I love it when someone I trust tells me about a new book they’ve read that they think I would like. It’s better than a new restaurant, better than a new movie. In fact it’s even better than a new coffee shop opening in town.
Living in Portland, Maine means all of these things happen a lot – restaurants opening, movies coming, new coffee shops – and it also means that there are going to be many months of indoor activities.
We have a good bookstore, Longfellow Books, and we have a good bookclub, Maine Women Write. But what I couldn’t find was a good list of “new” books by women. So I made this one up from my life here in Portland and I share it with you in hopes that you trust me and that it will give you as much pleasure as it has given me.
I give you 50 of my favorite books written by women in the past 50 years:
Tales of Burning Love – Louise Erdrich
Gilead – Marilynne Robinson
Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
The Autobiography of My Mother – Jamaica Kincaid
Grace Paley: The Collected Stories – Grace Paley
Break It Down – Lydia Davis
Dance of the Happy Shades – Alice Munro
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
A Girl Named Zippy – Haven Kimmel
The Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
The Bottle Factory Outing – Beryl Bainbridge
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek – Annie Dillard
A Swiftly Tilting Planet – Madeleine L’Engle
Kindred – Octavia Butler
The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan
A Thousand Acres – Jane Smiley
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone – J.K. Rowling
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
The Elegance of the Hedgehog – Muriel Barberry
Stones from the River – Ursula Hegi
The Tiger’s Wife – Tea Obreht
The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan
The Solace of Open Spaces – Gretel Ehrlich
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Against Interpretation – Susan Sontag
Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret – Judy Blume
Wise Blood – Flannery O Connor
The Dispossessed – Ursula LeGuinn
Speedboat – Renata Adler
The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Bad Behavior – Mary Gaitskill
Geek Love – Katherine Dunn
Possession – A.S. Byatt
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Shipping News – Annie Proulx
Birds of America – Lorrie Moore
Journal of a Solitude – May Sarton
Magic for Beginners – Kelly Link
The Liars Club – Mary Karr
A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan
The Flame Throwers – Rachel Kushner
Okay, I’ve shared mine. Now it’s your turn. Send me your suggestions and I’ll post it here.
Happy reading.
