Women Authors -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

Women Authors

March is Women's History Month, so I thought I'd highlight some of the women authors sitting on my TBR shelves. My reading is split pretty evenly between male and female authors and this is reflected in the books on my TBR shelves. 

Who are some of your favorite women writers? Or those you want to try?

Here’s are two stacks of books by women. In the stack on the left are ten books by women writers whose books I’ve already tried. Some of these, like Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark, are favorites and I've read most of their books. Others, like Margaret Atwood and Elizabeth Strout, are those I've only dipped into but want to read more of their work. In the right stack are ten book by women writers whose work is new to me. There are many other women authors I love, but I limited myself to ten of each. 

FAVORITE AUTHORS

Kate Atkinson, Transcription. I love everything by Atkinson. I really like her Jackson Brodie mystery series, but I also like her historical fiction. 

Margaret Atwood, Hag-Seed. This is Atwood's retelling of William Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest. I've read and enjoyed a few other books from the Hogarth Shakespeare series so am really looking forward to this one. 

Joanne Harris, Five Quarters of the Orange. I've only read one Joanne Harris book and can't remember which one, other than it wasn't Chocolat. I need to remedy this situation. 

Patricia Highsmith, Ripley Under Ground and Ripley’s Game. My book club read her first Ripley book a few years ago and I intended to read the others straight through, but I got off track.

Iris Murdoch, Nuns and Soldiers. I love Murdoch's books but she was so prolific! I feel like I must have read them all but I'm only halfway through. 

Ann Patchett, State of Wonder. I read Bel Canto right when it came out and didn't like it so never read any more books by Anne Patchett. Then my book club read The Dutch House and I loved it, so I read Tom Lake when it came out. Now I want to go back and read her earlier books. 

Annie Proulx, Bad Dirt. The Shipping News is one of my very favorite books. I think I've read almost everything Proulx has written. I don't gravitate to short stories, so what is left on my TBR shelf are a coup of sort story collections, like this one.

Barbara Pym, An Academic Question. Pym is another author I love but have not read as many of her books as I think I have. Time to catch up!

Muriel Spark, The Comforters. I love Spark's snarky, dark humor but have never read this, her first novel. 

Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! I'm not wild about the two other Strout books I've read, but I found this one in a little free library so want to give her another chance. 

NEW-TO-ME 

Ann Beattie, Chilly Scenes of Winter. This one is on Erica Jong's list of Top 20th Century Novels by Women, one of my favorite sources of women authors. 

Suzanne Berne, A Crime in the Neighborhood. This one won the 1999 Women's Prize for Fiction (then the Orange Prize), my other favorite source for finding women writers.

Gina Berriault, Women in Their Beds. Again, I am not drawn to short stories. But this one won both the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and I am working my way through both those lists. 

Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra. Another Erica Jong listed book.

Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus. This has been on my TBR shelf for years, even though it sounds like a wonderful ovel about two sisters. 

Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of Pointed Firs. It isn't easy to find classic books by women so I don't know why I haven't read this before now. 

Hiromi Kawakami, The Nakano Thrift Shop. I don't know anything about this, but bought it on a whim because I liked the cover and title. 

Molly Keane, Good Behaviour. This one gets a lot of love on Instagram so I am excited to read it. 

Olivia Manning, The Balkan Trilogy. Anthony Burgess included this trilogy on his list of the Best 99 Novels in English Since 1939 (to 1984), another list I'm working on.

Jody Picoult, Keeping Faith. Despite Picoult's enormous popularity, I have yet to read any of her books. 

Do any of these look good to you? Where would you start?

Erica Jong's Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women -- LIST

Erica Jong's Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women

At the turn of the Millennium, there was a flurry of "Top 100" book lists. The Modern Library’s list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century, started the craze (and led to this blog). Erica Jong wrote an article for The Nation criticizing the Modern Library’s list for including relatively few books by women.

She titled her article "I've Got a Little List" and included her own list of the Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women. Jong explained that she had compiled the list from votes cast by those “250 or so distinguished women writers and critics” and “about thirty male novelists, critics and poets” whom she solicited directly, as well as participants in “the rather lively writers’ forum” on Jong’s website. The list is in order of the number of votes received. 

Jong's method for creating the list was not scientific. But the results provide excellent reading. 

