Men - do you read books written by female authors?

[Sue]

Interesting thread.

I don't read nearly as many books as I used to (possibly because I now spend the time I used to spend reading books reading and posting on Urban).

When I do, I tend to read "classics" or "modern classics", and women authors are in a very small minority in those categories.

I didn't realise quite how few women authors I have on my book shelves until I had a look just now. It starts off OK with a few Jane Austins and a couple of Brontes, but then there appears to be no books by female authors until I get to Mary Shelley.

Can anyone suggest a few female authors who are part of the established canon so I can start to redress the balance.

In no partic order (having just looked at my bookshelves):

Edith Wharton
Elizabeth Gaskell
Margaret Attwood
Hilary Mantel
George Eliot
Donna Tartt
E Annie Proulx
A L Kennedy
Ali Smith
Jenni Fagan
Zadie Smith
Jessie Kesson
Denise Mina
Louise Welsh

 

[marshall]

I read masses, and most of my favourite authors are female, Donna Tartt, Tana French, Sarah Waters, and particularly Rachel Kushner - The Flamethrowers is fantastic. Best novel I’ve read this year could by Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead.

 

[killer b]

I read masses, and most of my favourite authors are female, Donna Tartt, Tana French, Sarah Waters, and particularly Rachel Kushner - The Flamethrowers is fantastic. Best novel I’ve read this year could by Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead.

what's the ratio though?

 

[andysays]

If you like the classics, I might suggest that Daphne Du Maurier should be next in line. Jean Rhys is good but sad (Wide Sargasso Sea is Jane Eyre told from the first Mrs Rochester's PoV).

Thanks. I'll give Du Maurier a try.

I think I may have read Wide Sargasso Sea (or perhaps another Jean Rhys) some years ago and not really got on with it.

 

[Pickman's model]

One author Kameron recommended to me years back was poppy z brite, an excellent writer

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I don’t read anywhere near as much fiction as I ought to but with the non fiction I read it’s the subject matter that’s of interest and not the author. I recently read From Russia With Blood and that was written by someone called Heidi Blake. And Goldfinger and Me by his ex missus.

 

[andysays]

I don't really understand this bit. Which canon? The male one? Or do you mean widely read female writers?

I would always recommend Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou.

I guess I meant the canon of generally accepted literary classics - stuff that is (or might be) published by Penguin Classics or Modern Classics.

But most of that is male, so it maybe it would be simpler/better to ask about widely read female writers.

 

[andysays]

In no partic order (having just looked at my bookshelves):

Edith Wharton
Elizabeth Gaskell
Margaret Attwood
Hilary Mantel
George Eliot
Donna Tartt
E Annie Proulx
A L Kennedy
Ali Smith
Jenni Fagan
Zadie Smith
Jessie Kesson
Denise Mina
Louise Welsh

Thanks

 

[Pickman's model]

I guess I meant the canon of generally accepted literary classics - stuff that is (or might be) published by Penguin Classics or Modern Classics.

But most of that is male, so it maybe it would be simpler/better to ask about widely read female writers.

Have you tried Hilary mantel?

 

[JimW]

I had a period of reading a load of Marge Piercy who seemed to come out of the US New Left, and it's one about radicals staying underground that recall most enjoying. Very long time back.
Can't second middlemarch enough either, in completely opposite vein.

 

[andysays]

Have you tried Hilary mantel?

No. Can you suggest a particular title?

 

[JimW]

As well as Cromwell ones thought Mantel's shelf bender on the French Revolution was excellent, not read any of her contemporary ones bar a short story.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Politically I have read Sex, Race and Class by Selma James. I probably ought to again.

 

[8ball]

women do buy and read novels much more than men do, account for something like 80% of sales of novels apparently.

A friend of mine joined a sci-fi book group because it was the only one with any men in it (she was kind of half-looking for a boyf at the time and doesn't much like pubbing or clubbing).

My bookshelf is currently really heavily male-dominated, only exceptions being Scarlett Thomas, Dorothy Rowe, Vicky Coren and Germaine Greer.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Carson McCullers is a great female writer; I own The heart is a lonely hunter and Ballad of the Sad Café which are both superb books of a sort with Steinbeck

 

[Sue]

No. Can you suggest a particular title?

Start with Wolf Hall. First in a trilogy and they're all excellent.

Or a A Place of Greater Safety if you like a bit of French revolutionary shenanigans.

Eta There's also an excellent (BBC?) adaptation of WH which is definitely worth watching once you've read the books.

 

[Orang Utan]

Rose Tremain and Pat Barker don't get nearly enough respect or admiration

 

[Idaho]

I guessed that of my last 50 books, about 15 would be women writers. I overestimated - it was 10.

I read a fair amount of science fiction and history, in my defence.

 

[8ball]

I'm putting it down to reading the female authors first and then giving the books to other people.

 

[Sue]

Rose Tremain and Pat Barker don't get nearly enough respect or admiration

Oh yes, good shout.

 

[JimW]

Another classic is Kerri Hulme's (sp?) Bone People in a Maori setting. Again memory a bit dim other than it was good.
ETA Keri not Kerri looking it up

 

[Steel Icarus]

Also highly recommended: a book likely to make my top twenty if I could be arsed to compile one would be Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, about a travelling troupe of deliberately-created circus freaks. It's terrific.

 

[RainbowTown]

Carson McCullers is a great female writer; I own The heart is a lonely hunter and Ballad of the Sad Café which are both superb books of a sort with Steinbeck

Seconded. Her life was blighted with illness and misfortune but she produced some fantastic work. Along with Flannery O' Connor and Eudora Welty, the greatest of all female US Southern writers. And she was a favourite of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Graham Greene and Truman Capote. Infact Graham Greene preferred her to William Faulkner.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Yes I do. Even in the sci-fi fantasy ghetto a lot of the authors I read are female.
A fair number of my manga authors too. At least the ones I own physically.

 

[JimW]

For non fiction, not only was Ellen Meiksins Wood a brilliant mind she was a great prose stylist too, won't get much better or clearer historical analytical writing.

 

[8ball]

Another classic is Kerri Hulme's (sp?) Bone People in a Maori setting. Again memory a bit dim other than it was good.
ETA Keri not Kerri looking it up

This sounds utterly perverted, as well as possibly racist.

 

[Sue]

Iris Murdoch
Doris Lessing
Angela Carter
Elizabeth Taylor
Anais Nin

 

[JimW]

This sounds utterly perverted, as well as possibly racist.

Not in the Urban sense

 

[bimble]

i've just been given a really fat book called the found and the lost, the collected novellas of ursula le guin (there's 13 of them). Thats going to be interesting, not a format I'm familiar with at all.

it's all a bit personal isn't it, i bought a couple of things by someone called Maggie O'Farrel because it was being plugged and she's won some prize but turns out I basically hate her writing and have no idea why she's popular. Odd.
Handy tip: If you're quick you can press return on a kindle book order if you hate it and know that life is too short to plod on through.

 

[8ball]

Not in the Urban sense

WHITI TE RAAAAA! <does cum face>

<gets coat...>