Joad wrote:I can't stand women authors. ...I've completely given up on women that write fiction they are just a lost cause...
The sentence I bolded is just plain mean. Do you have any idea how many female authors there are, and how many fiction books they've written? You would have to read at least one book from every author to be able to make a claim like that, and that's at the very least. So narrow-minded! There are plenty of horrible books written by men, too, but you don't write them off entirely as a gender just because you don't like certain books written by
some men.
Why are you writing off all female writers just because you haven't read books in that classification that suited you? Sure, a lot of literature written by women is cheesy and tedious drivel, but that's only the mainstream popular crap that people who don't really care about literature read. I personally hate Jane Austen and won't touch Danielle Steele with a 10 meter cattle prod, but I don't write them off because they're
women, I write them off because they're
bad writers. There are plenty of male writers I hate, but I don't not read books by men. I hate J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nicolas Sparks, Thomas Hardy, John Donne, Stephen King, Herman Melville, Bram Stoker, Michael Crichton, John Steinbeck, Cervantes, James Fenimore Cooper, Emerson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Yeats, Keats, Percy Shelley, etc. etc., but that doesn't mean I hate all male writers just because they're male! Chances are, the suggestions you're getting when you ask someone for a book written by a female are all very similar in style and genre and are leading you toward literature by women that even discerning female readers don't read. Let me point out a list of innovative and brilliant women whose works deserve a chance to be read before you give up on them just because of the genitalia they were born with.
Mary Shelley:
Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus
I doubt you'll find lush, rolling meadows and a woman's spiritual journey here. What you will find is a monster hated by his creator, who yearns only for love and finds hatred and destruction that come from his very form, and the very real question of how far should science go, what makes a "man" (what makes a human), and what makes a monster, and other very deep, thought-provoking, ungirlie topics that trump many other science-fiction books I've read that were written by men. If you have a problem with the language, you can blame that on the period and not the woman; if you read her husband's writing they would sound very similar. There's one for you.
On Amazon:
amazon.com/Frankenstein-Case-Studies-Co ... amp;sr=1-1
Margaret Atwood:
The Handmaid's Tale
Here you'll find a story about a society that has stripped women of their citizenship, their civil rights, their human rights, and even their right to their own names, so that if they are not married to someone important or are dissenters of the right wing religious fascist government, they are put to work as handmaids to barren women of wealth who will then raise that child as if it were her own, treating the handmaid like a dog (or even less than) and having them hanged if they disobey or even if they simply cannot reproduce, and the safest, most free job in the entire society is to be a stripper/hooker at private mens' clubs, where you are drugged and drunk and raped but at least you're alive and can have some sense of yourself. No woman wins in this society. The handmaids' lives are the worst of all, but the rich wives are unloved and hated by their husbands and have to pretend that is not the case, and even men who do not agree are hunted and killed "for the greater good." No bathroom gossip story here, either.
On Amazon:
amazon.com/Handmaids-Tale-Everymans-Lib ... amp;sr=1-1
Olive Schreiner:
The Story of an African Farm
This story chronicles the life of a young man working on a farm where a woman raises her sister's children and runs a farm on her own, and his childhood spent learning and playing with the young girls, one of whom he grows up to fall in love with. When Waldo, the young man, goes out into the world, he is a hard worker but continues to pine for the girl he once loved on the farm who was too headstrong and idealistic for her aunt and ran away at a young age, and when Waldo finally does catch up with her, she is sickly and dying, all the energy and sparkle her youth once held deflated by the cruel reality of life, as do many other characters in the novel, and the only character who "survives" in the literal and emotional sense of the word is the cruel aunt who runs the no-nonsense, no daydreaming farm, arguing the point that in order to survive, we must surrender our ambitions and our dreams, or else succumb to the despair of never seeing them through, and there is a great big "Why?" at the end of the book, "why are we here," "is there a God," "why must it be this way?" Again, I doubt you'll see this in a Redbook "List of good female books to read" list.
On Amazon:
amazon.com/Story-African-Farm-Olive-Sch ... amp;sr=1-1
Willa Cather:
My Antonia
This is one of my all time favorite reads, even though it's not in a category I necessarily read from too often. This story follows a young man who moves to his remote family's farm in the country, and at first has a hard time getting used to living so isolated and with no one to talk to, but he makes friends with the daughter of an immigrant, Antonia, and they spend many years together playing in the fields and making new discoveries and generally having fun. Eventually, the narrator grows up and goes off to boarding school and then college, and although he has girlfriends there, his real love is Antonia, but when he finally goes back to the farm where he grew up to see her, she is older, and looks even older than she is because she has a family of her own and has taken over for her father and thus works very hard, and although she is still young, her soul and body are old, and she is not the woman the narrator loved and so he cannot face her, and so, disillusioned, he lives out the rest of his life without her, remembering her not as who she has become, but who she was when he first knew and fell in love with her. Another lovely story about how disenchanting life can be. I'm sure you can find this in any salon across the country. It's a must read for soccer moms.
On Amazon:
amazon.com/My-Antonia-Willa-Cather/dp/1 ... amp;sr=1-5
Louise Erdrich:
Tracks
This book is very innovative in its narrative form because the story is told by two separate narrators, one whom, as we continue to read, we learn may not necessarily be trustworthy, which also casts doubts on the other. The story is about a native American tribe in the early stages of being forced to either accept the White Man's ways or find somewhere else to live, and while the Shaman of the tribe, Nanapush, acts as one narrator, giving the reader the history of the tribe and defiance to the forced integration and disgust at his brethren who change their ways to make life easier. The second narrator is a young woman of the tribe who desperately wants to be "white," and takes the English name "Pauline," and goes to a nunnery to become a Christian and become 100% "white," which it is obvious she can never be, because she cannot escape her history. In the end, Pauline cannot escape her heritage, and Nanapush cannot escape his debt and inevitable "surrender" to the "white man." As Jim Morrison said in the song "Five to One," which, as all of his music, was heavily influenced by his obsession with native American culture, "No one here gets out alive." I'd call that a fairly fitting statement for the message in
Tracks. I also have a paper written on the effect of the dual narrators in this book, if you read the book and are inclined to see my thoughts. Again, I can't really see someone reading this mid pedicure, so perhaps you're just looking in the wrong places.
