So this isn't really on topic, but today is my sixteenth birthday so doesn't that count for at least one special privilege?

Anyway, I would just like to mention that I feel as if this blog single-handedly turned me into a raging feminist. And I would like to thank you all for doing so!

Love always,
Aidan [who is often mistaken for a boy through other people's misconceptions about gender.]

ps: Favorite author would have to be Khalid Hosseini. [u]A Thousand Splendid Suns[/u] is spectacular.

JRR Tolkien, for the most beautifully crafted prose I've ever read and probably will ever read.

Margaret Atwood and I'm getting into Milan Kundera right now, as well. Yay authors!....and the books they write!

I don't really have favorite writers; I just really enjoyed particular books.
Angela's Ashes is one of my favs.
The Lovely Bones is another.
And America the Book, haha.

Happy Birthday, Aidan Grrl! So happy to meet a young feminist like yourself. This blog (and others I read on a daily basis) has really raised my feminist consciousness as well.

Happy 16th birthday, Aidan! Hmm... my favorite author is Phillip Pullman, because he writes such badass female characters. And my favorite book is Carmilla. She was the FIRST lesbian in the media. I love manga too, but that you've got to be careful with; too many times, girls are made into wide-eyed damsels in distress. My favorite feminist manga is: Bleach, (Tite Kubo), Revolutionary Girl Utena, Naruto, (Later on in the series, after the Chuunin exams, for an otaku reading this), and Bizenghast. I'm still looking for others in that category however.

Feliz Cumpleanous Aidan! Beautiful name, also. :) I love some Jeffrey Eugenides, Flannery O'Connor, Michael Faber, and Carson McCullers.

Current favorite is Susannah Clarke, author of Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norell. She has a great style and I only wish she would write more! Neil Gaiman is another I really like, ever since I discovered him through the Sandman comic books waaaayyy back in the day.

Katherine Anne Porter. Unsurprisingly, being an English major at a liberal arts college doesn't involve reading a lot of female authors (unless you take the 'Women's Literature' class that's offered every two years), so I'd never heard of her until a friend recommended 'Ship of Fools,' her only novel. The book changed my entire notion of what writing and narrative are. There's really no plot, the title says it all (a bunch of people on a boat going from Mexico to Germany in the early 30s), but I've reread that sucker three times already and could go on forever. Her truly breathtaking craftsmanship when it comes to words only adds to my impression of her as a total kickass woman. She was well into her 30s before she decided that writing was what she wanted to do, and although her career spanned fifty years and many famous writer friends she's never associated with any particular 'scene.' She spent most of her life in Mexico and Europe, getting married and divorced and winning Nobel prizes like it was nothing. I think I relate to her inability to settle down. Anyway, 'Ship of Fools.' Read it.

Mireille, I just started reading JS & MrN last night, and it is great!

I really love Milan Kundera (being an eastern european politics major) and Isabel Allende- her stories are intoxicating. Haruki Murakami novels keep me busy for weeks.
Also, of course, Kurt Vonnegut changed my life.

Anita Diamont, Margaret Atwood, Marjane Satrapi, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Gilbert and Eireann Corrigan. I am always looking for new authors and books, so I'm looking forward to checking out everyone else's suggestions!

I am absolutely obsessed with Jeanette Winterson. I could read every one of her books over and over again (and have...), and still discover new fascinating and beautiful details. She writes so deliberately, as if each word is placed with such attention and care. I also love how she is at once both critical and romantic, a rather difficult feat in my mind!

He's been around for a while, but I just recently discovered Junot Diaz from an amazing story of his, Wildwood, featured in the summer fiction issue of The New Yorker. In the story he writes from the point of view of a punk Dominican teenage girl in New Jersey about her complicated relationship with her mother . He writes with the most amazing straightforward energy I've read in a long time. Really great stuff.

I read Angier's "Woman: An Intimate Geography" a few years ago and ABSOLUTELY loved it. People ask me what the book is about and I have to say "everything." I think that book really framed the way I approach feminism.

I can't say I have a "favorite" author, but recently I've really been enjoying Neil Gaiman ("American Gods" makes me incredibly happy).

