parker, when I was in my twenties, actually, and it really made an impression on me. Loved Murder on the Orient Express.

I thought the Tuchman a very accessible and interesting read - not that the 14th century has ever really been of great interest to me. I've read the Christie, of course, and some of Dorothy Parker. Last year I acquired Women of Sand & Myrrh and it's in the TBR pile, along with Excellent Women.

If they would just stop publishing books, I would catch up.

>102

I have read much of Carol Shields and loved them all (take a peek at my library if you wish). I will look through them this weekend and send you some recs. There are lots of other librarything folks who may know her work better than me and can also make a recommendation. Anyone care to?

I'm finding this thread interesting but confusing. The reasons why these categories were chosen by the editors is not clear. I'm not very good at taking in information from a computer screen - would probably have to see the book. (Off to Amazon.)

I just got the book, Amanda, but have not have time to browse through it yet!

Dorothy Parker would be worth reading had she only written her famous review of "Winnie the Pooh" when it was first released under her pseudonymn Constant Reader. The review, in its entirety:

Tonstant Weader frowed up.

Amandameale, there is nothing mentioned about why these specific categories were used. There is a one page (sometimes only a half page) introduction to each category, followed by the list of books for that category, followed again by a paragraph on each book listed. The paragraphs are basically a synopsis for the book.

Because everyone doesn't have the book, on this thread we are talking about the ones we have read.

Nohrt4me: besides the review of Winnie the Pooh, I think Parker will live because of her story Big Blonde, which imo is one of the very best American short stories of all time. Tragic, but great. (I skipped the Sue Miller because the reviews made it look too depressing at the time. I should revisit.)

I'm beginning to think that I am woefully underread.

And so am I, Cariola!

me, too.

#110 and 112 ~ OMG, nohrt4me, I laughed out loud when I read that (or, should I say, reread) that quote. I confess I haven't read Big Blonde but definitely plan to look for it. Parker had quite the wit!

Edited to make sense.

Message edited by its author, Feb 1, 2008, 9:26pm.

Parker also wrote "The High Cost of Living," which is about the funniest thing I ever read outside of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, who I think had a hand in writing the screenplay for "Blonde Bombshell" with Jean Harlowe.

There were some really great women satirists who came out of the 20s and 30s, but they caught flak a years ago from feminist critics who think they disparaged women too much.

I believe that "The Women"--the original stageplay--had a revival on Broadway five or six years ago.

Big Blonde was dramatized for American television way back in 1980. Sally Kellerman starred as Hazel, with John Lithgow co-starring as her alcoholic husband, Herbie Morse. I only saw this production once, and I was only fourteen-fifteen at the time, but I remember it being quite well done. It's now available on DVD as part of the Broadway Theater Archive.

A few months ago World Literature Today featured a remembrance/appreciation of Mercè Rodoreda by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's available online as a pdf file and is well worth reading, particularly for those not familiar with her work. Those interested in exploring her oeuvre further, as well as work by other Catalan writers, should check out Lletra-Web of Catalan Literature, which features many informative pages in English as well as other languages and a searchable database of Catalan literature in translation.

In somewhat the same ethnographic vein as Guests of the Sheik, I'd recommend Jean L. Briggs' wonderful Never in anger: portrait of an Eskimo family. Briggs spent one and half years living with an Arctic Inuit group, the Utku, as an adopted daughter. Her struggles to conform to Inuit norms and her willingness to take into account the ways in which individuality and subjective experience interact with culture (in both herself and in the Inuit she's observing) make this a classic of anthropology and a really good read.

Message edited by its author, Feb 2, 2008, 12:52am.

I could be wrong, but I think Parker panned a play (authored by Milne) based on Winnie the Pooh, not the storybooks. Makes sense--it's one thing to lisp that stuff as a kid or to a kid, quite another to have to listen to it staged (and played by adults, if memory serves).

>119 I believe it wasn't a play but The House at Pooh Corner that Parker was trashing. I like A. A. Milne's response (in his autobiography) very much:'When, for instance, Dorothy Parker, as "Constant Reader" in The New Yorker, delights the sophisticated by announcing that at page 5 of The House at Pooh Corner "Tonstant Weader fwowed up" (sic, if I may), she leaves the book, oddly enough, much where it was. However greatly indebted to Mrs Parker, no Alderney, at the approach of a milkmaid, thinks "I hope this lot will turn out to be gin", no writer of children's books says gaily to his publisher, "Don't bother about the children, Mrs Parker will love it.'

Says it all, at least as far as I'm concerned ;-)

I just wrestled down my laziness--for a minute--and looked up the review, it WAS a play by Milne I remembered, but not Pooh-related. However, she did title it "Just around the Pooh corner". Oh, and trashed--and how. :)

Okay, I have to quote just a bit:

"The cabinet minister talks softly and embarrassingly to Sally--'Ah, Selly, Selly, Selly'--but that is not enough. He must tap out to her, on the garden wall, his message, though she is right beside him. First he taps, and at the length it would take, the letter 'I'. Then he goes into 'l', and, though surely everyone in the audience has caught the idea, he carries through to 'o'. "Oh, he's not going on into 'v'", I told myself. "Even Milne wouldn't do that to you." But he did. He tapped on through 'v', and then did an 'e'. "If he does 'y'", I thought, "I'm through." And he did. So I shot myself."

