What 20th Century women authors have you read?

Alice Walker
Maya Angelou
Betty Smith
Willa Cather

Tons more, I'm sure, that I can't call to mind. Those are my favorites.

How about you?

edit: inspired by this poll http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x3348969

there are so many I would have to go through my bookshelf but I like your list. :hi:

Starbridge series was excellent and her Wheel of Fortune novel.

Is Starbridge series the same as "Glittering Palaces," etc..? The Church of England series? Wonderful combination of love, passion, theology, spiritual direction, and the messiness of church life.

I think there were six in the series. I was not as happy with the St. Benet series - The Wonder Worker, etc. I in particular was not happy with the very last one. However, even the ones I didn't like as much were worth reading!

and then there are Mystical Paths, Absolute Truths, Ultimate Prizes, and Scandalous Risks, although I'm not sure of the order. I recently re-read the first two after about ten years and enjoyed them just as much the second time. The rest are "in my queue." (I have book queues instead of Netflix queues.)

Octavia Butler
Nancy Kress
Sheri Tepper
Connie Willis
Jo Clayton
Ursula LeGuin
Julian May
Pamela Sargent
Ann McCaffrey
Mary Gentle
Catherine Asaro
Tanith Lee
Kate Wilhelm

Mercedes Lackey: She is definitely one of us. Read THE FAIRY GODMOTHER and THE DRAGON JOUSTERS triolgy: JOUST, ALTA, AND SANCUARY, as well as her VALDEMOR series.

Sara Douglass: Innovative Australian author with a different slant: THE WAYFARER REDEMPTION triolgy THE TROY GAME series, THRESHOLD

Katherine Kerr: Tells a really great stroy spanning about five hundred years with one character that lives over four hundred of them for making a vow... the Gods would not release him to death until the vow was fulfilled and it took four hundred plus years for the conditions to be fulfilled.

Katherine Kurtz: She has written at least twenty-five novels of The Deryni, a persecuted race of beings with telepathic and magical powers in a land that corresponds with the time of the Inquisition or the Star Chamber. Also has written several novels concerning Masons and the Templar Knights of St. John.

Judith Tarr: Varied subjects, always excellent. PILLAR OF FIRE is an interesting take on Moses. Was Akenaten, the Pharoh who was the first leader in recorded history to believe in a single Deity also Moses?

Lynn Abbey: Really good reads, still developing

Other catagories

Pearl S. Buck: Great novels about Eastern cultures

Georgette Heyer: The inventor of the Regency novel. Everyone else is just a wannabe. Her novels are intelligent and funny.

In my younger years, I devoured Victoria Holt and Phyllis A. Whitney

for the other recommendations - I'll certainly be on the lookout for them. A couple do look familiar, though - I'm sure I've read Lackey, and probably Kerr and Kurtz. I'm always looking for good SF&F - especially by female writers. (Oh yeah, I certainly read Holt & Whitney when I was a girl!!)

They have a sureal feeling to them and are as close to poetry as prose ever gets.

And Andre Norton, queen of SF & F. She was a pioneer of the genre, writing it before it was even named. She still writes today. WITCH WORLD series, with Mercedes Lackey the ELFBLOOD series, and many many more.

I was very resistant, mainly because I was told that I just HAD to read such stuff. Then I read "Beauty" and got fairly hooked. Long ago. Thanks for the memory!

Christa Woolf is great ("Cassandra").

Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)

don't get me started.

:hi:

you see, I'm looking for "new" authors. I've read Morrison & Kingsolver but not the other three you mentioned, so thanks!

Um... which one should I start with?

it's the longest book in the world. :)

The problem is that I really don't read much fiction, and when I do, it's not necessarily the classics.

I've also found it's possible to be in a program of literature studies for YEARS and never get assigned anything by a female author. :mad: That happened to me when I was studying German.

But as for 20th century authors, here are a few:

Betty Smith
Christa Wolf
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Helen Fielding (Yeah, I know, I know)
Sue Townsend
Harper Lee
Joanne Harris
Tracy Chevalier
Ruth Rendell (AKA Barbara Vine)
P.D. James

On edit: Also Diane Schoemperlen, plus various Irish writers, usually in anthologies.

Morrison and my advisor said, "these old white guys will do that when pigs fly". Then she got the award, and then pigs flew!

Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, esp.)

also Ursula LeGuin

I've read the women you listed plus Virginia Wolff from that poll.

Hmmm...who else?

Anais Nin :)
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Alice Hoffman
Harper Lee
Ursula K. LeGuin
Sue Grafton (sometimes ya just gotta read detective novels) :)
A.C. Crispin
Barbara Hambly
Jody Lynn Nye
Joanna Russ (I actually dated her nephew)

I read a lot of scifi so there are many more that I'm not sure most people have heard of. And of course if I added non-fiction the list would explode...Molly Ivins, Susan Brownmiller, Susan Falludi, Merlin Stone...

Not so much because it only included Woolf, the Academy's token. (Funny, they diminish her work by including it!)

But because of my ornery personal/ critical opinions.

Joyce wrote a great first novel. After that, his novels had "no there there". His short stories are gems but his novels, while courageously experimental, were mostly failed experiments as far as I'm concerned.

Hemingway developed a "muscular" style. Read: phallocentric. His audience is limited. But his essays are great -- as in "Moveable Feast". I love the writer but as you know, there were women doing equally or more amazing things that were disrespected then and now for being not Hemmingway.

Faulkner was a genius. But Orwell and Greene certainly don't rise to the level Cather or Wharton or other women attained in their artistry.

What a great thread. :)

When God Was A Woman?

She's great, after her death was rated by many as one of the 20th century's most underrated authors. Wry, gentle (well, not always gentle, often acerbic) humor and wonderful social observations/commentary about post WWII British life, the life of the 30-year old "spinster" who is doing quite well, thank you, without a husband. The women are very bright and very independent: if they find a spouse, great, if not, well, life is great anyway. I HIGHLY recommend Barbara Pym. They're slow, quiet, very funny books. Start with "Excellent Women" and/or "Jane and Prudence".

Also, Toni Morrison, PD James, Barbara Kingsolver. More, but I'm blanking.

I guess I'd also add A.S. Byatt and Ruth Rendell. Deborah Crombie is good for mysteries, too. (added on edit).

For example, I've read Diane Schoemperlen's Our Lady of the Lost and Found, but not her short story anthology. I liked Joanne Harris's Holy Fools and Chocolat, despite having very different views from her on the church.

Yeah, the above is a very Catholic-oriented selection. For Anglophiles, I'd recommend Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole books, except for the last one (Adrian Mole: The Capuccino Years).

And Elizabeth Jane Howard's Getting It Right is one of my favorite novels, period.

Alice Walker

Margaret Atwood

Sherri Tepper

Octavia Butler


Harper Lee

Toni Morrison

Barbara Kingsolver

Anne Rice

My books are packed-I am moving There are more--I just can't think of them right now

I wish Harper Lee had written more and these women occupy places of honor on my bookshelves.

Lotta good stuff there. If you can ONLY add one more please do make a point to check out MARGE PIERCY. She's amazing. I'd suggest you start with Woman On the Edge of Time and go from there!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/sim-explorer/explore-items/-/0449210820/0/101/1/none/purchase/ref%3Dpd%5Fsxp%5Fr0/002-0737935-2232012

I also really like Rita Mae Brown's books. I am addicted to her detective novels (it is my guilty pleasure.) Several of her non-detective novels are funnier that heck and yet sad at the same time. She's an amazing writer!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/sim-explorer/explore-items/-/055327886X/0/101/1/none/purchase/ref%3Dpd%5Fsxp%5Fr0/002-0737935-2232012



Laura

RMB's "Mrs Murphy's Mysteries" are my guilty pleasure, too. And her non-detective novels are among the most-read books on our shelves. :bounce: I LOVE Rita Mae Brown.

Those two women in that novel made me laugh out loud several times with the rude remarks they have for each other and the stuff they do. They just destroyed any hope I had of remaining objective about that book.

I got turned on to Rita Mae Brown back around 1980 or 81. They were teaching RubyFruit Jungle in a Women's Lit class and I was just blown away by it. I feel in love with her stuff then and there and have never looked back.

Maybe we need to start a Rita Mae Brown group on here! :)



Laura

:rofl: out of context maybe they're not funny but GOD the things she invents for her characters to say.

I love this exchange between Mrs. Murphy and Tucker the Corgi:

"Let Tucker bitch. She stole my catnip sockie this morning."

"You're a real shit, Mrs. Murphy. You've got a million of those things."

