#ReadWomen 2019/20 Reading List

Ok, so a new post every day of March was perhaps a bit optimistic...but I’m still keen to keep celebrating the month of International Women’s Day and British Science Week!

Carrying on the theme of awesome authors, here is an update to my reading list - just book titles and authors (otherwise I’ll never get this out) but I have thoroughly enjoyed reading everything on there. All written by women.

Since first discovering Joanna Walsh’s campaign to promote female writers, I have discovered so many amazing books that I probably wouldn’t have found otherwise. I’ve even ventured out of my usual sci-fi/fantasy genres and been pleasantly rewarded! If you’re up for the challenge give it a go and try reading only female authors for 2020.

I have a theory that there’s a perfect book out there for every moment and that somehow the right book for wherever you are in life will find its way to you at the right time - many of the books listed have been that for me. As well as intriguing characters and compelling stories, all of them contain somewhere within them, a fundamental truth about the human experience that helps make sense of this crazy world. In a paragraph, a sentence, an idea, a character flaw or virtue. As Jeanette Winterson says in her introduction to ‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’: “Books read us back to ourselves.”

They’ve also all, at some point or another, made me laugh. I hope by sharing this list, it will help others find the right book for them right now.

Find the full reading list here.

2019/20 additions:

‘Under the Net’ by Iris Murdoch

‘Women and Power’ by Mary Beard

‘The Greenhouse’ by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

‘The Power’ by Naomi Alderman

‘The Bastard of Istanbul’ by Elif Shafak

‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Sceenplay)’ by J. K. Rowling

‘Saving Bletchley Park’ by Sue Black

[annual revisiting of Harry Potter, books 6 and 7, and the Tales of Beedle the Bard]

‘Uprooted’ by Naomi Novak

The result of a Grand Day Out with good friend Ellie

‘Honour’ by Elif Shafak

‘Offline’ by Anne Holt

‘Redemption in Indigo’ by Karen Lord

‘Kindred’ by Octavia E. Butler

‘Gods of Jade and Shadow’ by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

‘Space Opera’ by Catherynne M. Valente

‘Once & Future’ by Amy Rose Capetta & Cori McCarthy

‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’ by Jeanette Winterson

‘Northwest Smith: Shambleau’ by C. L. Moore

‘Cold Sleep’ by C. J. Cherryh

By Becky Chambers:

Literary and Scientific Heroes George Eliot
(Mary Ann Evans) and Ada Lovelace meet
in Sydney Padua’s beautiful
  ‘The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage’

‘A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet’
‘A Closed and Common Orbit’
‘Record of a Spaceborn Few’
‘To Be Taught If Fortunate’
‘The Vela’ (with Yoon Ha Lee, Rivers Solomon, and S.L. Huang)
‘The Good Heretic’

By Tomi Adeyemi:
‘Children of Blood and Bone’
‘Children of Virtue and Vengeance’

By Marie Brennan:
‘A Natural History of Dragons’
‘The Tropic of Serpents’

By Agatha Christie:
‘The Thirteen Problems’
‘Murder in the Mews and Other Stories’
‘The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side’
‘The Murder on the Links’

By Katherine Arden:
‘The Bear and the Nightingale’
‘The Girl in the Tower’
‘The Winter of the Witch’

‘What’s in here?’ By Amy Brown

By Robin Hobb:
‘Assassin’s Apprentice’
‘Royal Assassin’
‘Assassin’s Quest’
‘The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince’
‘Fool’s Errand’
‘The Golden Fool’
‘Fool’s Fate’
‘Fool’s Assassin’
‘Fool’s Quest’
‘Assassin’s Fate’
‘Ship of Magic’
‘Mad Ship’
‘Ship of Destiny’
‘Dragon Keeper’
‘Dragon Haven’
‘City of Dragons’
‘Blood of Dragons’
‘The Inheritance’
‘Shaman’s Crossing’
‘Forest Mage’

Thanks again to Varan and Michaela for the recommendations! Also Muniza, Theo and Reena, and the lovely people in the bookshops and libraries of Southampton and Reykjavik :)