I have tracked all the books I have read since around the middle of 2021 and when going through it today I noticed a lack of female authors. It’s not that I go out of my way to read male authors, I mainly choose my books based on the story or the significance of the work. Female authors I have read and liked are: Flannery O’Connor, Ottessa Moshfegh, Harper Lee, Toni Morrison.
Some of my favorite authors of all time though are Vonnegut, Ishiguro, Hemingway, McCarthy, and Steinbeck.
Also bit of a caveat I am not really into books written prior to around 1880s I would say I mostly like more modern works post 1910s. Not really into colonial or Victorian works.
by Clam_Cake
33 Comments
Octavia E. Butler. Parable of the Sower and/or Kindred.
Here are some novels by female authors that I’ve loved:
* ***A Tree Grows in Brooklyn*** by Betty Smith
* ***The Good Earth*** by Pearl Buck
* ***The Stone Diaries*** by Carol Sheilds
* ***Rebecc***a by Daphne du Maurier
Tana French
Jane Harper
Jesmyn Ward – Salvage The Bones
Lauren Groff – The Vaster Wilds
Barbara Kingsolver – The Poisonwood Bible
Mary Shelley! Don’t let the publication date put you off, it’s oddly modern.
Barbara Kingsolver: all of her works
Amanda Peters: The Berry Pickers
Jodi Picoult: Small Great Things
Amy Tan: The Joy Luck Club, The Bonesetter’s Daughter
*The Color Purple* by Alice Walker
*Station Eleven* by Emily St. John Mandel
*The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter* by Carson McCullers
*Oryx and Crake* by Margaret Atwood
*The God of Small Things* by Arundhati Roy
*The People in the Trees* by Hanya Yanagihara
*We Need to Talk about Kevin* by Lionel Shriver
*The Goldfinch* by Donna Tartt
*The Song of Achilles* by Madeline Miller
*Their Eyes Were Watching God* by Zora Neale Hurston
Joyce Carol Oates. I tell people to start with Black Water.
Marilynne Robinson. Gilead or Housekeeping.
Jean Stafford. The Mountain Lion
Dorothy Baker. Cassandra at the Wedding.
Shirley Jackson. We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
Lynda Barry. Cruddy.
Katherine Dunn. Geek Love.
Enjoy!
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Elizabeth Strout has written several novels that include overlapping characters. The main two are Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton. Strout’s character development is what make these books so engaging.
I really like Ayn Rands books, OK I don’t agree with the philosophy, though I don’t see it quite as evil as reddit does… But the writing is really beautiful
**”Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens.** A beautifully written mystery about solitude, resilience, and a girl growing up in the wild marshlands.
I also run a weekly newsletter where I share book recommendations like this if you are interested. No Spams!
[https://hi.switchy.io/QGsy](https://hi.switchy.io/QGsy)
The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker is rather good.
Agatha Christie is great.
Murder on the Orient Express
The ABC Murders
The Moving Finger
Margery Allingham also works.
Mystery Mile
Police at the Funeral
Flowers for the Judge
Try Iris Murdoch, mid 20th century philosopher and writer.\
Don’t believer i saw Ursula K. Le Guin mentioned here. S.F., fantasy, speculative fiction.
Maybe you could take a look at Persephone Books. They are a bookshop and publisher here in the UK. Owned and run by women, they re-publish forgotten and neglected books (fiction and non-fiction), mostly by women and mostly from the mid-20th century.
Their website is fantastic: https://persephonebooks.co.uk/
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.
Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
Anything by Ursula Le Guin (maybe try The Word for World is Forest if you’ve not read any of her stuff before)
The Charioteer by Mary Renault
As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann (warning though, it gets pretty nasty/dark in places)
Also i second Margaret Atwood – as well as the Maddaddam series, maybe try the Blind Assassin
Annie Proulx. Barkskins. Shipping News. Accordian Crimes. And many more.
Barbara Kingsolver. Poisonwood Bible, Demon Copperhead, Prodigal summer, and many more.
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
Vonnegut is my favorite author, so I feel comfortable recommending [[The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin]]. Anarchist Science fiction that is my favorite of her works so far.
*’Persepolis’* – Marjane Satrapi
If you like Flannery O’Connor then I think you’ll like Dorothy Allison. Cavedweller and Bastard out of Carolina.
Camilla Gibb, Miriam Toewes, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Lawrence
These are my favorite authors:
* Ursula K. LeGuin
* Tamsyn Muir
* Octavia Butler
* N. K. Jemisin
* Jane Austen
* Jacqueline Carey
* Catherynne Valente
* Agatha Christie
* Shannon A. Chakraborty
* Mercedes Lackey
*The Secret History* by Donna Tartt is probably my favorite novel of all time. I will also throw in a vote for author Sarah Waters.
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
them by Joyce Carol Oates
Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
The left hand of darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Sexing the cherry by Jeanette Winterson
Marilynne Robinson – Gilead
Elena Ferrante – My Brilliant Friend
Claudia Pinero – Elena Knows
Mona Awad – All’s Well
George Eliot (despite it being from the 1800, if you love Steinbeck, you’ll love her) – Silas Minar (Middlemarch is her most famous novel I’m yet to read)
Annie Ernaux (very different from the authors you have mentioned but I think she is a stellar memoirist) – Happening and the Woman’s Story
Jhumpa Lahiri – The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies
Virginia Woolf – Mrs Dalloway
Han Kang – the Vegetarian and the White Book
Clarice Lispector – the Passion According to GH and the Hour of the Star and her short stories in “Family Ties”
The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee (my favorite fantasy series of all time)
Maggie O’Farrell – Hamnet
Madeline Miller – The Song of Achilles
Emily St. John Mandel – Station Eleven
Jesmyn Ward – Sing, Unburied, Sing
*The Farming of Bones*
*In the Time of the Butterflies*
*The House of the Spirits*
Steinbeck’s *Grapes of Wrath* was influenced by the notes of a journalist, Sanora Babb. He didn’t know that she was writing a novel and when she finished it, her publisher said the market couldn’t handle another Dust Bowl novel. It was only published a few years ago. I haven’t read it yet, but it might interest you.