Here is Jong's list. I've noted if I've read a book, if it's on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library. 

See any favorites?

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell FINISHED

Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice ON OVERDRIVE

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

The Waves by Virginia Woolf TBR SHELF

Orlando by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes TBR SHELF

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton FINISHED

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton FINISHED

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton FINISHED

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall ON OVERDRIVE

Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer TBR SHELF

The Dollmaker by Harriette Simpson Arnow

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood FINISHED

My Ántonia by Willa Cather FINISHED

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (reviewed here) FINISHED

Fanny by Erica Jong 

Obasan by Joy Kogawa FINISHED

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing FINISHED

The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing

The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing TBR SHELF

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee FINISHED

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy ON OVERDRIVE

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley FINISHED

Her First American by Lore Segal FINISHED

The Color Purple by Alice Walker FINISHED

The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley FINISHED

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark FINISHED

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark FINISHED

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison FINISHED

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here) FINISHED

Anya by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer TBR SHELF

Trust by Cynthia Ozick TBR SHELF

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan FINISHED

The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan FINISHED

Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie TBR SHELF

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston FINISHED

A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion TBR SHELF

Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Group by Mary McCarthy FINISHED

The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy FINISHED

The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley TBR SHELF

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath FINISHED

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers FINISHED
 
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen FINISHED

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor FINISHED

Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson TBR SHELF

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison FINISHED

Beloved by Toni Morrison FINISHED

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (reviewed here) FINISHED

Mr. Fortune's Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner TBR SHELF

Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter FINISHED

Progress of Stories by Laura Riding

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Booker winner) FINISHED

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald FINISHED

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende FINISHED

Possession by A.S. Byatt FINISHED

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker TBR SHELF

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown ON OVERDRIVE

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner FINISHED

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter TBR SHELF

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (reviewed here) FINISHED

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn DNF

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (reviewed here) FINISHED

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym FINISHED

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko TBR SHELF
 
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler FINISHED

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler FINISHED

Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard (reviewed here) FINISHED

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson FINISHED

Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz TBR SHELF

Civil Wars by Rosellen Brown TBR SHELF

Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr TBR SHELF

The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford TBR SHELF

Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx FINISHED

The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein 

The Children of Men by P.D. James FINISHED

Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi FINISHED

The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon FINISHED

Collected Stories by Katherine Mansfield TBR SHELF

Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis TBR SHELF

The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich TBR SHELF

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin DNF 

The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O'Brien TBR SHELF

Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble TBR SHELF

The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble FINISHED

The Locusts Have No King by Dawn Powell

The Women's Room by Marilyn French

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty FINISHED

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields FINISHED

Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid TBR SHELF

Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen TBR SHELF

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein FINISHED

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch FINISHED

Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai TBR SHELF

The Drowning Season by Alice Hoffman FINISHED

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend ON OVERDRIVE

The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer TBR SHELF


NOTE

Updated July 3, 2025.

This is a repost of a list I first posted in 2009. So far, I've read 57 of the 100 and gave up on two others, so I have 41 to go. Of those that I read because they were on this list, my favorites are Play It as It Lays, Things Invisible to See, and The Children of Men. 

January Wrap Up - My January Books

JANUARY WRAP UP

One of my bookish New Year's resolutions was to try to post monthly wrap ups of the books I read each month. I haven't done this in the past because I read so many books with my ears that I don't have book books to photograph. I also often give books away right when I finish reading them so don't have a complete stack to take a picture of at the end of the month. 

Because I made this resolution -- let's call it an intention, it's less than a resolution -- I did two things. First, I remembered to keep the books I finished reading until the end of the month so I could take a picture of them. Important. 

Second, I concentrated my audiobook selection on books that were already on my TBR shelves. This might sound silly to you. Why chose an audiobook when the perfectly good paper book is sitting right there, waiting to be read? I'll tell you. Because some of those books have been sitting on my TBR shelves for years - years! According to LibraryThing, there are over 1,700 physical books on my groaning TBR shelves. It could be many more years before I get to any particular book. So I decided to start reading some of them with my ears and clearing off those shelves just a tiny bit faster.