Elizabeth Moon, science fiction writer. Now some people say Sci Fi is chewing gum for the mind. Perhaps it is, but less so than TV. Moon is very readable and also very feminist. Since most Sci Fi and in particular most space opera is patriarchal "masters of the universe" bullshit, Moon is very very refreshing.

Unlike most of the male writers of space opera featuring space battles, or fantasy featuring primitive land battles and hand-to-hand combat, Elizabeth Moon actually served in the Marine Corps for three years as a computer tech, during the Viet Nam era. When she got out of the service, she took an advanced degree in Biology. Her mother trained as an engineer, but the best job she could get with that degree after her father abandoned them was as a draftsman on the oil patch in south Texas--1950's Texas. So she has formal training and hands-on experience in both hand-to-hand combat, military tactics, computers, engineering and science.

Her are her books, best first (IMHO).

Remnant Population: an established agrarian planetary colony is relocated to another planet by their corporate sponsors, the most elderly lady of them decides she'd rather stay behind all by herself , feeling that she (and treated like she) would only be excess baggage -- and believes that she would enjoy surviving on her own without the people (including her own family) who no longer consider her really worth even listening to (or even treating with any respect). They leave. She survives. And then the original inhabitants of the planet show up...

The Speed of Dark. Near future Sci Fi. Elizabeth Moon has one adult son, who is autistic. This book is a Sci Fi imagining of what life might be like for him if some treatment were available that left his personality intact and specifically what employment in a large corporation might be like for a group of similarly abled people, a high tech corp kind of taking advantage of the savant part of their idiot savant abilities. There is the "new boss" scene who is a bigot and a bully and wants them all out, despite their contribution. (The sneakiness with which this boss has to carry out his objective is very very realistic, and reminds me of the kind of covert sabotage and ambush tactics that many women in professional settings have to put up with when dealing with a bigoted misogynist bully of the passive-aggressive snake variety....but I digress.)

And then there are 3 girl space opera series, and 1 fantasy series, all featuring the maturation of a "tomboy" from early teens to their mid-40's. Each space opera series features a rather distant but extremely helpful Aunt figure, who serves as both a role model and does intervene at key moments with helpful technology and/or advice -- but never rescue. It's left to the strong female lead to figure out what to do with the Aunt's technology/help/advice/example.

The second girl space opera series, Herris Serrano, who becomes a spaceship captain, even features...extraterrestrial horses. And extraterrestrial fox hunts. The aunt figure in the Serrano series is of the intergalactic Horsie Set. It's a scream. Ideal for teenage girls who like science and...well, horses.

Most recently I've fallen in love with Tolkein. I love the mythological style, and he pulls it off perfectly.

I also love Daniel Quinn's ideas and optimism, and Marion Zimmer Bradley captured my imagination more than every other author I've ever read combined. It's a bit odd, but The Mists of Avalon is my most influential book.

Scott Westerfeld, hands down. He's an amazingly prolific YA writer, with strong female protagonists (or at least characters) featured in all of his books. The trilogy UGLIES is a dystopian future where at the age of 16 everyone is required to undergo plastic surgery to become "pretty" (by the standards of the "pretty committee"). Love love love him.

wagadog, I'm with you on the Elizabeth Moon love.

My library just hit the 1200-book mark and quickly went over, so asking me to pick a favourite writer is...kinda crazy, really. So how about a favourite feminist writer? That would be Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Her short stories often feature a woman (or women) who overcome some difficulty that arrives out of society's idea of womanhood, and everything ends happily. So if you're feeling depressed by the state of the world, Charlotte can cheer you up.

My final big photo project in undergrad was called 'Charlotte's Room' and grew out of The Yellow Wallpaper and Victorian ideas of feminine madness, and the way to cure it.

Jane Austen and the Brontes all the way, plus Tolkein and JK Rowling and Madeleine L'Engle! And as for more modern favorites, I'd have to say Jhumpa Lahiri and Jon Krakauer.

Angela Carter. No question.

Alice Walker, hands down. She is so insightful - really eye-opening reading on society and myself personally. It's always a great learning experience with her books.

I would have to second the love for the Bronte's though. Charlotte's work with Villette is just awesome.

I used to have a hard time answering this question, but recently, it's become simple.

