Must Read Books

In response to Esquire's Greatest Books Ever Written, Jezebel polled readers on must read books by women. As Jezebel pointed out there was just one woman author on Esquire's list:
http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/75-books?src=rss

Jezebel's list is compiled mostly of female authors - http://jezebel.com/5053732/75-books-every-woman-should-read-the-complete-list

I've included the list below. Which books have you read? Which ones do you want to read? (I've bolded the ones I've read and the ones I'd like to read are in red. Sadly, I have not read a lot of these books.

• The Lottery (and Other Stories), Shirley Jackson (I know I read The Lottery in high school)
• To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
• The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
• White Teeth, Zadie Smith
• The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
• Excellent Women, Barbara Pym
• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
• Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
• The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
• Beloved, Toni Morrison
• Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
• Like Life, Lorrie Moore
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
• The Delta of Venus, Anais Nin
• A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
• A Good Man Is Hard To Find (and Other Stories), Flannery O'Connor
• The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
• You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down, Alice Walker
• Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• Fear of Flying, Erica Jong
• Earthly Paradise, Colette
• Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
• Property, Valerie Martin
• Middlemarch, George Eliot
• Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid
• The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
• Runaway, Alice Munro
• The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
• The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
• Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
• You Must Remember This, Joyce Carol Oates
• Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
• Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill
• The Liars' Club, Mary Karr
• I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
• A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith
• And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
• Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
• The Secret History, Donna Tartt
• The Little Disturbances of Man, Grace Paley
• The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker
• The Group, Mary McCarthy
• Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
• The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
• The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank *I've read this in school but would like to re-read it.
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
• Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag
• In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez
• The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
• Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
• Three Junes, Julia Glass
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft
• Sophie's Choice, William Styron
• Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann
• Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
• Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
• The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
• The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
• The Face of War, Martha Gellhorn
• My Antonia, Willa Cather
• Love In The Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Harsh Voice, Rebecca West
• Spending, Mary Gordon
• The Lover, Marguerite Duras
• The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
• Tell Me a Riddle, Tillie Olsen
• Nightwood, Djuna Barnes
• Three Lives, Gertrude Stein
• Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
• I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (I've seen the movie, I'd like to read the book)
• Possession, A.S. Byatt

Morsels

Jezebel had a great post today on cheesy 1980s romance novels that might have had more than a hint of misogyny.

From Jezebel:

In what I can only assume was a backlash against the feminist movement and increasingly independent portrayals of women, these romances contained an appallingly misogynistic bent made even more disturbing when you think that they were written both for and by women. The plots feature doormat heroines and sadistic, domineering males who see through their feeble protests and know that 'no' means 'yes.'

Just so we're clear though, the works of Betty Neels - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Neels - remains beyond reproach. Why do I mention Betty Neels? Um, no reason in particular…

http://jezebel.com/5019950/1980s-romance-novels-hair+raising-lip+mashing-horror-shows

Fine Lines finds a publisher

One of my favorite haunts online is Jezebel. I think it’s quirky, cutting, insightful, and interesting. Sure it’s also sometimes befuddling and infuriating, but definitely worth checking out.

One regular feature is Fine Lines, which Jezebel describes as “a sentimental, sometimes critical, far more wrinkled look at the children’s and YA books we loved in our youth.”

Lizzie Skurnick's take on The Secret Garden: But The Secret Garden, more than anything, is about those who are locked up, and those who grow — both literally and emotionally

Jezebel posted this week that Harper Collins will be publishing a book featuring previously published Fine Lines and new material.

I wonder why some of the fondest memories we have of books are the ones we read in our childhood. For instance, some of my favorites are Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain series. Is it because we start learning the true magic of reading when we’re young. That when have less pressures and worries it's easier to find time to read? I still remember being teary eyed at the end of Charlotte’s Web (and so a lifetime of crying while reading sad stories began).

Other childhood favorites: For some reason The Donkey Prince was a favorite. A prince is under a curse where he’ll remain a donkey until he finds true love. The Little House – LOVE IT. New favorite would Hug, which I usually always include as part of baby gifts.

I would love to see a Fine Lines on that often overlooked girl detective – Trixie Belden. Move over Nancy Drew! Unfortunately, the series was out of print for a number of years. While Random House has reissued the first five, the series had many, many more books – 39 to be exact.

Speaking of Nancy Drew: Nancy Drew: Curious, Independent and Usually Right - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91753085&ft=1&f=1032

To All Our Fans, With Love, From Lizzie, http://jezebel.com/5019004/to-all-our-fans-with-love-from-lizzie

Fine Lines

The Chocolate War: Life’s Tough Kid, http://jezebel.com/378750/the-chocolate-war-lifes-tough-kid

A Wrinkle in Time: Quit Tesseracting Up, http://jezebel.com/5013495/a-wrinkle-in-time-quit-tesseracting-up

The Secret Garden: Still No Idea What A Missel Thrush Is, http://jezebel.com/381385/the-secret-garden-still-no-idea-what-a-missel-thrush-is

Update: Amazon weighs in too.
http://www.omnivoracious.com/2008/06/a-book-about-bo.html