"So what? I didn't say you could play with any of them."

Want to read Willa Cather

Forced to read Willa Cather, but not my taste.

she writes very readable novels, and many of them are critically acclaimed.

I'm in the middle of "Wonderland" now, and it's great.

However I couldn't manage to slog through "We Were The Mulvaneys" despite Oprah's approval. There didn't seem to be a point to it.

I could never understand why he treated his daughter the way he did and why his wife agreed to it for all that time.

For a long time, there were Black women writing astonishing novels and Lit critics had no clue what to do with them. Hurston is in many ways the founder of that whole deal. :)

Zorah Neale Hurston

How could I have possibly left her off of my list?

House of Mirth (my favorite)

Age of Innocence

her 'Everything that Rises Must Converge' is incredible

"The Violent Bear It Away" & her writing ON writing
"Mystery & Manners" is also excellent & inspiring.
Flannery is my favorite fiction writer.

after Flannery O'Connor. No one around here understood where the name came from. I named her after my greatgrandmother instead.
I have always said that if I have another daughter someday she will be a Flannery. I think that it bodes well for her future.

But there are so many others......

If I'm not in the right mood I just can't do them.

"My Antonia" was one of the favorite novels of my youth.

It is beautiful & breaks my heart... much like life ;)

I just started reading her about 2 months ago and have already read all 18 of her Richard Jury (Scotland yard super) series. And I have just read 4 more of her books that have different characters.

the Darkover books... Mists, as well, no doubt.

"La Noche de Tlatelolco"

(the student massacre of 1968 in Mexico City)

Really, too many to list here.

The Lathe of Heaven

The Fountainhead
Atlas Shrugged

I really loved Stones from the River and have passed that book on to many others. Everyone that I have lent the book to loved it and they in turn went out to buy it just to lend their copies to others.

The main character is someone who is physically different from everyone yet she learns how to be strong and survive. The setting is Germany. The timeframe for the largest part of the book is during the Nazi regime. It's an incredibly moving book that will have you crying and cheering for her.

http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/068484477X.asp

I have reread it quite a few times. Enjoy!

"Old Jules" by Sandoz is wonderful. It's an unvarnished story of her father's life. You'll learn a lot about life in the Sandhills of Nebraska - and it's definitely not Little House on the Prairie sweet!

Lot's Wife

But his wife looked back from behind him,
and she became a pillar of salt.
Genesis

The righteous man followed God's messenger,
Enormous and bright, across the black hill.
But the voice of distress spoke loud to his wife:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
At the red parapets of your native Sodom,
At the square where you sang, the yard where you spun,
At the vacant windows of that tall house
Where you bore children to your dear husband."

She looked back and bound in deadly pain,
Her eyes were no longer able to see;
Her body turned to transparent salt,
Her nimble legs grew into the ground.

Who will lament this woman's fate?
Does she not seem the least of things lost?
My heart alone will never forget her,
Who forfeited life for a single glance.

24 February 1924

--and I agree with cryingshame that Marion Zimmer Bradley's name should be on the list.

Bradley's THE MISTS OF AVALON is a masterpiece.

For people interested in Didion, one great novel is DEMOCRACY, and her essays gleam: THE WHITE ALBUM, SLOUCHING TOWARD BETHLEHEM, MIAMI.

They hold up perfectly. I love her, too.

All of my other websites are devoid of them. Dorks.

I love:

bell hooks
Molly Ivins
Valerie Solanis
Naomi Klein
Kate Clinton
Barbara Ehrenreich

Amy Tan
Barbara Ehrenreich
Jane Kenyon
Marianne Moore
Kay Boyle
Margaret Mead
Ursula K. LeGuin

There are more...I' m blanking at the moment.

is a good writer. I especially enjoyed Fair and Tender Ladies.

was great too.

novel. It's light years from her good earlier novels, head and shoulders above anything else in this category I've ever read.

a Chinese Princess.

and write authors down, get Christmas gifts, voila! I have a few friends and family who are voracious readers!

Willa Cather
Hmmm, Numerous mystery authors, J. A. Jance,
numerous English ladies, Margaret Atwood, Rendell,
(who wrote Handmaid's Tale?)

Kitty Kelley

I confess: even though I know they're female, I don't pay attention. If I like the book, I look for their name again. If not, I don't.

A Handmaids Tale