Female Writers Month Part 1.5 – The Recommendations 2: Revengimification!

Hello lovely blog reading people! Hello!

So, last post got quite a few likes and some people following. Hooray! This is very nice to see, and I like that you liked my blog posts (yo dawg…). Buuuuuut, and here I don’t want to look ungrateful, but these likes weren’t really what I’m looking for, though they are nice.

As it stands, my Female Writers Month list looks like this:

1. Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, by Gwendolyn Leick
2. Spirit, by Gwyneth Jones
3. A Soldier’s Duty, by Jean Johnson
4. Heir of Night, by Helen Lowe
5. Obsidian and Blood, by Aliette de Boddard

I’ve got A Soldier’s Duty, Heir of Night and Obsidian And Blood on that list thanks to AJ, and that fills up my SFF slots on the list nicely. However, I am still lacking a Western (remember, Westerns with SFF elements in them are also good. Better, in fact, because that combines two things I like) and a classical piece. In fact, I’m going to narrow it down to Virginia Woolfe, because as far as I understand her work is supposed to be very funny and I’m always up for a good chortle. With that in mind, people’s favourite Virginia Woolfe book.

Any recommendations would be great, and would also make you a objectively awesome human being.

Female Writers Month Part 1 – The Recommendations

There’s been quite a lot of controversy flying about as of late in the realms of Sci-Fi and Fantasy following a SFWA article where two blinkered old white men who couldn’t see through the haze of their own privelige talked a whole load of sexist shit about women in SFF and then acted surprised when people got pissed off. There are bloggers out there who are covering the whole thing in a lot more detail, and can give a much more comprehensive breakdown on the situation and what it says about the genre’s views on women (spoiler alert: it doesn’t say many good things).

It did get me thinking about the number of women writers I’ve read, and when I did think about it, the number wasn’t huge. I’ve read a fair few books by women authors over time, but when I compare it to the amount of male authors that I’ve read I realise that it’s a much smaller sum. It’s difficult for me to precisely work out why; when I’m scanning the shelves of a bookshop I don’t think “this author is in possession of a Y-Chromosome! I shall not read this!”, but there’s definitely an imbalance.

I do, however, have a chance to redress this. Come July, I’m going to be jetting away from from sunny (ha!) London to Korea to study martial arts for a month for my Gap Year travels, and after that I’m touring Australia and New Zealand in August for shits, giggles, adventure sports and possibly the chance to fist-fight a kangaroo. Also, before anyone asks, I’m going to Nice Korea, not Naughty Korea.

The touring Oz and New Zealand leg of my travels does, however, involve one potential fly in the ointment. Coach journeys. Long, long coach journeys where the hours stretch on, there’s nowhere to go, little to do and not much to distract you from the boredom. In short, perfect reading time.

And so, in the interests of both balancing my reading scales and not going insane, I’m declaring August my Female Writer’s Month 2013. For August, I will endeavour to expand the list of female authors I’ve read, but in order to do that, I first need female authors to read.

This is where you come in, ugly, blog-dependent peasants oh beloved readers of my blog. I need recommendations from you people. So far, I’ve got two books:

• Spirit, by Gwyneth Jone, a SFF novel that I picked up the other day
• Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, a history book that I’m sticking on this list even though I’d picked it up before I had this idea but just hadn’t read much of it yet and shaddup it’s my list and the history of the Fertile Crescent is interesting anyway so STOP JUDGING MEEEEE!!
• No other books yet

Books I’m looking for are:

• At least 4 SFF works, from authors I haven’t read before (sorry, Sarah Cawkwell and Cherie Priest). If they’re big, long ones in the vein of the massive old-school SFF novels that you can use to beat someone to death with, then that’s great.
• A Western novel, as I’ve recently discovered I quite like Westerns. If you’ve got a Western with fantasy/sci-fi elements in it as your suggestion, all the better.
• A ‘classic’. Some like Virginia Woolfe, whichever one of the Bronte Sisters who didn’t write Jane Eyre or somebody else. Says something rather condemning about literature when all I can think of for classical female authors is Virginia Woolfe and the Bronte Sisters and yet if you asked me to list some male ‘classic’ authors then I could reel off a whole big list off the top of my head.

The comments section is open. Go nuts. Sensibly, please.

Also, go and give my friend’s kickstarter some money while you’re here. Scroll down, post before this one. Give generously, you cretins!