Terry Pratchett.

If you've read him, you know what I mean. If you haven't, you're missing out.

Neil Gaiman, Wendell Berry, Anne Lamott, Margaret Atwood, Kurt Vonnegut, Marilyn French. Has anyone else read The Women's Room, by Marilyn French? That book was a singular consciousness-raising experience for me when I read it at 15. I just reread it this summer (I'm 22 now) and found it just as powerful, though somewhat dated. Definitely recommend it.

Jane Austen, for being so funny, shrewd, and all around awesome; and Vladimir Nabokov, for making the English language twist and sear and sparkle.

Sci-Fi: David Weber, Lois McMaster Bujold, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Vernor Vinge

Fantasy: Terry Pratchett, Mercedes Lackey, Tanya Huff, R. A. Macavoy, Katherine Kerr, Patricia Briggs. I had read Elizabeth Moon's Legacy of Gird series and while it was okay, didn't find it something that I'd reread. I'll have to look into her scifi stuff.

Politics: Al Franken

I read a lot, so I could probably keep going for a while (particularly among much less prolific authors), but those are the ones that stand out in my memory as old favorites.

arundhati roy- hands down. sheis brilliant.

I really love (most) of Miranda July's short stories. I am half way through her new book and can't put it down.

I also love Jonathan Safran Foer, Isabelle Allende, and JK Rowling. I like magical realism, but not really fantasy, and tend to read a wide variety of authors rather than getting too stuck on individuals. I also review three books a month for an entertainment magazine in East Texas, so that limits my subject matter a bit. I try to pick books that will challenge the locals, and while Bitchfest was okay, How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America probably wouldn't fly.

My all time favorite book? The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.
Uses the English language in alliterative yet unexpected ways, plus makes lots of references to Shakespeare, mythology and other classic works--often side-by-side with anachronistic pop-culture references for added hilarity. All that plus a very beautiful, poignant story. Perfect.

But then, I'm an English geek who specialized in mythology and medieval and Renaissance literature, so it's really right up my alley.

Since other people are including manga, I'll also give a nod to Tsugumi Ohba (Death Note) and Matsuri Akino (Pet Shop of Horrors) for sheer had-to-read-all-10+-volumes-in-a-single-sitting awesomeness. ;)

evil olive: I LOVE Miranda July, as well. I've only seen her film work though, and have been wanting to get into some of her short stories. I was wondering, do you have any recommendations?

p.s. Fantastic name! (My favorite palindromes are "Did mom poop? Mom did" and "Mr. owl ate my metal worm" Yep, I'm a huge dork.)

An idea just occurred to me: I'm doing almost all of my book buying in e-book format at Fictionwise nowadays (I just bought Elizabeth Moon's "Remnant Population" and "Speed of Dark" in particular in this thread), and one of the features of Fictionwise is that people who have bought books there can generate 10% off coupons for others that want the same book as part of their recommend-a-book program. If there is interest, I can generate a list of all of the books on my online bookshelf and provide discount codes on request (or just for those two, for people taking recommendations from this thread alone).

Full disclosure: I will receive book discounts on future purchases for everyone that buys a book via one of those codes, and it will involve an exchange of e-mail addresses.

I have no idea how many people currently go the e-book route, but if this technique actually generates interest, Feministing might actually want to sponsor a reading circle of some nature, where people who own e-books on feminist topics, or by female authors, or simply with strong female leads, can add themselves to a list as people to contact for a discount to encourage that the books be read more widely.

Interested parties can e-mail me at zed@resonant.org, or send feedback through my website (mostly defunct as it currently is). Please be patient if you do; I'm about to be travelling, and my take a little while to respond.

(I really hope I'm not going to wake up tomorrow to several hundred requests, but I suspect the reads-ebooks-and-reads-feministing-threads crowd is small enough to be easily manageable. :P)

elizabeth mccracken. every single word.

Isabel Allende.

Octavia Butler. just finished parable of the sower...blew my mind

No way I can pick my all-time favorite writer, but I'll name two women whose writing I love:

My favorite short story writer is Alice Munro. Practically every one of her short stories is a gem, but check out her collection Open Secrets, especially the story "The Albanian Virgin".