>123 "I lovey"? I don't get it. ;)

Ha ha! I'm going to have to Google all that now, you know! :-)

Thanks for all that background, and I stand corrected about Dorothy and Pooh.

I guess you love or hate Milne. Winnie the Pooh gives me the dry heaves.

Gimme E. Nesbitt and her little Bastables any day!

christiguc, I think the point is that she shot herself before he could spell out all of "you".

I never quite understood Parker's baby talk attack on Milne because as far as I can recall, he didn't talk baby talk anywhere in the Pooh stories. They were, first and foremost, for children and, secondly, were situational comedies of the particular sort which children can visualize and laugh at heartily. I certainly did when I was four. Just as I laughed hard at Parker when I was 24.

I read a lot of books aloud to my kid, but I just could not stomach Pooh.

The preciousness seemed strained to the point of drivel. I think that was the point of the baby talk by Parker.

Just my opinion, of course, but give me Walter the Farting Dog or Click Clack Moo any day.

Didn't have Walter in my day. I'm also pre-Seuss.

Ah, Seuss! Loved The Cat in the Hat, which I eventually came to see as a dialogue between Anarchy (Cat and his Things) and Tyranny (Fish motivated by fear of Mother's return).

It was published the year I was born, and I read it so many times by 1960 that I can still recite most of it by heart.

I have read only some of these novels but, seriously, now I have new titles and authors to investigate. I'm quite excited.

Pioneers and Seekers

Here are stories of brave, intelligent women who broaden our vision of what is possible. The quest can be physical, spiritual, political, motivated by economic necessity or the sheer excitement of challenge. . . . These women and their stories are empowering, invigorating, and awe-inspiring. -excerpt from intro to this section.

All But the Waltz: A Memoir of Five Generations in the Life of a Montana Family, Mary Clearman Blew (memoir, US)
Annapurna: A Woman's Place, Arlene Blum (Memoir, Nepal/US)
The Cavalry Maiden: Journals of a Russian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars, Nadezhda Durova (diary, Russian, trans from the Russian)
Crusade for Justice: the Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, Ida B. Wells (US)
The Curve of Time, M. Wylie Blanchet (memoir, Canada)
Daughter of the Hills : A Woman's Part in the Coal Miners' Struggle, Myra Page (novel, US)
The Devil is Loose, Antonine Maillet (novel, Canada, trans from the French)
Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim (novel, Italy/England)
Exile in the Promised Land, Marcia Freedman (memoir, Israel)
Floreana: A Woman's Pilgrimage to the Galapagos, Margaret Wittmer (memoir, Ecuador/Germany)
Heat and Dust, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (novel, India)
The Hidden Hand, E.D.E.N. Southworth (novel, US)
A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, Isabella Bird (letters, US/England)
Libby: The Alaskan Diaries and Letters of Libby Beaman 1879-1880 as Presented by her Granddaughter Betty John (diary/letters, US)
Living My Life, Emma Goldman (autobiography, US)
Mountain Charley or the Adventures of Mrs. E. J. Guerin, Who Was Thirteen Years in Male Attire, Mrs. E. J. Geurin (autobiography, US)
My Antonia, Willa Cather (novel, US)
A New Home - Who'll Follow? or Glimpses of Western Life, Caroline Kirkland (novel, US)
Purple Springs, Nellie L. McClung (novel, Canada)
Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America, Mary Paik Lee (autobiography, US)
Spiritual Narratives, Sue E. Houchins (nonfiction, US)
Tracks, Robyn Davidson (memoir, Australia)
Two in the Far North Margaret Murie (autobiography, US)
West with the Night, Beryl Markham (autobiography, Kenya)
Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, Lillian Schlissel (history/diaries, US)
Women in the Resistance, Margaret L. Rossiter (nonfiction, France)

And for the sake of clarification (if one can be clear about this):

A memoir is:
1. An account of the personal experiences of an author.
2. An autobiography. Often used in the plural.
3. A biography or biographical sketch.
4. A report, especially on a scientific or scholarly topic.
5. memoirs The report of the proceedings of a learned society.
(from answers.com)

An autobiography is a biography about a person written by that person.

Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey is an absolute MUST!

Very nicely done narrative interspersed with bits from diaries that tell you stuff you really wonder about as a woman.

Like, did women worry about getting pregnant on the trip? How did they manage to avoid it? Was it their idea to go West or did they just have to pack up everything and follow their husbands? How'd they manage with young children? What did they do if someone got sick?

Women on the trail also had a very different, more humane, attitude toward the Native Americans, who often followed the wagon trains looking for food.

I agree about Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey. I found it very interesting to read the woman's perspective. I generally like history written from alternate points of view (i.e.; the oppressed people instead of the victor, the minority instead of the majority, etc.)

I've also read Heat and Dust, which won the Booker Prize some years ago.

The only one I've read on that list is The Enchanted April, but I would recommend it without question.

I have only read The Enchanted April and My Antonia, and would warmly recommend both of them.
I am intrigued by Annapurna: A Woman's Place. As of late, I find myself being drawn to narratives of women travelers in the Himalayas, and another book I would definitely add to the list is My Journey to Lhasa by Alexandra David-Neel, the only Western woman who succeeded in entering the "forbidden city".

Not doing well with this list either. I've read Enchanted April, Heat and Dust, and My Antonia.

I have only read Enchanted April, Heat and Dust, My Antonia and West with the Night.

Many of the books in the list look really interesting.
I'd like to mention that Enchanted April was a film with Joan Plowright,

My Antonia was on TV; I think it was Hallmark, with Jessica Lange.

