Books & other media by and about women

[fakely mctest]

The always-excellent Captain Awkward offers this advice on the regular:

Works by men, with male protagonists, dominate popular culture. We all grow up on stories and messages where men go out and do great deeds and they rescue and/or win the love of women. They pursue women. They acquire women as decorative objects. If you aren’t good at acquiring these objects you are a loser or a failure. These are the messages you are swimming in, and they are affecting your life. Not every work created by a woman goes against this grain, obviously, since we’re all swimming in the same cultural soup. And hopefully you already seek out and enjoy works by women — I don’t want to insult you by saying that you don’t or that you are unaware! But I think it’s a good idea to make a deliberate year-long project of it at this time in your life, when you are trying to figure out how to relate to women better.

Important note about this list: After some Mod discussion we have decided to offer the option to get these books from our Nerdlounge Amazon store, which means Nerdlounge gets a tiny profit if you click and purchase.  Any money we get would be used for community improvement -- buying new stuff to make the boards work better, possible contests, that sort of thing.  Obviously, this is not mandatory.  We just wanted to be transparent!

Feel free to discuss any potential additions to the lists below!  We will update as needed!

Link to the store.

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Books by women

Adichie, Chimamanda: collected works esp. Half of a Yellow Sun
Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women
Angelou, Maya: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Anon.: S. A Novel About the Balkans
Anon.: A Woman in Berlin
Armstrong, Kelley: various works esp. her YA and Women of the Other World series
Atwater-Rhodes, Amelia: Hawksong series
Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaid's Tale and The Penelopiad
Austen, Jane: various works
Baker, Kage: The Company series
Benard, Cheryl: Moghul Buffet
Briggs, Patricia: Mercy Thompson series
Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre and Villette
Butler, Octavia: Kindred and Wild Seed
Canavan, Trudi: Black Magician and Traitor Spy
Carriger, Gail: Parasol Protectorate series
Chapman, Vera: The Three Damosels
Clarke, Susanna: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell and The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories
Collins, Suzanne: The Hunger Games trilogy
DuMaurier, Daphne: Rebecca
Donoghue, Emma: Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins
Egan, Jennifer: A Visit From the Goon Squad
Frank, Anne: The Diary of Anne Frank
Gilman, Rebecca: Boy Gets Girl
Gloeckner, Phoebe: autobiographical graphic novels
Hand, Elizabeth: Saffron and Brimstone
Heyer, Georgette: Cotillion
Hochschild, Arlie: The Managed Heart
Hong Kingston, Maxine: The Woman Warrior
Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Jacobs, Harriet: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Kushner, Ellen: Swordspoint and The Privilege of the Sword
Kingsolver, Barbara: The Poisonwood Bible
Kirino, Natsuo: Out
L'Engle, Madeleine: A Wrinkle in Time, Meet the Austins, A Live Coal in the Sea
Le Guin, Ursula K.: The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, the Earthsea series
Larbalestier, Justine: various works
Lippman, Laura: Life Sentences
Lo, Malinda: The Huntress
McGuire, Seanan: The October Daye series, the InCryptid series
McKillip, Patricia: various works
McKinley, Robin: various works esp. Deerskin
Marr, Melissa: Graveminder
Miller, Madeline: The Song of Achilles
Moon, Elizabeth: Vatta's War series
Nutting, Alyssa: Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls
Okorafor, Nnedi: Who Fears Death
Patchett, Anne: State of Wonder
Peterfreund, Diana: various works
Pierce, Tamora: various works
Plath, Sylvia: The Bell Jar
Rees Brennan, Sarah: various works
Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein
Smith, Zadie: White Teeth
Tan, Amy: The Joy Luck Club
Tepper, Sheri S. - Grass
Valente, Catherynne M.: various works
Various authors: Serenity of Whiteness
Waters, Sarah: Affinity
Wein, Elizabeth: Code Name Verity
Whalen Turner, Megan: The Thief
Wharton, Edith: The House of Mirth
Woolf, Virginia: To the Lighthouse
Wynne Jones, Diana: various works

Books by men that feature well-written women

Aeschylus: Oresteia trilogy
Alsanea, Rajaa: The Girls of Riyadh
Aristophanes: Lysistrata
Baldwin, James: Go Tell It on the Mountain, Another Country, and Just Above My Head
Banks, Russell: The Darling
Brown, Joe David: Paper Moon
Fforde, Jasper: Thursday Next series
Eugenides, Jeffrey: Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides
Euripides: Medea
Ishiguro, Kazuo: Never Let Me Go
Khadra, Yasmina: The Attack
Kundera, Milan: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Lott, Bret - The Difference Between Women and Men
Martin, George R.R.: A Song of Ice and Fire
Mitchell, David: Cloud Atlas
Nix, Garth: The Abhorsen Trilogy
Nicholson, William: The Wind Singer series
Pratchett, Terry: Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade, Carpe Jugulum, The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight, and Monstrous Regiment
Sanderson, Brandon: The Mistborn trilogy, The Stormlight Archive, Warbreaker, and The Emperor's Soul
Scalzi, John: Old Man’s War and its sequels
Sophocles: Antigone
Williams, Tad: Otherland series