20 books every woman should read

editor

Esquire recently posted a list of 75 books every man should read. It was in fact a list of fine literature, but we couldn’t help but notice that the compilation was very bland (as in, a mere four authors are non-white and only one is a woman) listing Bukowski’s misogynistic Women as a must-read is kind of offensive. 


Jezebel decided to make their own list of the 20 books every woman should read, and these selections are much more on target—and yay for female authors! Slouching Towards Bethlehem would rank highly on my list, but my all-time favorite book? Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Sure it’s a children’s book, but I think it could make the cut. 


Check out Jezebel’s picks below and share with us: What books do you think every woman should read? 




  1. The Lottery, Shirley Jackson
  2. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
  3. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
  4. White Teeth, Zadie Smith
  5. The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende    
  6. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
  7. Excellent Women, Barbara Pym
  8. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
  9. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
  10. The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
  11. Beloved, Toni Morrison
  12. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
  13. Like Life, Lorrie Moore
  14. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
  15. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
  16. The Delta of Venus, Anais Nin
  17. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
  18. A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Flannery O'Connor
  19. The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
  20. You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down, Alice Walker

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Comments 101-106 of 106
  • Plumnelly's Avatar
    Posted by Plumnelly Thu Oct 2, 2008 2:57pm PDT

    Mama Day by Gloria Naylor

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  • Plumnelly's Avatar
    Posted by Plumnelly Thu Oct 2, 2008 3:00pm PDT

    All works by Barbara Kingsolver

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  • Darla's Avatar
    Posted by Darla Thu Oct 2, 2008 3:37pm PDT

    oh yes, definitely Willa Cather...My Antonia & Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead is wonderful!

    I also agree with The Secret Life of Bees & To kill a Mockingbird.

    II'd like to suggest:

    The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber

    Bittersweet by Nevada Barr

    The Grapes of Wrath

    Girl with a Pearl Earring

    Ghost Rider by Neal Peart

    Ethan Frome

    Also just about anything by Beverly Lewis. She's a religious fiction writer whose specialty is the Amish & Mennonites.

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  • tika's Avatar
    Posted by tika Thu Oct 2, 2008 3:39pm PDT

    Books by Lili Dauphin. Her books are compelling and inspirational.

    In "I Will Fly Again-the Restavek" Lili writes about growing up in poverty stricken Haiti as a child slave. In "Crying Mountain" she writes about surviving a major hurricane. "My First Sin" is her latest book. Humorous and very entertaining. Lili also has wonderful books of poetry, poetic affirmations. "The Dancing Flowers" "I Will Touch the Sun" and "Betrayal in a Nutshell".

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  • I Use My Brain's Avatar
    Posted by I Use My Brain Thu Oct 2, 2008 5:20pm PDT

    I would recommend Middlemarch by George Eliot save for the fact that most readers today have little patience to get through a 700+ page Victorian novel (and with little dialogue to keep their dulled brains entertained). And why exactly are women encouraged to read books only written by women? Of course, if all you ever read are books Oprah tells you to and that redundant garbage from Stephanie Plum ( by the way, it doesn't even make sense that an author would write under a pseudonym only to include her more well-known name so her readers won't take one look at the new book, realize it is in fact garbage and dismiss it as such) I suppose you wouldn't really be up for reading the more challenging "adult" literature that's out there and still a thousand times better than anything written in the last fifty years.

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  • Kaitlin Chely's Avatar
    Posted by Kaitlin Chely Thu Oct 2, 2008 6:05pm PDT

    NICE ONE... ESPECIALLY SOME OF THE FAV BOOKS WERE LISTED THERE

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