Heat and Dust was a film with , I think, Julie Christie.

I remember seeing a documentary about Beryl Markham who wrote West with the Night. There was some discussion in her biography about whether West with the Night was really written by her, or by her writer-companion. (She was also one of the lovers of Denys Finch-Hatton, who was Karen Blixen's (Isak Dinesen's) great love.

Doing better than me, Cariola ~ I've only read My Antonia, and that was for my thesis for a college English class, though I really enjoyed the novel notwithstanding all the work I had to do to write the thesis.

I've seen the movie version of Enchanted April and have been meaning to read the novel but haven't gotten round to it yet. Perhaps this is a good time. Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey also sounds good.

#139 Greta Scacchi, not Julie Christie.

Thanks, Cariola. I mix them up a lot, even tho i thing Christie is much gentler, softer and prettier. They are both terrific actresses, imo.

And Greta Scacchi is much younger than Julie Christie, but not as good as her, imho.

Places and Homes
A piece of land, a mountain, a river---all can exist without a human presence. People have rarely had this capacity for separation, however. Wherever they are, they send out their tendrils of associations, memories, needs, and questions, intertwining themselves into the landscape, making it a home. (from the intro to this section, p.247)

Bake-Face and Other Guava Stories, Opal Palmer Adisa (short stories, Jamaica)
Beka Lamb, Zee Edgell (novel, Belize)
A Belfast Woman, Mary Beckett (short stories, Ireland)
Greeting Home Alive, Aurora Levins Morales and Rosario Morales (essays/short stories, US/Puerto Rico)
The Good Times are Killing Me, Lynda Barry (Novel, US)
Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary, Hannah Senesh (diary/letters, Hungary/Israel, trans from Hebrew)
Her, Cherry Muhanji (novel, US)
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (short stories, US)
The Irish R. M., E. (Edith) Somerville and Martin (Violet Florence) Ross (short stories, Ireland/England)
Italian Days. Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (travel journal, Italy)
The Land of Little Rain. Mary Austin (nonfiction, US)
Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir, Mamie Garvin Fields with Karen Fields (autobiography, US)
Mute Phone Calls and Other Stories, Ruth Zernova (short stories, Russian, trans from Russian)
My Mother's House, Colette (essays, France, trans from French)
Now in November, Josephine Johnson (novel, US)
Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen (memoir, Kenya/Denmark)
Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, Terry Tempest Williams (nonfiction, US)
River Time: Frontier on the Lower Neuse, Janet Lembke (nonfiction, US)
The Solace of Open Spaces, Gretel Ehrlich (essays, US)
Stradbroke Dreamtime, Oodgeroo Nunukul (memoir/folk tales, Australia)
Street Games, Rosellen Brown (short stories, US)
Talking to the Dead, Sylvia Watanabe (short stories, US)
Winter Wheat, Mildred Walker (novel, US)
Women of the Shadows: the Wives and Mothers of Southern Italy, Ann Cornelisen (nonfiction, Italy)
Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South, Shirley Abbott (nonfiction, US)

Only two! The House on Mango Street and The Solace of Open Spaces, which I remember having had a profound effect on me when I read it.

Not a one for me; however, like previous categories, I have read other works by some of these authors. I have poetry by Cisneros and have read some of Colette's novels.

The Stradbroke Dreamtime looks interesting to me.

Only two: The House on Mango Street and Out of Africa.

I always liked stories ABOUT Colette better than BY Colette.

One time she saw a cat in Central Park yowling at something and cried, "At last! Someone who speaks French!" (At least I hope I have that straight, as I balled up the Parker/Pooh story.)

A belated plug for Von Arnim ("Enchanted April"), who was not a prolific writer, but whose work still seems fresh.

I forget the title of the other book I read, but it was about a young-looking widow who marries a much younger man, and then spends most of her time trying to maintain her youthful looks so as not to be taken for his mother. Shallow as this sounds on the face of it, the anxieties, embarrassments--even shame--of aging are explored very delicately. The tables turn at the end of the novel--that's as much as I can say without spoiling it--and it is a wonderful read. It's a hard book to find.

Might make an interesting parallel read with Parker's "Big Blond" mentioned earlier.

It was called Mr. Skeffington and was also a movie with bette davis and claude rains.

I have read women of the shadows, the wives and mothers of southern italy, The irish r.m. , The house on mango street, out of africa, My Mother's House and Hannah Senesh

Out of Africa
Winter Wheat
Refuge & other Terry Tempest Williams
Solace of Open Spaces
Now in November & also The Inland Island by Josephine Johnson
House on Mango Street

Message edited by its author, Feb 7, 2008, 8:13pm.

#148> nohrt4me, the book is Love by Elizabeth von Arnim, and not Mr. Skeffington, as almigwin says.
Both by the same author, but the first deals with an older woman who falls in love with a younger man and marries him, as you describe, whereas the other tells the story of a younger woman who marries an older man (Mr. Skeffington). True, both women do whatever they can to preserve their beauty and youthful looks, but for different reasons.
You know, although I have both books and have read them, I never thought to compare them!

P.S. You might be interested to know that both books are published by Virago. Also, the touchstone for Love is wrong.

Message edited by its author, Feb 7, 2008, 8:45pm.

>148, 152 Here's your link for Love!

Thank you, Christi, you are priceless! (And I am still wondering why it did not work before....)