On Amazon:
amazon.com/Tracks-Louise-Erdrich/dp/B00 ... amp;sr=1-1
Ursula K. LeGuin:
The Left Hand of Darkness
This was an official BookTalk discussion in January-February of this year, which I participated in gladly when I first joined, because I had read the book a few months back, and reading it (among some others) was one of the reasons that prompted me to find a place like BookTalk. This book provides us a story of an alien named Ai alone on the planet Winter, trying to persuade the native people, the Gethens, to join an intergalactic alliance that reaches over hundreds of galaxies. The Gethens are gender neutral unless they are in their sexual/reproductive state known as "kemmer," and each Gethen contains both male and female attributes, and no one gender is seen as being more important to the other. Ai, being an outsider, is stared at, mistrusted, and even hated because he is not gender neutral and therefore always "in kemmer," and this makes the Gethens uncomfortable to say the least. The Gethens also have a system of polite customs known as Shrifgethor, which makes it difficult to speak to them openly, because even one gesture can offend the officials Ai is trying to convince to ally with him to sentence him to death, and one Gethen in particular tries to help him but does so in a way that Ai does not understand until it is too late, because the Gethen doesn't realize that Ai has no Shrifgethor and wouldn't be insulted by direct advice/help. This Gethen ends up risking and giving his life for Ai, because he desperately believes in what Ai is trying to do, and their journey together through prison and uninhabitable mountains becomes a bonding experience equal to any such story written by a man, and says far more about gender and sex than do most textbooks on the subject. I think this book may appeal to you, because it is so very different from any other book on this list, or on any list you could think of. Another one I doubt you'd find in the chick lit section.
On Amazon:
amazon.com/Left-Hand-Darkness-Ursula-Gu ... amp;sr=1-1
The BookTalk discussion:
booktalk.org/the-left-hand-of-darkness- ... -f141.html
I think another mistake you're making is to go straight to the "new releases" section of a bookstore expecting to find meaningful literature written by anyone, male or female. Some of the best books are older, and while new authors are definitely writing great works, not everything you see in a display advertising "Just in" is also "really good." Bookstores get money from publishers, and those publishers and bookstores care more about what sells than what is good, so what you're really seeing when you buy a book from a "new releases" table that isn't from an already recognizable author is a display of books the publisher thinks will rapidly sell numerous copies, and the deeper literature written by women that you're desperately seeking is unlikely to be a part of that display. I hate to say it, but it's true. Chick lit sucks, but it sells.
Twilight sucks, but it sells. Romance novels suck, but they sell. You have to push past the "displays" and into the real meat of the fiction section to find something that you can really sink your teeth into and not toss away as fluff and nonsense, even with male authors. You may be less picky about male authors because their default is usually adventure or crime stories, and almost everyone would accept reading that over chick lit, but that's doing a disservice to female authors because it's making people like you think that women aren't capable of writing a story worth reading.
Next time you're in the bookstore, push past the displays and "just in" sections of the store, and look for books in the section you want to read from, be it fiction, science fiction, what have you. Don't pay attention to the author's name or the picture on the cover, pay attention to the plot summary and review comments, then open the book up and read the first sentence or two, or from any part in the middle, just to get a feel for the writing style. If you don't like it, put it back. Don't go searching for books by women, go searching for books you want to read, and if what you want to read happens to be written by a woman, great! But if not, oh well. There are far too many books out there to be ruling them out by author's gender. Obviously if there is a genre you don't like you won't read it, but the author's name or gender should have nothing to do with whether or not you think it is a good book. I think this is your first problem, and once you jump over that hurdle it'll be easier for you to weed out the good from the bad of female authors.
I have many more examples if you aren't convinced. I could also write an entire forum on women's poetry, but as you mentioned fiction, I stuck to that. My main concern here is that you're assuming an author's gender dictates whether or not you should read it, and I hope I've given you some reasons and helpful ways to push past that, as well. Authors of both genders can write bad books, but you shouldn't give up reading books by either one based only on that. Hate the author for what they write, not what's in their underwear.
Good luck, and happy reading.
I go to the bookstore, I try to look for female authors -- I've completely given up on women that write fiction they are just a lost cause -- to read but everything I see looks like drivel. Every book looks the same, there is some lush, rolling green meadow on the cover with the solitary woman standing in the middle, maybe there is a horse or a quaint village in the distance and the story is always about some sisters rekindling their sordid past together on some spiritual journey... It's not that I don't think women can't craft a great sentence, I just think the things they think make a great story is painfully droll, at least to me. I've had this debate with some of the women I work with at the bookstore, and they've all crucified me and promised to find me a women author that is worth reading... Well, needless to say I'm still waiting. Seriously, go to any bookstore and go to the new release section and peruse the books by women authors -- all of them are exactly what I described...
Really, you're going to start a book about war and all the incredible and horrible things that happen in war, with hugs? I guess there is something to say for dichotomy... I'm not saying soldiers shouldn't miss each other and they don't share an incredible bond, but I personally don't find it as interesting as what they go through....
