I just saw a mockup of my book cover. It is so cool.
2014: The Year of Reading Women
With these colorful cards in the shape of bookmarks, British writer and illustrator Joanna Walsh has sparked a movement. Throughout social media, women and men are pledging to read more – or exclusively – women writers this year. Journals are promising to publish and review more women writers. Book lists fly back and forth across the Internet. The twitterverse is aboil with #readwomen2014, the hashtag Walsh started.
To this I say hooray! And congrats! And join the party – we’ve been waiting for you. After all, for 21 years I have been in a book group whose membership has changed but whose organizing principle has remained the same: we read books by and about women.
What all this means is thanks to Joanna Walsh, it’s possible that for the first time in my life I might actually be trendy.
Not the year of reading white women
Let’s take a quick look at the card she designed. The bookmarks represent Walsh’s favorite authors, and it did not escape my notice that they are all white. But on the back of the card, in tiny print not discernible to anyone over 40, she provides a more diverse list of 250 women writers. Her goal is to help those who want to Read Women 2014 but don’t know where to start.
Collective reading decisions
In that same spirit, I’d like to share a list of some of the titles my book group has read. This list does not represent my own favorite books or authors, but rather the collective reading decisions – achieved with much discussion and red wine – that my book group has made over the years. And yes, in deference to Read Women 2014 I’ve left out the books that were about women but written by male authors.
The list is alphabetical by author. Let’s start with A – G.
- Allison, Dorothy – Bastard Out of Carolina; Cavedweller
- Alvarez, Julia – How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent; In the Time of the Butterflies
- Anshaw, Carol – Aquamarine
- Armstrong, Karen – The Spiral Staircase
- Atkinson, Kate – Life after Life
- Atwood, Margaret – Alias Grace; The Robber Bride
- Austen, Jane – Emma; Lady Susan; Sense and Sensibility
- Avery, Ellis – The Tea House Fire
- Barbery, Muriel – The Elegance of the Hedgehog
- Bloom, Amy – Away
- Blum, Arlene – Annapurna
- Boo, Katherine – Behind the Beautiful Forevers
- Braddon, Mary Elizabeth – Lady Audley’s Secret
- Brooks, Geraldine – March
- Brooks, Gwendolyn – Various readings
- Cather, Willa – Death Comes for the Archbishop
- Chang, Jung – Wild Swans
- Chase, Joan – During the Reign of the Queen of Persia
- Chen, Pauline – Final Exam
- Chevalier, Tracy – Remarkable Creatures
- Conway, Jill Ker – The Road from Coorain
- Cook, Blanche Weisen – Eleanor Roosevelt, Volumes 1 and 2
- Cook, Karin – What Girls Learn
- Danticat, Edwidge – Breath, Eyes, Memory
- Davenport, Kiana – Shark Dialogues
- DeRosnay, Tatiana – Sarah’s Key
- Desai, Kiran – Inheritance of Loss
- Diamant, Anita – The Red Tent
- Didion, Joan – Where I Was From; The Year of Magical Thinking
- Dillard, Annie – The Maytrees
- Donaghue, Emma – Room; The Sealed Letter
- Duke, Lynn – Mandela, Mobutu and Me
- Dunn, Katherine – Geek Love
- Egan, Jennifer – Look at me
- Ehrenreich, Barbara – Nickel and Dimed
- Eliot, George – Mill on the Floss
- Feinberg, Leslie – Stone Butch Blues
- Fischer, Erica – Aimee and Jaguar
- Flynn, Gillian – Gone Girl
- Fuller, Alexandra – Don’t Let’s go to the Dogs Tonight
- Gardam, Jane – Old Filth
- George, Elizabeth – Believing the Lie
- Golden, Marita and Shreves, Susan – Skin Deep
- Goodman, Allegra – Intuition
- Grant, Linda – When we Lived in Modern Times
- Grealy, Lucy – Autobiography of a Face
- Greene, Melissa Fay – Praying for Sheetrock
- Greenlaw, Linda – The Hungry Ocean
- Gruen, Sara – Water for Elephants
Your must-read list of women writers?
What do you think about The Year of Reading Women? Which women writers should go on a must-read list? I’d love to see your suggestions.
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Behind the Scenes in Book World
Photo by Kate Ter Haar
An update
It’s been three weeks since I sent the final draft of my novel, Her Own Vietnam, to my publisher for editing. While I wait to hear from her, there’s a lot for me to do.