The result is that I managed to knock nine books off my TBR shelves, reread an old favorite, read one new one for book club, and still get in two audiobooks not otherwise on my shelves. 

MY JANUARY BOOKS

My January books, in the order I read them, not the order in this picture, were:

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy. A friend gave this to me and I read it on New Year's Day. It is charming and I understand its popularity. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Lucky Jim by Kinglsey Amis made me appreciate this old favorite even more than when I first read it in college. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Red and the Black by Stendhal. This was a clunker for me. I found the hero, Julien Sorel, unbearable. 🌹🌹

Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow. I'm not much of a Doctorow fan and was surprised how much I enjoyed this one. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Now Now, But NOW by M. F. K. Fisher. This is Fisher's only novel. I read it for book club. It's an odd book, really four short stories about the same character, set in four different times and places, so connected by time travel. It was like Orlando, written by Colette, commissioned by Gourmet magazine. I'm glad I read it but I prefer her nonfiction. 🌹🌹🌹

Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter. This is on the Erica Jong list of Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women and on my Classics Club list. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis. This is one of the audiobooks I read that isn't pictured. Another bookish resolution of mine is to read several C. S. Lewis books this year. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Another audiobook. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed. I loved this book! See my review here. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman by Elizabeth Buchan. This was a nice surprise. It was much better, with a lot more heft to it, than the cover and description led me to expect. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. I've been meaning to read this classic sci-fi forever and am glad I finally did. I didn't love it like I loved War of the Worlds, but it was still very good. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. This early police procedural didn’t engage me, even though it won the Edgar Award for best mystery. It felt like a prototype compared to more recent versions of Nordic Noir like Jo Nesbo’s books. And the female characters were absurd – “nymphomaniacs,” shrews, or dipsos. 🌹🌹

On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist by Clarissa Ward. I just finished this gripping memoir about being a war correspondent. Can’t wait to discuss it at book club! 🌹🌹🌹🌹

I usually only read eight, maybe nine, books in a month. I don't know why I finished 13 in January. We will see what February has in store. 

What was your favorite January read? What books are you looking forward to in February? 

List: Erica Jong's Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women

In response to the publication of the Modern Library’s list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century, Erica Jong wrote an article for The Nation in which she discussed the relatively few number of books written by women that made it to the Modern Library’s list.

She also included a list of the Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women, compiled from votes cast by those “250 or so distinguished women writers and critics” and “about thirty male novelists, critics and poets” who Jong solicited directly and participants in “the rather lively writers’ forum” on Jong’s website. The results, while not scientific, would provide for some good reading. The list is in order of the number of votes received.

Those I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue. As always, if anyone has undertaken to read all the books on this list, I am happy to post a link to your progress reports. Just leave a comment with the link address.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer

The Dollmaker by Harriette Simpson Arnow

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

My Ántonia by Willa Cather

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (reviewed here)

Fanny by Erica Jong

Obasan by Joy Kogawa

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing

The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

Her First American by Lore Segal

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here)

Anya by Susan Fromberg Shaeffer

Trust by Cynthia Ozick

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan

Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion

Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion (reviewed here)

The Group by Mary McCarthy

The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy

The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (reviewed here)

Mr. Fortune's Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter

Progress of Stories by Laura Riding

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Booker winner)

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Possession by A.S. Byatt

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (reviewed here)

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (reviewed here)

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
 
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
 
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard (reviewed here)

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Civil Wars by Rosellen Brown

Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr

The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford

Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein

The Children of Men by P.D. James

Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi

The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon

Collected Stories by Katherine Mansfield

Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis

The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (tried, gave up)

The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O'Brien

Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble

The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble

The Locusts Have No King by Dawn Powell

The Women's Room by Marilyn French

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid

Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch

Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai

The Drowning Season by Alice Hoffman

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend

The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer


NOTE

Updated on June 27, 2019.

OTHERS READING THESE BOOKS

If you would like to be listed here, please leave a comment with your links to any progress reports or reviews and I will add them here.

Review: Things Invisible to See

GREAT VALENTINE GIFT IDEA!

Magical realism and baseball are two things I steer clear of in novels, but Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard makes me rethink my prejudices. For one thing, there is very little in the way of actual baseball, for a book that starts off with:

In Paradise, on the banks of the River of Time, the Lord of the Universe is playing ball with His archangels.