My favorite feminist writer is Katha Pollitt. The title of her essay collection Reasonable Creatures explains exactly why I am a feminist. She's written some gorgeous poems, too.

Anne Rice
Alice Walker
Amy Tan
Toni Morrison
George Orwell

I really enjoy the short stories of Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, and Amber Dermont.

They are amazing examples of the way language can be crafted to be beautiful, hilarious, and emotionally resonant.

miksizzle - july just published her first collection of short stories called "no one belongs here more than you". it reads just like her films - wonderfully, painfully and awkwardly. here is a link to one of her stories which was published on the web -

http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=292

and yes, i love palindromes too, obviously. thanks for the props!

Favorite writer? Oh man, I can't do a favorite, although lately I've been partial to Hunter S. Thompson, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Dante Alighieri. I like Hemingway also. You have to respect an individual who can write an entire story using six words.

I would've read Full Frontal Feminism, but it's a "Young Woman's Guide", and I'm a male, so I wouldn't understand it.

(kidding!)

Oh my... I've got such a long list.

Previous posters have mentioned Neil Gaiman, Susannah Clarke, Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman, Octavia Butler, Angela Carter, Tsugumi Ohba, J.R.R. Tolkien, Margaret Atwood, Peter S. Beagle, and a few others who are on my list.

I'd like to add Tanith Lee, Alan Moore, Nalo Hopkinson, Garth Nix, Jacqueline Carey, China Mieville, Kage Baker, Charles de Lint, Robin McKinley, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, Francesca Lia Block, Barbara Hambly... oh dear, I'm going to be here all day if I don't stop.

Curtis Sittenfeld

I'm reading bell hooks Feminism is for Everyone - and it's pretty sweet. Also- Rohinton Mistry wrote an amazing book called A Fine Balance, definetly one of the best fiction novels I've ever read.

For those who said they're an Angela Carter fan - you've made my day! I wrote my master's thesis on Wise Children and Nights at the Circus. She's fascinating, but no other students had heard of her. If I hadn't hated grad school, I would have *definitely* written my dissertation on her. :)

These days the automatic buys for anything new are:

Patricia McKillip-beautiful lyrical tales.

Louise McMaster Bujold who has written both great fantasy in the Chalion series and great space opera in the Vorkosigan books. Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan may be the best character ever.

Charlotte Bronte. (I exclude Emily because I hated Wuthering Heights.)

Ayn Rand.

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

C.S. Lewis.

Roald Dahl, for his dark humour. (Omnibus is great.)

For modern authors, I'll go with JK Rowling (of course), Jennifer Weiner (have to love her smart woman characters), and Mary Higgins Clark (okay, I travel a lot, and I need something to entertain me on planes).

Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Andrea Dworkin, Carol Ann Duffy ("The World's Wife") Francesca Lia Block, Miranda July, Dorothy Parker, Les Fienberg, Michelle Tea, Diane Diprima, Tony Kushner, Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Bulowski, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, e.e. cummings, Kerouac, Gertrude Stein, Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates, Joyce Maynard. whew!

Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Andrea Dworkin, Carol Ann Duffy ("The World's Wife") Francesca Lia Block, Miranda July, Dorothy Parker, Les Fienberg, Michelle Tea, Diane Diprima, Tony Kushner, Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, e.e. cummings, Jack Kerouac, Gertrude Stein, Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates, Joyce Maynard. whew!

Hello all!
I have recently begun reading this blog and have really enjoyed the content; both from those who post the entries and those who comment on them.

My favorite authors are Kurt Vonnegut, Salman Rushdie, Isabel Allende, William Faulkner (thanks to laboring over many of his writings through a senior thesis project), and Jhumpa Lahiri.

Now, here is an issue I may or may not have with Margaret Atwood. Up until a few months ago I would have put her as my absolute number one favorite author. After reading one of her books for a class I began to devour everything I could find. A few months ago I reached what I thought was the end of her work and found myself scrounging around for her less known writings. I came upon a short novel called Surfacing. It was an OK story, very obviously from the relative beginning of her career. There was one glaring issue that caused me serious problems...the book seems to be not-so-vaguely anti-choice, or at the very least anti-abortion.
Has anyone else read this novel or know more about this? I tried (a little) to find info about it online but failed.
Thanks!

