Every so often I like to get my reading back in shape. I studied English at uni, and having to read so much with mandatory deadlines and essay analysis made me fall out of love with reading. Every so often I come across a book that reminds me how much I love literature, which in turn prompts me to trawl the web for reading lists and challenges to keep the momentum up.
Rory Gilmore, Queen of Reading
Today I found the most amazing, insane, brilliant list.
This year, in honour of 100 years since Women got the vote, Hay Festival & The Pool combined forces to discover the top 100 books by women.
I own several of these books. I may have purchased them for my undergraduate degree or Masters, stolen them from my mother or scored them in a charity shop, but there are so many I haven't read yet. You can see the full list below, with the ones I've read in BOLD.
The ones I have read - Wide Sargasso Sea, The Handmaid's Tale, Rebecca, to name a few - are among my favourite books of all time. There must be other books in this list that are just waiting to become a favourite of mine.
I love a reading challenge. I'm going to adopt this list and make it my aim to work my way through it, no matter how long it takes.
Lucky me, it's June.
#VOTE100BOOKS - presented by Hay Festival and The Pool
'Merging great books of all genres, fiction and non-fiction, written by women and published in 1918 or later, the list is a greatest hits of the last 100 years of literature.'
1. Enough Rope: Poems by Dorothy Parker (1926)
2. Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928)
3. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)
4. Testament Of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933)
5. Frost In May by Antonia White (1933)
6. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)
7. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
8. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
9. The Body In The Library by Agatha Christie (1942)
10. The Moomins And The Great Flood by Tove Jansson (1945)
11. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (1945)
12. The Pursuit Of Love by Nancy Mitford (1945)
13. The Diary Of A Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)
14. Train To Nowhere by Anita Leslie (1948)
15. I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)
16. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
17. Babette’s Feast by Karen Blixen (1950)
18. A Book Of Mediterranean Food by Elizabeth David (1950)
19. Strangers On A Train by Patricia Highsmith (1950)
20. Under The Net by Iris Murdoch (1954)
21. Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan (1954)
22. The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West (1956)
23. The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (1958)
24. The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
25. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
26. The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien (1960)
27. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961)
28. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)
29. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963)
30. The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector (1964)
31. Ariel by Sylvia Plath (1965)
32. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)
33. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969)
34. The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin (1969)
35. The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)
36. Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor (1971)
37. Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny (1974)
38. Ain’t I A Woman by Bell Hooks (1981)
39. The House Of The Spirits by Isabel Allende (1982)
40. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 133/4 by Sue Townsend (1982)
41. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
42. Heartburn by Nora Ephron (1983)
43. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)
44. Standing Female Nude by Carol Ann Duffy (1985)
45. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (1985)
46. Henry And June: From The Unexpurgated Diary Of Anais Nin by Anais Nin (1986)
47. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
48. Bad Behaviour by Mary Gaitskill (1988)
49. The View From The Ground by Martha Gellhorn (1988)
50. Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (1989)
51. Possession by AS Byatt (1990)
52. Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker (1991)
53. Wise Children by Angela Carter (1991)
54. Wild Swans by Jung Chang (1991)
55. How We Survived Communism And Even Laughed by Slavenka Drakulic(1992)
56. A Greater Place Of Safety by Hilary Mantel (1992)
57. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
58. The Land Of Green Plums by Herta Muller (1994)
59. Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding (1996)
60. Selected Stories by Alice Munro (1996
61. Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes (1997)
62. The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997)
63. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
64. Tipping The Velvet by Sarah Waters (1998)
65. The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson (1999)
66. The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives by Carole Hillenbrand (1999)
67. How To Eat by Nigella Lawson (1999)
68. Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx (1999)
69. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban by JK Rowling (1999)
70. White Teeth by Zadie Smith (1999)
71. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2000)
72. Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman (2001)
73. Unless by Carol Shields (2002)
74. Brick Lane by Monica Ali (2003)
75. Notes On A Scandal by Zoe Heller (2003)
76. What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt (2003)
77. We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (2003)
78. The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson (2003)
79. Small Island by Andrea Levy (2004)
80. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2004)
81. The Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005)
82. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (2005)
83. Half Of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche (2006)
84. Bastard Of Istanbul by Elif Shafak (2006)
85. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007)
86. The Road Home by Rose Tremain (2007)
87. At The Source: A Writer’s Year by Gillian Clarke (2008)
88. Three Strong Women by Marie Ndiaye (2009)
89. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2011)
90. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)
91. How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran (2012)
92. A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride (2013)
93. Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates (2014)
94. Dept Of Speculation by Jenny Offill (2014)
95. Headscarves And Hymens by Mona Eltahawy (2015)
96. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (2015)
97. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (2016)
98. Falling Awake by Alice Oswald (2016)
99. Lullaby by Leila Slimani (2016)
100. Women & Power by Mary Beard (2017)