And while there is plenty of magical realism to go around, no one bit gets played to death, which is my biggest gripe.

The story involves twin brothers from Ann Arbor in WWII, one who makes a deal with Death to save the paralyzed girl he loves. But can his sandlot baseball team really beat a team of baseball’s dead legendary players?

You have to read this adorably imaginative, quirky, and irresistibly romantic novel to find out.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of Things Invisible to See listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

I'm gave this one a go because it is on Erica Jong's list of Top 100 Novels by Women and was one of the books I randomly selected for my personal TBR challenge this year. I am so glad I did!

Book Beginning: Things Invisible to See

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

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TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book  Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING

In Paradise, on the banks of the River of Time, the Lord of the Universe is playing ball with His archangels.

-- Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard.

Magical realism and baseball are two things I steer clear of in novels, but I'm giving this one a go because it is on Erica Jong's list of Top 100 Novels by Women and was one of the books I randomly selected for my personal TBR challenge this year.

Five Faves: Midwest Books

There are times when a full-sized book list is just too much; when the Top 100, a Big Read, or all the Prize winners seem like too daunting an effort. That's when a short little list of books grouped by theme may be just the ticket.

Inspired by Nancy Pearl's "Companion Reads" chapter in Book Lust – themed clusters of books on subjects as diverse as Bigfoot and Vietnam – I decided to start occasionally posting lists of five books grouped by topic or theme. I call these posts my Five Faves.

Feel free to grab the button and play along.  Use today's theme or come up with your own.  If you post about it, please link back to here and leave the link to your post in a comment.  If you want to participate but don't have a blog or don't feel like posting, please share your list in a comment.

FIVE FAVE MIDWEST BOOKS

My roots are in Nebraska and as the holidays roll around -- Thanksgiving especially -- nostalgia waxes for the flatlands of my childhood.

Any suggestion? What stories of the heartland tug on your heartstrings?

Here are five of my favorite books set in a celebrating the American Midwest.  You can tell from my list that my idea of "the Midwest" doesn't extend further east than about Davenport, Iowa.

• O Pioneers! by Willa Cather.  This very readable classic about prairie settlers is on the Radcliffe list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century -- the rival to the Modern Library's list. 

• The Road Home by Jim Harrison.  Harrison's inter-generational family story picks up where his earlier novel, Dalva, left off.  It has a permanent place on my personal Top 10 list and is probably my favorite American novel.

• The Echo Maker by Richard Powers.  Brain science and sand-hill cranes, no wonder it won the National Book Award.

• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (reviewed here).  Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for this uplifting and entertaining epistolary novel.

• A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.  It may be a little overwrought, but this Midwest Gothic deserves its Pulitzer Prize.  It also won the National Book Critics Circle Award and made it onto Erica Jong's list of Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women.

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

Abi at 4 the Love of Books is hosting in May. Please visit her fun, inspirational blog.

Two random books came into my house last week, both from books lists I'm working on.



Death and the Joyful Woman by Ellis Peters. This is the second book in the Inspector Felse series and it won the Edgar Award in 1963. I have the first book in the series, Fallen into the Pit, already on my TBR shelf.



Trust by Cynthia Ozick. I have never read anything by her, but this one -- her fist novel -- is on the Erica Jong list of Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women. The amazon reviews don't do it any favors.

What books came into your house last week?

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

Marie at Burton Book Review is hosting in June.  Please stop by her beautiful blog where she is "Leafing through history one page at a time."

Thanks to Rachelle at my favorite Second Glance Books, I got a stack of books last week, several that I have been looking for for a long time. 



Death at the Chateau Bremont by M. L. Longworth (this was an impulse -- I couldn't resist the cover)



Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (on the Erica Jong list)



Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels (Orange Prize winner)



Innocence by Penelope Fitzgerald (one of my favorite authors)



English Passengers by Matthew Kneale (Costa Book of the Year winner)



Saint Joan of Arc by V. Sackville-West (on my French Connections list)



Hole in the Sky: A Memoir by William Kittredge (on the list of 20 Greatest Oregon Books)

Review of the Day: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

It is hard to review a book that I so horribly misinterpreted that I ruined it for myself.

