Monday, November 12, 2007

100 Most Influential Books by Women

I found this list via Alison. I took enough classes in college to get a Women's Studies minor, but I never paid the fee and filled out the paperwork. I was curious to see how many I'd read. The ones I've read are in green type.
  1. Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
  2. Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire
  3. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
  4. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
  5. Virginia Woolf, The Waves
  6. Virginia Woolf, Orlando
  7. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
  8. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
  9. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
  10. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
  11. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
  12. Nadine Gordimer, Burger's Daughter
  13. Harriette Simpson Arnow, The Dollmaker
  14. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
  15. Willa Cather, My Ántonia
  16. Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
  17. Erica Jong, Fanny
  18. Joy Kogawa, Obasan
  19. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
  20. Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child
  21. Doris Lessing, The Grass Is Singing
  22. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
  23. Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
  24. Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres
  25. Lore Segal, Her First American
  26. Alice Walker, The Color Purple
  27. Alice Walker, The Third Life of Grange Copeland
  28. Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
  29. Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
  30. Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
  31. Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
  32. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
  33. Susan Fromberg Shaeffer, Anya
  34. Cynthia Ozick, Trust
  35. Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
  36. Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife
  37. Ann Beattie, Chilly Scenes of Winter
  38. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
  39. Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer
  40. Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays
  41. Mary McCarthy, The Group
  42. Mary McCarthy, The Company She Keeps
  43. Grace Paley, The Little Disturbances of Man
  44. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
  45. Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
  46. Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
  47. Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood
  48. Mona Simpson, Anywhere But Here
  49. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
  50. Toni Morrison, Beloved
  51. Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
  52. Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr. Fortune's Maggot
  53. Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools
  54. Laura Riding, Progress of Stories
  55. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
  56. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower
  57. Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits
  58. A.S. Byatt, Possession
  59. Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
  60. Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle
  61. Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
  62. Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
  63. Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
  64. Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
  65. Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
  66. Barbara Pym, Excellent Women
  67. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
  68. Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
  69. Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist
  70. Nancy Willard, Things Invisible to See
  71. Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
  72. Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Disturbances in the Field
  73. Rosellen Brown, Civil Wars
  74. Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
  75. Harriet Doerr, The Mountain Lion
  76. Stevie Smith. Novel on Yellow Paper
  77. E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
  78. Rebecca Goldstein, The Mind-Body Problem
  79. P.D. James, The Children of Men
  80. Ursula Hegi, Stones From the River
  81. Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
  82. Katherine Mansfield, Collected Stories
  83. Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills
  84. Louise Erdrich, The Beet Queen
  85. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
  86. Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy
  87. Margaret Drabble, Realms of Gold
  88. Margaret Drabble, The Waterfall
  89. Dawn Powell, The Locusts Have No King
  90. Marilyn French, The Women's Room
  91. Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter
  92. Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries (I just reviewed this one!)
  93. Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John
  94. Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle
  95. Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
  96. Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head
  97. Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day
  98. Alice Hoffman, The Drowning Season
  99. Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
  100. Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater
18 of the 100 - that's not so great! What's worse is that I haven't even heard of many of these books or authors. Maybe this is a challenge in the making. I'd be curious to know how many others of you have read.

4 comments:

alisonwonderland said...

it looks like we have some of the same ones already read - although you're a bit ahead of me! i've definitely got a lot of reading i want to do!

pussreboots said...

Interesting list. I've posted my response here.

Anonymous said...

I would recommend Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca. Otherwise, I haven't read many. I just yesterday completed one not on this list but by Doris Lessing.

Trish @ Love, Laughter, Insanity said...

Very cool! I'll have to come back to this and see how well I've done.