Hello all!
I have recently begun reading this blog and have really enjoyed the content; both from those who post the entries and those who comment on them.

My favorite authors are Kurt Vonnegut, Salman Rushdie, Isabel Allende, William Faulkner (thanks to laboring over many of his writings through a senior thesis project), Mark Twain, Don DeLillo, and Jhumpa Lahiri.

Now, here is an issue I may or may not have with Margaret Atwood. Up until a few months ago I would have put her as my absolute number one favorite author. After reading one of her books for a class I began to devour everything I could find. A few months ago I reached what I thought was the end of her work and found myself scrounging around for her less known writings. I came upon a short novel called Surfacing. It was an OK story, very obviously from the relative beginning of her career. There was one glaring issue that caused me serious problems...the book seems to be not-so-vaguely anti-choice, or at the very least anti-abortion.
Has anyone else read this novel or know more about this? I tried (a little) to find info about it online but failed.
Thanks!

Oops! I apologize for posting twice in a row!

CaitsDay, I read Surfacing by Atwood a couple years ago, I don't recall it sounding anti-choice or anti-abortion. Why did you get that feel? While I don't remember it completely, I had more of the feeling that Atwood was trying to convey that a woman is not simply an incubator but is an individual with choices to make. I'd have to refresh on the specifics of the plot, though.

oh, also...I didn't think Surfacing was anti-choice because the narrator recalls that she was essentially forced to abort a baby that she didn't want to abort. She felt powerless because she wasn't given a choice. She tries to regain that power by making the decision for herself to be impregnated again.

I love good fiction, and Julie Orringer is my favorite right now. Her wonderful collection of short stories, How To Breathe Underwater, is mostly about young women. It makes me swoon.

i heart iris murdoch.

Favorite writer from past centuries: Jane Austen

Favorite 20th century writer (fiction):
Angela Carter.

In her classic story collection The Bloody Chamber she did a brilliant job at rescuing fairy tales from the depredations of Walt Disney, the Brothers Grimm and their ilk, restoring them to their rightful place as narratives rich in meaning for adult readers -- especially women readers. Along with Anne Sexton's fairy tale poetry (collected in Transformations), Angela Carter's gorgeous stories inspired a large and vibrant new field of adult fairy tale literature, which is still going strong today. You can find it in mainstream fiction (by writers including A.S. Byatt, Emma Donoghue, Robert Coover, Gregory Maguire); in genre fiction (by writers including Susanna Clarke, Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman, and Tanith Lee); in YA fiction (by writers including Donna Jo Napoli, Robin McKinley, Jane Yolen, and Shannon Hale); and in contemporary poetry (by writers including Olga Broumas, Liz Lochhead, Lisel Mueller, and Carol Ann Duffy).

Favorite 20th century writers (nonfiction):
Carolyn Heilbrun (Writing a Woman's Life), Lewis Hyde (The Gift), David Abram (Spell of the Sensuous).

Favorite 21st century writer...? I haven't made my mind up yet -- there are so many talented young newcomers. Catherynne M. Valente, Christopher Barzak, Alan deNiro, Theodora Goss, Jedediah Berry and so many others...

Count me in as another one who hearts Margaret Atwood. Also Philip Pullman, Salman Rushdie, Greg Bear (I go back to Songs of Earth and Power every few years), Haruki Murakami, and James Mitchener (although I haven't read one of his in years). For academic stuff, I love Hermione Lee (although I haven't picked up Edith Wharton yet), and for sheer kookiness, Arnold Schoenberg.

And I just finished Jessica's book today. :)

Donna Tartt is fabulous beyond words.

fiction -- JK Rowling, Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, Kenneth Grahame

non-fiction -- Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins on religion; Dawkins and SJ Gould on science (Dawkins's "The Ancestor's Tale is one of the best books I've ever read)

Margaret Atwood (especially _The Blind Assassin_, I'm sensing the makings of a Feministing Atwood Fan Club)

Willa Cather
Barbara Kingsolver
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Two words:
Suzy Kassem

arundhati roy, she is amazing.games