500 Great Books By Women discussion

I will flesh out proper group board things when I have the chance. For now, welcome.

Edit: All the books are in the bookshelf, if one wishes to expedite one's perusal.

http://31.media.tumblr.com/b9c807496b...

Establishing your feminist ethos already, I see.

Still better than my GIF application ethos... Priorities.

Some key points:

-The bookshelf has all the books.
-Consider all entries discussion generators/review submission areas.
-I will be making directories for translation/genre/country/persons of color/etc etc. Feel free to submit ideas.
-I will be making a folder for user submitted Great Books By Women and accompanying reviews.
-Suggestions regarding group infrastructure/administration are more than welcome. I have no idea what I'm doing.
-There will be proper rules eventually. I swear.

I'll think of more stuff later.

wow, you went to a lot of work to set this all up, Aubrey... Thanks for all your effort.

My pleasure, Bill. I find the easiest way to promote communal growth is to provide a methodical, yet multifarious, structure. Now it's up to others to fructify it with reviews and fitting works.

This is a rich resource, Aubrey, thank you for setting it up.

My pleasure, Cheryl. The book's too good a resource to restrict it to those who purchase a copy.

If anyone here wants a physical copy and uses PaperBackSwap.com, there are a few copies available in the database.

Hi Aubrey,
This is an impressive listing resource. I have read 26 of 500 so far, while I cannot promise to read more of these fiction, I have read 671 books total either by a woman or co-authored or one or so in a collection of stories or essays. Glad you have set this up.

Jacob wrote: "If anyone here wants a physical copy and uses PaperBackSwap.com, there are a few copies available in the database."

Imma make a board for this in the General folder called "Trying to Find a Copy?", if that's alright.

thegift wrote: "Hi Aubrey,
This is an impressive listing resource. I have read 26 of 500 so far, while I cannot promise to read more of these fiction, I have read 671 books total either by a woman or co-authored o..."

I'm glad to hear you've read so many books by women that aren't included in the original 508. Feel free to submit your favorites that you've reviewed to the database.

I'll echo Bill's comments... incredibly grateful for your efforts in adding this list... thank you Aubrey!

Would you mind if I linked to this group from my group Listomania? We're interested in lists of all kinds, so a list of 500 great books by women would definitely be a helpful addition.

I wouldn't mind at all, Jimmy. At the moment, any exposure is good exposure.

Thanks a lot for setting this up, Aubrey! Looks like I'll be adding a lot of books to my To Read list... I'll try to add some books to the list as well.

A question: Do you want the threads for individual books to focus on that one book, or are general discussions about the authors OK too?

General discussions about the author are welcome, Bjorn. For the moment, none of the discussions have derailed much in terms of subject matter. If they do, I will outline the rules further.

That there are 500 Great Books by women I never doubted and that they are listed here so that I can remind myself of them or discover them for the first time is very useful, Aubrey. Thank you for the truly amazonian work you've put into these pages (my spellchecker just corrected these to theses - perhaps there will be material for many theses in these pages)!

Normally I avoid anything that corrals authors into a genre apart, e.g., according to gender, race, nationality or colour, fearing that such authors will no longer be assessed on their true value but by their value in relation to the group. I realise however that books by women seem to represent a smaller percentage of many people's reading, partly because they represent a smaller percentage of books available and partly because attention has not been adequately focused on them in the past.
If this group brings more attention to such neglected books, then I'm happy.

hi Aubrey. Looks like a great group. Thanks for the invite!

Hey Aubrey! I'll hang out here! Just because you're awesome.

Have you read 500 Great Books By Women yourself? Does it have essays on each book? I love books that are just essays about other books. Because I'm a sucker.

I notice that there's a "One book per author" rule in the book. I got thrown off for a minute 'cause I was like "Where the hell is Their Eyes Were Watching God?" But they've chosen Moses, Man of the Mountain instead, which did not help my statistics, thanks assholes.

I've got an embarrassing 28 here. That's awful.

Fionnuala wrote: "That there are 500 Great Books by women I never doubted and that they are listed here so that I can remind myself of them or discover them for the first time is very useful, Aubrey. Thank you for t..."

Welcome, Fionnuala. I'm glad you're here.

Aloha wrote: "hi Aubrey. Looks like a great group. Thanks for the invite!"

Welcome, Aloha. Thank you for joining.

Alex wrote: "Hey Aubrey! I'll hang out here! Just because you're awesome.

Have you read 500 Great Books By Women yourself? Does it have essays on each book? I love books that are just essays about other books...."

I have, and it does, leastwise in sizeable paragraph/review form. The one per author limit did indeed result in some less popular choices, but I'm hoping people won't refuse to read a book by a 500 BBGW author simply because it wasn't on the list,

As for numbers, there's a reason why I didn't make up a board for members to post how many they've read. This is a resource, not a competition. I do have to say, Alex, that your 28 is a healthy amount, despite all appearances of the contrary.

