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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.

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