Pardon my mistake re Mr Skeffington. My memory is becoming unreliable. I'll have to do more checking.

Message edited by its author, Feb 7, 2008, 10:39pm.

You are forgiven, dearest almigwin!!
;-))

"Mr. Skeffington" is a wonderful movie in its own right. Probably my favorite Davis after "The Old Maid."

I'll trust that "Love" is the title of the Von Arnim. I've totally blanked out!

I'd like to require everybody who blabbers on about how 50 is the new 30 read it. 50 is only the new 30 because a lot of people in their 50s have the dough to get plumped and squeezed and dyed and doped and liposucked to look 30.

Don't get me started ...

>157. I'll stay 50 something and spend the bucks on books:-)

me too, avaland!!!!!!!

POWER

There is power in a dream achieved or destroyed, in the lust for control of a corrupt and dictatorial government, in the passion of two people for each other, in the unshakable faith of a spiritual foundation. . . . Here are the battles and revelations, moments and centuries of defeat and triumph. Here is the power of beauty, of greed, of hate, and of love. (excerpt from the intro to this section, p. 265).

They Didn't Die, Lauretta Ngcobo (novel, South Africa/England)
Awaiting Trespass, Linda Ty-Casper (novel, Philippines)
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, Susan Faludi (nonfiction, US)
The Beggars' Strike, or THe Dregs of Society, Aminata Sow Fall (novel, Senegal, trans from the French)
City of Kings, Rosario Castellanos (short stories, Mexico, trans from Spanish)
The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey (novel, England)
God Bless the Child, Kristin Hunter (novel, US)
Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman's Sourcebook, Paula Gunn Allen (nonfiction, US)
The House of Ulloa, Emilia Pardo Bazán (novel, Spain, trans from Spanish)
How to Suppress Women's Writing, Joanna Russ (nonfiction, US)
I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian woman in Guatemala, Rigoberta Menchú as told to Elisabeth Burgos-Debray (autobiography, Guatemala, trans from Spanish)
John Dollar, Marianne Wiggins (novel, Burma)
Kelroy, Rebecca Rush (novel, US)
Killing Color, Charlotte Watson Sherman (short stories, US)
The Living is Easy, Dorothy West (novel, US)
Mary, Queen of Scots, Antonia Fraser (biography, Scotland)
Mean Spirit, Linda Hogan (novel, US)
Memoirs of a Korean Queen, Lady Hong (memoir, Korea, trans from Korean)
Oroonoko, The Rover and Other Works, Aphra Behn (novels, plays, poems & letters, England)
A Persian Requiem, Simin Daneshvar (novel, Iran, trans from Persian)
Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (nonfiction, US)
Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde (essays/speeches, US)
Sofia Petrovna, Lydia Chukovskaya (novel, Russia, trans from the Russian)
Sultana's Dream and Selections from The Secluded Ones, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (short stories, nonfiction/ Bangladesh, some trans from Bangla)
A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story, Elaine Brown (autobiography, US)
The Threshing Floor, Barbara Burford (short stories, England)
A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft (nonfiction, England)
Women, Culture and Politics, Angela Y. Davis (essays, US)
The Women Outside: Meanings and Myths of Homelessness, Stephanie Golden (nonfiction, US)
The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (short story, US)

Well, I'm doing a little better with this list. I've read: The Daughter of Time, Mary, Queeen of Scots, Oroonoko, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and The Yellow Wallpaper.

Message edited by its author, Feb 9, 2008, 1:57pm.

Sadly I've only read Daughter of Time, but that one I read two or 3 times. :) I've been wanting to read Mary, Queen of Scots and The Yellow Wallpaper ~ maybe 2008's a good year to do that. I'm also putting The Women Outside: Meanings and Myths of Homelessness on my TBR list. I live in downtown L.A. and, esp. at night, see so many homeless people ~ mostly men, but more women than I in my prior insulated life in a middle-class suburb would have imagined.

Cariola, Oroonoko sounds interesting too.

#162 Hope my students think so--I'll be teaching it in a few weeks!

Hi everyone! I'm new to this thread (and to LT), but wanted to encourage the potential Pym readers. Excellent Women is ... well, excellent. Pym is such a delightfully funny writer. And for any Pym fans out there there is a lovely piece on her on Readerville.com's new online magazine this month.

So many wonderful books on these lists! I've read a lot of them but it looks like I have a lot of reading to do.

I've added my hardcovers to my library, but not yet my paperbacks. Now I'm inspired to do so in hopes of connecting with other fans.

I have read Backlash, Daughter of Time, Mary Queen of Scots, Oroonoko, Sophia Petrovna, A vindication of the rights of Women and The Yellow Wallpaper

Welcome, megwaiteclayton!
I am an affectionate reader of Pym's, whom I like a lot. So, thanks for pointing out Readerville.com
:-))

oh no! we are all lapsing back into the 'how many have we read' responses. Come on, now, I'm sure some of you can come up with something interesting to say about one of these books!

Well, How to Suppress Women's Writing is an amazingly thought-provoking read. Just the cover, which has many of the dismissive comments that have been said/are said about women's writing running across it, is interesting. Here's a clickable thumbnail of it:

#167 OK, here goes. I know I am in the minority here, but I really did not enjoy Daughter of Time. It may be because I don't care for mysteries--and it is sort of an historical mystery. Or it may be because I am pretty knowledgeable about Richard III. It was just a bit too "pop" for my taste. Obviously, we all know where Richard's greed got him: running around looking for a horse on Bosworth Field. I guess that's why it makes this list.

Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women is not a particularly easy read, but it was a revolutionary piece in its day. I am even more fascinated with books about her life. I've read a number of fictionalizations,and Lyndall Gordon's Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft is a very good bio.

Message edited by its author, Feb 9, 2008, 7:17pm.

Cariola....THANK YOU!!!! I never understood all the fuss about Daughter of time. As I was reading it, I remember thinking "Well, what is so special about what this guy is doing? What did he find out, after all?"
Also, after reading all the different opinions about Richard III - guilty/not guilty, cruel, maligned etc. - I have my doubts about the way he was portrayed.

**Off the soapbox**

I read Daughter of Time for the first time in my early twenties, and it opened my eyes as to how history can be skewed by the victor, the majority, etc. I recently reread it and found it a less compelling read, but I remain grateful to it for making me more aware at a time in my life when I was about as aware as a seaslug.

Edited to change word from "thoughtful" to "aware" to say more what I meant.

Message edited by its author, Feb 10, 2008, 7:55pm.

I love short stories. It is an art.

The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (short story, US)

Is one of my favs.

The Yellow Wallpaper is absolutely phenomenal, a totally compelling reading.

I always think I don't care much for short stories, but every once in awhile I come across a collection that reminds me that I do like them. Women author-wise, I'd definitely put Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies on the list. Or anything by Katharine Mansfield, especially "The Garden Party."

Message edited by its author, Feb 11, 2008, 6:11pm.

Oh yes, Meg!! Katherine Mansfield is a great favourite of mine, ever since I was a university students (centuries ago).
:-))

Trials and Adversity

Trapped by circumstances not of their making, thse women do what they can ---yell, cry, hit out with both fists, find an escape, make peace within themselves. They do not always succeed, yet these books carry a feeling of triumph, for they look adversity in the face and capture it in prose. (from the intro to this section, p. 287)

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank (diary, Holland, trans from the Dutch)
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (novel, US)
Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills, Latife Tekin (novel, Turkey, trans from Turkish)
The Censors, Luisa Valenzuela (short stories, Argentina, trans from Spanish)
Christabel, Christabel Bielenberg (memoir, Germany/England)
Daughter of Earth, Agnes Smedley (novel, US)
A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman. Ida Pruitt (oral history, China)
The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark (novel, England)
The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector (novel, Brazil, trans from Portuguese)
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (novel, US)
The House with the Blind Glass Windows, Herbjorg Wassmo (novel, Norway, trans from Norwegian)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs (autobiography, US)
journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg (memoir, Russia, Trans from Russian)
Love Must Not Be Forgotten, Zhang Jie (short stories, China, trans from the Chinese)
Magic Eyes: Scenes from an Andean Girlhood, Wendy Ewald from stories told by Alicia and Maria Vásquez (oral history, Colombia)
A Mountainous Journey, Fadwa Tuqan (autobiography, Palestine, trans, from Arabic)
My Father's House, Sylvia Fraser (autobiography, Canada)
Nectar in a Sieve, Kamala Markandaya (novel, India)
Or Else, The Lightning God and Other Stories, Catherine Lim (short stories, Singapore)
Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story House, North, Showing that Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There, Harriet E. Wilson (novel, US)
Plaintext: Deciphering a Woman's Life, Nancy Mairs (essays, US)
Rebecca, Daphne DuMaurier (novel, England)
Second Class Citizen, Buchi Emechta (novel, Nigeria)
This Child's Gonna Live, Sarah E. Wright (novel, US)
A War of Eyes and Other Stories, Wanda Coleman (short stories, US)

Only four more categories. I hope some of you have discovered some interesting books on these lists or, at least have been inspired to check a few out here or on Amazon...

Our Nig is set in New Hampshire and is considered to be semi-autobiographical. I thought it quite good considering it was written in the 19th century. Here is a little more information on her:
http://www.harrietwilsonproject.org/abou...
The HW Project put on some great events in the area which I was able to attend.

I don't remember much about The Bell Jar but I read it in the early 90s. Loved Rebecca, of course. Even enjoyed Sally Beauman's Rebecca's Tale (same story, different viewpoint). A few years ago someone mentioned the similarities between Jane Eyre and Rebecca which, I admit, I had not thought about before. Very interesting. . .

I've read a few of the others aslo - Frank, Jacobs and Wharton, and several Emecheta novels but not this particular one (yet)

I certainly don't agree about the 'feeling of triumph' in books like The House of Mirth where the heroine kills herself at the very end of her tether, but where she has paid her last debt. Or the Diary of Anne Frank where she says that she thinks people are really good at heart, before her family is handed over to the Nazis to be killed. The Girls of Slender Means is a romp in wwii Britain where life itself is fragile and girls from all walks of life share discomforts in a rooming house. Journey into the Whirlwind is a memoir by the mother of a fine Russian Novelist about her arrest and imprisonment. Triumph? Christabel if I remember correctly, is about an Englishwoman married to a German, and trapped in Germany during the war. Nectar in a Sieve and Rebecca are rather light, but pleasant enough.The Bell Jar is unrelieved tragedy when you think about the suicide of the author while her children were tiny. I just don't get the correlation among these choices, although I have not read all of them.

