500 Great Books By Women discussion

B
1. Published in the pre-1800s
Selected Letters - Marie de Rabutin-Chantal de Sévigné
2. Fantasy
Bloodchild and Other Stories - Octavia E. Butler
3. Less than 5,000 Ratings on Goodreads
Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas - Rebecca Solnit
4. Disability as Theme and/or Disabled Author
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays - Esmé Weijun Wang
5. Long Read - More than 600 Pages

I
1. Nobel Laureate Author - Not Just For Lit
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets - Svetlana Alexievich
2. Sci-Fi
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1 - Emil Ferris
3. Translated from Language Other Than English/Not Originally Written in English
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay - Elena Ferrante
The Story of the Lost Child - Elena Ferrante
4. Queer Theme and/or Author
In the Dream House - Carmen Maria Machado
Girlhood - Melissa Febos
5. Less than 1,000 Ratings on Goodreads
Pointed Roofs, Backwater, Honeycomb - Dorothy M. Richardson

N
1. Mystery/Thriller
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
2. Published in the 1900s
The Heart of a Woman - Maya Angelou
Women, Race & Class - Angela Y. Davis
3. Free Space
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference - Greta Thunberg
4. Potential Classic Published After 1970
The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor
5. Nonfiction
On the Abolition of All Political Parties - Simone Weil
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History - Elizabeth Kolbert

G
1. Published in the 1800s
2. Less than 10,000 Ratings on Goodreads
Wilding - Isabella Tree
3. Author Born in Latin America
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza - Gloria E. Anzaldúa
4. Play
5. Short Story Collection
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories - Lucia Berlin

O
1. Poetry
Loose Woman - Sandra Cisneros
2. Author Born in Africa
3. Author Born in Asia
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
4. Novella - Less than 200 Pages
5. Published in the 2000s
The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery

Personal Challenge
1. Timely PNW read
Crying in H Mart - Michelle Zauner
2. Geopolitics
The Battle For Paradise - Naomi Klein
3. Timely memoir
Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir - Rebecca Solnit
4. Tech culture
Uncanny Valley - Anna Wiener

Welcome to the challenges, Nell. I'm interested in seeing what works you choose to fill the categories with.

Thanks Aubrey!

Welcome Nell. I somehow missed the Solnit book, and must read it! I love this under 5,000 ratings category. Thanks!

Thanks Kathleen! Solnit has put out a series of atlases on New Orleans, New York and San Francisco in partnership with each city’s larger museums. I can’t speak for the other two, but the San Francisco one is AMAZING! It goes into natural histories, Native American place names, civil rights periods, cultural institutions, etc. I’ve been getting to know SF more in the past year, and really enjoyed long walks paired with this.

Nell wrote: "Thanks Kathleen! Solnit has put out a series of atlases on New Orleans, New York and San Francisco in partnership with each city’s larger museums. I can’t speak for the other two, but the San Franc..."

That sounds so lovely, Nell! I can't wait to read it.

Finally got around to updating this. This year's reads have been overwhelmingly nonfiction for me, which leaves some spaces to fill out, but I'm adding some of the extras to my personal challenge.

I have high recommendations for the graphic artist I've started reading this year, Emil Ferris. She combines turbulent social change and art critique in a noir-ish, smart and wickedly funny way - I've realized by stumbling across this gem that there are some really interesting developments in alt-graphic fiction I've been missing out on.

Highly recommend Elizabeth Kolbert's Sixth Extinction, too. It's well researched, expansive and very timely.