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I’m really excited about this challenge so I can read everyone’s reviews and recommendations. I have a feeling my tbr is going to get ever higher. The challenge lasts until November 2010, and more information can be found at the Women Unbound Challenge site.
There are three options:
- Philogynist: read at least two books, including at least one nonfiction one.
- Bluestocking: read at least five books, including at least two nonfiction ones.
- Suffragette: read at least eight books, including at least three nonfiction ones.
I’m going with the Suffragette option. I’ll first list the titles I’m interested in reading for the challenge, and then I’ll give some recommendations of some great books that I think are great reads for this endeavor.
Fiction:
- The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland
- The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist
- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
- Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)
- The Good Women of China by Xinran (2002) (non-fiction)
- Kristin Lavransdatter III: The Cross by Sigrid Undset (1922)
- Expat: Women’s True Tales of Life Abroad edited by Christina Henry De Tessan (non-fiction)
- A Woman of Independent Means by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey (Amazon info)
- Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (Amazon info)
- A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (Amazon info)
- Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (Amazon info)
- Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Amazon info)
- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Amazon info)
- The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer (Amazon info)
- Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte (Amazon info)
- The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein (Amazon info)
- Out by Natsuo Kirino (Amazon info)
- The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki (Amazon info)
- The Waiting Years by Enchi Fumiko (Amazon info)
- ?? by Nawal El Saadawi (Amazon info)
Nonfiction:
- Expat: Women’s True Tales of Life Abroad by Christina Henry De Tessan (Amazon info)
- A Woman Alone: Travel Tales from Around the Globe by Faith Conlon, Ingrid Emerick, and Christina Henry de Tessan (Amazon info)
- Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (Amazon info)
- A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf (Amazon info)
- Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Lauren Ulrich (Amazon info)
Books I recommend for the challenge:
- So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
- The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
- Unless by Carol Shields
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Property by Valerie Martin
- Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall
- Purple Hibiscus by Adichie
- Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
- Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
- The Help by Kathryn Stockett
- Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth Pattillo (this is a light read, but it does examine how women’s expectations are sometimes based on the literature we read)
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- probably a few more but I had to stop somewhere!
And two non-fiction titles:
- Wild Swans by Jung Chang
- Persepolis I and II by Marjane Satrapi