The list maker mentions that "They did not always succeed, yet these books carry a feeling of triumph"... I believe that very few women actually "suc ceed " in the materiel sense .
Anne Frank, tho her end was tragic, did "succeed" in giving a face to those who perished in the holocaust. Obviously that wasn't her intention in keeping her diary, but under the circumstances just writing down her thoughts was a triumph.
I agree with you completely about "The Bell Jar" it is hugely over-rated, but Plath's poetry is so outstanding, that is what she should be remembered by.
I remember reading Girls of Slender Means when it first came out, when I was also young. The book was funny & enjoyable. I looked for other books by Muriel Spark; didn't she write a sequel? I might read it again.

Bit of a grim category here. . .

Violence

Is violence only that which is committed with a knife, a fun, a fist? What happens to our perceptions if we expand our concept of violence to include a mental or physical invasion of privacy, a poverty that endangers the mind long before it kills the body, a systematic denigration of one's identity? The books in this section open our definition of violence and help is to see it as something both more amorphous and more prevalent. (from the intro to this section, p. 307)

Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Susan Brownmiller (nonfiction, US)
Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir, Jena Said Makdisi (memoir, Lebanon)
Beloved, Toni Morrison (novel, US)
The Bone People, Keri Hulme (novel, New Zealand)
Burmese Looking Glass: A Human Rights Adventure and a Jungle Revolution, Edith T. Mirante (nonfiction, Burma)
The Butcher's Wife, Li Ang (novella, China, trans from Chinese)
Cartoucho/My Mother's Hands, Nellie Campobello (short stories, Mexico, trans from Spanish)
Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus by Carolina Maria de Jesus (journal, Brazil, trans from Portuguese)
A Chorus of Stones: the Private Life of War, Susan Griffin (nonfiction, US)
Cracking India, Bapsi Sidhwa (novel, Pakistan)
Dogeaters, Jessica Hagedorn (novel, Phillipines)
Dumba Negue: Run for your life: Peasant Tales of Tragedy in Mozambique, Lina Magaia (nonfiction, Mozambique)
G is for Gumshoe by Susan Grafton (novel, US)
The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself, Mary Prince (autobiography, West Indies/England)
The House Tibet, Georgia Savage (novel, Australia)
The Loony-Bin Trip, Kate Millett (memoir, US)
the Montreal Massacre, Louise Malette and Marie Chalouh, editors. (essays/letters, Canada)
Regeneration, Pat Barker (novel, England)
Scraps of Life: Chilean Arpilleras, Chilean women, and the Pinochet Dictatorship, Marjorie Agosin (nonfiction, Chile, trans from Spanish)
Still Loved by the Sun: A Rape Survivor's Journal, Migael Scherer (memoir, US)
A Woman's Civil War 1861-1865 , Cornelia Peake Mcdonald (memoir, US)
Yes Is Better than No, Byrd Baylor (novel, US)

You hit an interesting point, Avaland. Most people do believe physical violence as a more extreme then emotional abuse. Some have rethought this since 9/11, but time seems to erase/heal. A very interesting list. I would say if I made a list, it would mostly include war stories. I see most of your stories are not American. It is not considered an American story. Too taboo.

yareader2, I thought this was indeed an interesting viewpoint for the editors to take - what constitutes violence. These are not my choices, of course:-) What is it you think is not considered an American story? war?

Your question is not an American story.

if we expand our concept of violence to include a mental or physical invasion of privacy, a poverty that endangers the mind long before it kills the body, a systematic denigration of one's identity?

It is acceptable to have memoirs from Chile, Mozambique, or China where they are not as " advanced" as our society.

I don't know if that sounds more confusing. ;)

nah! just needed clarification:-)

Ways of Knowing

...We come away from these books knowing that the ground under our feet is deeper and less stable than we thought, and that the possibilities for new questions and understandings are endless. (from the intro to this section, p. 325)

AIDS and Its Metaphors, Susan Sontag (essay, US)
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Patricia Hill Collins (nonfiction, US)
Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko (novel, US - native American)
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Anne Tyler (novel, US)
Dreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches and Diatribes, Irena Klepfisz (essays, US)
How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, Slavenka Drakulic (essays, Croatia)
I Heard the Owl Call My Name, Margaret Craven (novel, Canada)
In Silence: Growing up Hearing in a Deaf World, Ruth Sidransky (autobiography, US)
Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives, Carolyn Kay Steedman (nonfiction, England)
Living by Water: Essays on Life, Land and Spirit, Brenda Peterson (essays, US)
Mama Day, Gloria Naylor (novel, US)
Man Made Language, Dale Spencer (nonfiction, Australia)
Mohawk Trail, Beth Brant (short stories, Canada/US, native Americans)
My Story, Kamala Das (autobiography, India)
A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman (nonfiction, US)
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, Lillian Faderman (nonfiction, US)
Plain and Simple: A Woman's Journey to the Amish, Sue Bender (memoir, US)
Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, Ntozake Shange (novel, US)
The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir (nonfiction, France, trans from French)
The Straight Mind (and Other Essays), Monique Wittig (essays, France)
Talking Back: Thinking Feminst, Thinking Black, bell hooks (essays, US)
Typical American, Gish Jen (novel, US)
Waterlily, Ella Cara Deloria (novel, US)
Women's Ways of Knowing: the Development of Self, Voice and Mind, Mary Field Belenky et all (nonfiction, US)
Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory, Michele M. Tokarczyk and Elizabeth A. Fay, eds. (essays, US)
Writing a Woman's Life, Carolyn G. Heilbrun (nonfiction, US)
Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism, Elly Bulkin et al (essays, US)

When I started typing this list, I thought this would be another dismal showing for me but I was surprised to find that I had read a few on the list. I can't remember much about the Anne Tyler novel, except that I liked it at the time. I don't think I'd recommend The Second Sex for everyone, but I also enjoyed in the early 90's reading Women's Ways of Knowing and Writing a Woman's Life and would recommend them both.