Here are some of the things that are on my mind during this hidden gestation period as my manuscript evolves into a book.
Design
It’s not up to me to figure out cover images or page layout. A professional designer will do that, and my publisher will have the final word. But I am fortunate that Rosalie – unlike many publishers – actively engages her authors in design decisions and creative thinking about what the book should look like. So while I’m not worried about specific fonts or photos, I am thinking about the feeling I want the book cover to project – and hoping the designer can find a way to express that feeling visually.
Blurbs
Some readers study blurbs, some scorn them, but you’ve gotta have them. Two writers are currently considering blurb requests for my novel, and I’m working up the nerve to ask another well-known writer for a blurb. (Generally the publisher requests the blurbs, but in some cases the author might ask.)
As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s a delicate matter to ask someone to blurb your book. And like most people, I am uncomfortable asking for favors. The writer I’m about to approach has already been very generous to me. Is it over the top to ask her for yet more assistance? We’ll soon see.
Reviews
I suspect a novel like mine is going to find most of its readers through word of mouth. But the very first readers, particularly those who might stock the novel on their bookstore or library shelves, will most likely learn about it from reviews.
It is the publisher, not the author, who sends books out for review and Rosalie has already developed a list of review outlets for my novel. But I want to add to her list by learning about all the places I think my potential readers might hear about the book.
Who are my potential readers? Women (and men) who are interested in women’s stories. Who think about the human impact of social issues. Who fought in wars or marched against them, or both. Who are willing, for the length of a novel, to try on someone else’s life.
What about you?
I have three friends whose book recommendations are always on target. I have a couple of others whose stamp of approval for a book might as well be a skull and crossbones.
What about you? How do you hear about books to read? Is it through a particular website or magazine? A local bookstore? A trusted friend?
Do you have any advice for me about how to reach, well, people like you? Leave a comment and start the conversation: How will find your next book?
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Missing: Sunday’s Women
I have recently railed about how women writers are underrepresented among books that get published and reviewed.
Well, guess what? Women are also missing from Sunday morning.
You may have seen this recent report from Media Matters, which documents that on the Sunday political talk shows, only about 30% of the guests and 15% of the individuals interviewed are women. (The only hero of this tale is Melissa Harris-Perry, who hosts the most gender-balanced Sunday talk show on television.)
So what? After all, not everyone gets their news and opinions from the Sunday talk shows. Most people get them from Jon Stewart.
But here in Washington DC, the Sunday shows are serious business. Powerful public figures go on the shows to float policy proposals or advocate a position. What they say on these programs is widely quoted and discussed in mainstream and social media.
What happens when most of a nation’s public authorities – those who are called upon to tell us what is going on in the world and what it means – are men? How does that shape our understanding of the world and our role in it, as a country and as individuals?
I know this kind of gender argument is a blunt instrument that misses other dynamics – such as race, class and culture – that might affect how people lead, govern and interpret the world. Yet in every race, class and culture, half the people are women – and they are the half we don’t hear from.
In the U.S., women constitute a slight majority of the population. In some categories, we constitute a distinct majority: minimum wage workers, for instance, or people living in poverty. (On second thought, maybe that’s only one category since, at $7.25 an hour, “the minimum wage” and “poverty” are synonymous.)
But I’m not holding out hope for completely proportionate representation for women on the Sunday talk shows or elsewhere; I’d settle for something less. Fifty percent, let’s say.
Women would comprise half of Congress and half the Cabinet. Half the state legislatures. Half the Supreme Court. Half the judiciary at all levels.
Women would constitute half of the writers who get published and reviewed. Half the experts on news programs. Half the executives of the corporations that own the mass media and run the Internet.
Would this scenario really make the world a better place? Or would women simply mess things up in a different way, with different blunders and blind spots?
I’d sure like to find out.
(Photo: Pueppilottchen aka Dollily)
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1,331 Times
That’s approximately how often I’ve thought about a character in Margaret Atwood’s 1989 novel, Cat’s Eye. It was not one of her best books, and the theme – that the friendship between girls often glints with cruelty – was actually repellent to me.
Yet I think about it almost every time I do the laundry.
Why? Because one of the characters in the novel was a fiber artist, and Atwood’s description of how she created works of beauty from the soft, multi-colored dryer lint that everyone else discards has never left me.
In a book I didn’t love and barely remember, Atwood created a character who springs to life whenever I do a routine and recurring chore. That’s powerful writing.
What about you? Do you have any characters who haunt you?
Start with a Story 
