I’ve been on a women writers kick this month in honor of Women's History Month. Just finished these and would love some recommendations for what to read next to wrap up the month! 👀
- Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
- My Antonia by Willa Cather
- Their Eye Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- The Time of Man by Elizabeth Madox Roberts
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
I’m especially drawn to anything atmospheric, a little gothic, but open to everything!
by literarypubcrawl
9 Comments
If you enjoyed Wuthering Heights you should read Windward Heights by Maryse Conde, it’s a retelling set in the Caribbean and I loved it! I also want to suggest Natalia Ginzberg, Elena Ferrante, and Clarice Lispector.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier!
Anything by Elena Ferrante! I was absolutely captivated by the honest descriptions of female friendship in My Brilliant Friend.
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel.
Barbara Kingsolver (anything by her)
Educated (non fiction Tara Westover)
The Last Letter (Rebecca Yarros)
Hidden Figured (Margot Lee Shuttely)
You might like RF Kuang! Babel is an atmospheric dark academia with magical realism. Yellowface is an excellent modern thriller. The Poppy War Trilogy is some of the best fantasy I’ve ever read!
Lorrie Moore Lorrie Moore Lorrie Moore!
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia. The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina by Z Cordova.
This is sort of a long winded buildup, but I feel I need to introduce the author
Dr. Alice Sheldon was an experimental psychologist and her genius in her profession shows also in her writing. She wrote under several pen names, but the one through which she gained everlasting fame was “James Tiptree Jr.” An incredibly original and brilliant writer, who deserves much more attention.
Her tales are always interesting and often frightening explorations of the human mind.
Have you checked her “best of” short story collection:
Tiptree, James, Jr. [Alice B. Sheldon]. *Her Smoke Rose Up Forever.* Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1990.
Sheldon had an amazing life story. Military service, PhD in psychology, worked in U.S. intelligence, wrote under a male pen name because of sexism and other reasons, and had an unfortunately tragic end. There needs to be a biopic about her.
For more about her life, you can check out her biography:
Phillips, Julie. *James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon.* New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006.
Special note: The short story, “The Screwfly Solution,” that she wrote under another other pen name “Racoona Sheldon,” is the most frightening and scientifically plausible SF horror story ever written! [It’s in the collection]