I'm surprised not to see Atwood's Surfacing on this list.

Are we all suffering "Great Book" fatigue? Well, it's understandable. The end is in sight; only a few more topics. I'll try to get one up tomorrow.

Thanks for these lists avaland. I'm using them for future reading suggestions. Just finished The Golden Notebook which doesn't appear here yet.

Wives, Lovers, and Partners

Changes, Ama Ata Aidoo (novel, Ghana)
Changes in Latitude, Joana McIntyre Varawa (memoir, Fiji)
Constance Ring, Amalie Skram (novel, Norway, trans from Norwegian)
the Coquette, or, The History of Eliza Wharton, Hannah Webster Foster (novel, US)
The Day I Began My Studies in Philosophy and Other Stories, Margareta Ekstrom (short stories, Sweden, trans from Swedish)
Disappearing Acts, Terry McMillan (novel, US)
A Farm Under a Lake, Martha Bergland (novel, US)
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Fannie Flagg (novel, US)
The Heptameron, Marguerite de Navarre (short stories, France, trans from French)
Homemade Love, J. California Cooper (short stories, US)
The Impenetrable Madam X, Griselda Gambaro (novel, Spain, trans from spanish)
Incantations and Other Stories, Anjana Apachana (short stories, India)
Indiana, George Sand (novel, France, trans from French)
Lantern Slides, Edna O'Brien (short stories, Ireland)
Like Water for Chocolate:A Novel in Monthly Installments, with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies; Laura Equivel (novel, Mexico, trans from Spanish)
The Lone Pilgrim and Other Stories, Laurie Colwin (short stories, US)
Nightwood, Djuna Barnes (novel, US)
Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce, Brenda Maddox (biography, Ireland/France)
Pembroke, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (novel, US)
Possession, A.S. Byatt (novel, England)
The Princess of Cleves, Madame de Layfayette (novel, France, trans from French)
Ramona, Helen Hunt Jackson (novel, US)
The Riverhouse Stories: How Pubah S. Queen and Lazy LaRue save the World, Andrea Carlisle (short stories, US)
The Samaritan Treasure, Marianne Luban (short stories, US)
A Small Country, Sian James (novel, Wales)
The Stillborn, Zaynab Alkali (novel, Nigeria)
Stones for Ibarra, Harriet Doerr (novel, Mexico)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte (novel, England)
Why is There Salt in the Sea?, Brigette Schwaiger (novel, Austria, trans from German)
The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Volume 1; Alice Dunbar-Nelson (short stories/poetry, US)
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (novel, England)

#61 Am almost done with Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively and am just loving it! Amazing prose. For such a short novel, it has a lot of substance. It may take me awhile to process it once I'm finished.

I'm so grateful for these lists, if only for the discovery of this one novel (and author, whom I'm going to read more of), and I bet I'm going to find a whole lot more to love as I go through the lists. Thanks, avaland!

just one category left after this one:-) Certainly the Brontes, Esquival, and Byatt are wonderful novels. I did log a few of these others away on wishlists...

Storeetllr, if you like it that much you might want to consider picking up a used copy of the book. It has short synopses which are also very interesting to read.

Well, this is the topic for which I've read the most listed books:

The Heptameron
Like Water for Chocolate
Possession
The Princess of Cleves
Wuthering Heights

With a catgory like this you could list 500 books here alone! I think it is the word partners that made the doors wide open, unless you are only being politically correct about sexual partners.

I recently read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and loved it so much I think I'll change my name to Helen Huntingdon.

Message edited by its author, Mar 6, 2008, 11:58am.

And the final topic is:

Work

At its best, work sustains and fulfills us. When we are held back by gender, class or race, however, work can be soul-numbing, a theft of spirit and energy. The authors in this section show us the beauty, frustration, inspiration, boredom, challenge, and obstalbes that make up women's work. - from the intro to this section, p. 369.

Alva Myrdal: a Daughter's Memoir, Sissela Bok (biography, Sweden)
Angie, I Says, Avra Wing (novel, US)
Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years, Margaret Mead
Bobbin Up, Dorothy Hewitt (novel, Australia)
A Bridge Through Time, Laila Abou-Saif (autobiography, Egypt)
Call Home the Heart, Fielding Burke (Olive Tilford Dargan)(novel, US)
Composing a Life, Mary Catherine Bateson (nonfiction, US)
Daughter of Persia: a woman's journey from her father's harem through the Islamic Revolution, Sattareh Farman Farmaian (autobiography, Iran)
Doc Susie: the True story of a Country Physician in the Colorado Rockies by Virginia Cornell (biography, US)
Forged Under the Sun/Forjada bajo el sol: the life of Maria Elena Lucas, by Maria Elena Lucas with Fran Leeper Buss (oral history, US)
Fruit Fields in My Blood: Okie Migrants in the West, Toby Sonneman (nonfiction, US)
The Home-Maker, Dorothy Canfield (novel, US)
An Imagined World: a Story of Scientific Discovery, June Goodfield (nonfiction, US)
Lady's Maid, Margaret Forster (novel, England)
Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic's Life, Alice Childress (short stories, US)
A Midwife's Story, Penny Armstrong with Sheryl Feldman (nonfiction, 1986)
A midwife's Tale: the Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary 1785-1812, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (history, US)
More Work for Mother: the Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave, Ruth Schwartz (nonfiction, US)
One Pair of Hands, Monica Dickens (memoir, England)
Rosie the Riverter Revisited, Sherna Berger Gluck (oral history, US)
Ruth Hall and Other Writings, Fanny Fern (Sara Payson Willis Parton)(novel, US)
Storm in the Village, Miss Read (Dora Jessie Saint) (novel, England)
A Week Like Any Other: Novella and Stories, Natalya Baranskaya (short stories, Russia, trans from Russian)
Windbreak: A Woman Rancher on the Northern Plains, Linda Hasselstrom (journal, US)
Women and Appletrees, Moa Martinson (novel, Sweden, trans from Swedish)