Shirley Jackson's dark masterpiece, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, is a physiologically chilling little novel about the remnants of the Blackwood family, living in their mansion, ostracized by the villagers in their small New England town.

The completely unreliable (unhinged) narrator is 18-year-old Mary Katherine, known as Merricat, who floats around acting like a spooky 12-year-old while her older, long-suffering sister Constance spends her days cooking, putting up preserves, caring for their ill uncle, and otherwise tending the house she is too agoraphobic to leave. Meanwhile, poor demented old Uncle Julian obsesses over his memorialization of the day, six years earlier, when most of the family died.

This is a terrifically creepy book; not scary, but a real psychological study of family madness.

Unfortunately – and this is not a spoiler – I thought it was about ghosts. I thought that Marricat, or maybe all three of the Blackwells – were ghosts and that this was a ghost story. So when people came to visit them, or Merricat went into town, I pondered whether the people could really see them, or just the things they moved around, or just what was going on.

I was completely wrong. The Blackwells aren't ghosts. This isn't a ghost story. I have no idea where I got such a notion. But because I was looking at the story through such a distorting prism, I missed the opportunity to experience the book as it was intended. Drat!

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This is on Erica Jong's list of Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women.

Opening Sentence of the Day: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood.

-- We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. This is a crazy weird book. Very funny in a creepy way.

This is on Erica Jong's list of Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women.

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at A girl and her books (fka The Printed Page), who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

Passages to the Past is hosting in April. Please visit Amy's entertaining and comprehensive blog devoted to historical fiction.

I went to Idaho last week for work and came back with a suitcase full of books.

First, the waiter at my dinner restaurant in Sandpoint turned out to be an author named Sandy Compton who has self-published several books. We had an interesting conversation about self-publishing and he gave me copies of his books:

Side Trips from Cowboy (his most recent book, a collection of personal essays, which looks very interesting)

Archer MacClehan & the Hungry Now (an earlier novel, sort of a contemporary Western adventure)

Jason's Passage: From the Blascomb Family Chronicles (his first book, a collection of three related short stories)

Second, I went to the main library in Coeur d'Alene where they had a great library book store:

The Group by Mary McCarthy (on Erica Jong's list of Top 100 novels by women)




The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (on the BBC Big Read list)



Overdrive by William F. Buckley, Jr. (an early memoir)




Corridors of Power by C. P. Snow (one of the Strangers and Brothers series)

List: Erica Jong

In response to the publication of the Modern Library’s list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century, Erica Jong wrote an article for The Nation in which she discussed the relatively few number of books written by women that made it to the Modern Library’s list.

She also included a list of the Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women, compiled from votes cast by those “250 or so distinguished women writers and critics” and “about thirty male novelists, critics and poets” who Jong solicited directly and participants in “the rather lively writers’ forum” on Jong’s website. The results, while not scientific, would provide for some good reading. The list is in order of the number of votes received.

Those I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue. As always, if anyone has undertaken to read all the books on this list, I am happy to post a link to your progress reports. Just leave a comment with the link address.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer

The Dollmaker by Harriette Simpson Arnow

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

My Ántonia by Willa Cather

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (reviewed here)

Fanny by Erica Jong

Obasan by Joy Kogawa

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing

The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

Her First American by Lore Segal

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here)

Anya by Susan Fromberg Shaeffer

Trust by Cynthia Ozick

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan

Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion

Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion (reviewed here)

The Group by Mary McCarthy

The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy

The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (reviewed here)

Mr. Fortune's Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter

Progress of Stories by Laura Riding

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Booker winner)

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Possession by A.S. Byatt

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (reviewed here)

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (reviewed here)

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
 
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
 
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard (reviewed here)

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Civil Wars by Rosellen Brown

Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr

The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford

Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein

The Children of Men by P.D. James

Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi

The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon

Collected Stories by Katherine Mansfield

Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis

The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O'Brien

Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble

The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble

The Locusts Have No King by Dawn Powell

The Women's Room by Marilyn French

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid

Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch

Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai

The Drowning Season by Alice Hoffman

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend

The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer


NOTE

Updated on July 18, 2016.

OTHERS READING THESE BOOKS

If you would like to be listed here, please leave a comment with your links to any progress reports or reviews and I will add them here.