I'm not doing too well with this one, either. I've read A Midwife's Tale, and two more, Bobbin Up and Lady's Maid, are somewhere in my TBR stacks.

That's better than I have done, Cariola. I would highly recommend A Midwife's Tale and the PBS adaptation of it (which I acquired recently).

I am reading quite a bit of nonfiction at the moment which would fit this category, but I sense this group is more fiction-heavy, so I won't list them here.

Some novels that I think would fit here:
The JumpOff Creek by Molly Gloss is about a single woman homesteader on the frontier of Oregon in the late 19th, early 20th century. She doesn't talk much but what a tough survivor!
Intuition by Allegra Goodman has a portrait of several women in a science research field. I very much enjoyed this peek into a world I don't know much about.
The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville presents us with 'Harley Savage' - a wonderful female character, a textile artist and historian, who comes to a small community in the Australian outback from the city to help them start a history museum (of everyday articles . . .).

I think all three of these novels presents women and their chosen work as something that 'sustains and fulfills' them.

It occurs to me that Jane Eyre fits into just about every category. It's certainly a book about women's work as well.

Ditto on the wonderful PBS version of A Midwife's Tale. I actually read the book after seeing it years ago.

If you can accept Jane Eyre then also Villette also by Charlotte Bronte and Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. Villette has a teacher and The Tenant... has a woman using her skills as a painter to earn her living for herself and her son when she escapes her husband. Oh, I believe there have always been working women in literature from the beginning.

>199 yes, certainly there have been working women in literature, but I think the theme above has been given to books in which the 'work' is given special attention in some way or another throughout the book.

I'd have to think about whether, imo, any of these Bronte novels fit the category. Certainly, as you say, all the women have occupations/paid work . . . hmmm.

#61 I've had Moon Tiger on my TRB for literally years, and have read other Lively novels in the interim and enjoyed them. Thank you for the reminder.

And I, too, am grateful for these lists. Thank you, avaland.

Message edited by its author, Apr 6, 2008, 6:23pm.

I have enjoyed reading these lists enormously. Thank you Avaland for providing them for us. They have certainly provided me with many more 'must read' books and have got me thinking more on many a varied subject and have changed the way I have looked at some of the books on the list I have read in the past. I am looking forward to many years or fun sourcing some of these books and enjoying what they have to offer.

I saw this in a bookstore last year but couldn't afford to get it that day . Of course haven't been able to find since then . I'll probably end up ordering from Amazon .

Message edited by its author, Apr 28, 2009, 12:49pm.

I just had a chance to read this thread, and if we are resurrecting it, I would like to add something to the list of books about aging.

I read The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence several years ago. In it, an elderly woman narrates the story of her life on the Canadian great plains. I thought it was an excellent matter-of-fact depiction of some of the indignities of aging--the fact that our bodies do strange things to us, and that young people sometimes treat the elderly as if they were infants who need to have things explained to them, or, worse, have nothing left to offer.

The Twilight Years by Sawako Ariyoshi is a two-fer, maybe even a three-fer. Not only do we get an insider's view of the life of an elderly man, we also get a realistic picture of Japanese life, and a middle-class woman's place in that society at mid-century. Ariyoshi has written several outstanding novels.

One of my favorite books relates to aging: Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym in which four individuals approaching retirement must face the fact of their ultimate aloneness.

Does anyone have any updates to add to their reading from this list since last year?

Message edited by its author, Apr 28, 2009, 5:14pm.

On aging, I really was moved by Doris Lessing's Love, Again about a 65 year-old theatre artist who falls in love. I read it when it first came out about 15 years ago, when I was in my mid-40s and feeling the onset of middle age, and recognized how honestly Lessing dealt with a woman's realization that she is entering OLD age. It's stayed with me -- I don't know where my copy is, but I think I should go back and revisit it.

>205: I read Love, Again when I was 30ish and didn't get it. Now, at 47 ... perhaps I should give it another try?!

205 & 206--I did too--and now I'm 58 looks like I need to read it again too. There may be a run on Love, Again at the bookstores soon!

Hmm, now that my knees are starting to go, hair dye has become a necessity rather than an option, and my bathroom cupboard is starting to overflow with moisturizing products, maybe I should read this one, too!

Well, if we're all going to read it, I'll have to order another copy, the one I had is nowhere it should be, and I never catalogued it -- must have lent it to someone who never returned it.

Aruba, Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym is a much loved book for me too. AND The Stone Angel! I need to reread Love, Again as well.