I can only broadcast one message a day, so to anyone reading this, the Translations Directory is up and open to comments. For anyone who's curious, tomorrow I'll be making the Persons of Color Directory.

Didn't realize about the one title per author and I submitted a second title for Hurston. Are we going to keep to the one title rule?

Sue wrote: "Didn't realize about the one title per author and I submitted a second title for Hurston. Are we going to keep to the one title rule?"

We won't be, Sue. Samadrita already put a second one in for Audre Lorde, and I see no need for us volunteers to adhere to rules set down by people who were getting money for their work.

Kudos Aubrey for all the effort you've put into this. It may just motivate me to (finally) write reviews for the neglected Dawn Powell, and Aphra Behn's important Oroonoko.

Aloha wrote: "hi Aubrey. Looks like a great group. Thanks for the invite!"

Welcome, Aloha!!!:)

Gregsamsa wrote: "Kudos Aubrey for all the effort you've put into this. It may just motivate me to (finally) write reviews for the neglected Dawn Powell, and Aphra Behn's important [bo..."

Welcome, Josef. I look forward to your reviews.

Aubrey, I just had a look at the 1001 books to read directory and I'm hoping for some clarification. Is this saying that of the 1001 books only 53 are written by women? Which version of the list did you use (the original, or the cumulative list which I believe is now more than 1300)? I'm not challenging you here, I'm simply trying to understand. Thanks!

The 500 GBBW and 1001 BBBYD lists share 53 books. The rest of the 500 are not on the 1001, and the rest of the 1001 by women are not on the 500. I used the cumulative 1001 with 1305 books and the actual total of 500 with 508 books. The 1001 list has around 260 books by women, off the top of my head.

Ah! Ok. I was alarmed and I'm glad that I clarified that. Thank you. (Not that 260 is an impressive number, either...)

The number might be greater, Jen. I'll let you know the exact count when I check my 1001 Excel doc.

The total number of books written by women on the 1001 BBYD list is 269. Sad, but true.

Question. I haven't examined the books in the library closely enough to know the answer to this: I would assume that we are not limiting ourselves to fictional works? That histories, biographies, etc. written by women do qualify?

Any work written by women, no matter the genre/format, is welcome, Ted. In fact, you've reminded me that I meant to make a directory for the entries that aren't novels, as there's a healthy amount of juicy nonfiction/poetry/etc that isn't readily apparent to the casual browser. I will start work on that today.

In the meantime, all the entries have the genre within the first discussion post, so if you search for 'nonfiction' in the 'search discussion posts' box, appropriate entries will pop up.

Great question, Ted!

Hello, Group. I'm new here. I'm astonished by the thoroughness represented here--testament no doubt to the dedication and passion of Aubrey looks like.

I'm not presently reading a woman author though often do. Joan Didion is probably my all time favorite among women. The books represented here by her left me scratching my head at first, but after looking deeper it's clear -- at least in the cases of the writers I'm familiar with -- that the selections were chosen idiosyncratically, perhaps w/a view to spotlighting lesser known titles, which is a great idea in and of itself. I mean who really needs, in Didion's case, to read another review of Play It as It Lays or Slouching Towards Bethlehem? Been there done that. So it's nice to see a less celebrated (but still exceptional) book like After Henry find some love.

I'm curious if anyone here has ever read a novel I've never been able to find in a brick-and-mortor store, The Cubical City by Janet Flanner?

Welcome, Blue. I'm not familiar with the book, but this is a good place to ask.

Welcome, Blue!

Thanks for the welcome. Glad to be here!

Blue wrote: "Thanks for the welcome. Glad to be here!"

:)

Oh, hi everybody! I apologize, Aubrey, but for some reason I didn't spot this thread - I probably needed to expand my view for the "general" section.

Will now know to direct future chatting here. :)

Traveller wrote: "Oh, hi everybody! I apologize, Aubrey, but for some reason I didn't spot this thread - I probably needed to expand my view for the "general" section.

Will now know to direct future chatting here..."

That's perfectly fine, Traveller. This was initially the introductory chat when the group first opened, and I never got around to transitioning it to a general one once the group had been around for a while. In light of that, thanks for drawing my attention to it.

Hey Aubrey, I just wanted to celebrate that, after reading your profile note about not feeling well-read unless more than half of your books are by women, I counted my own. Thanks to an embarrassingly low number of books read, the fact that I haven't counted lots of books read long ago that I don't remember very well, and reading mostly women this calendar year, I have crossed over to having read two more by women than men.

Just wanted to say thanks for the inspiration, and now it will be my goal to keep the balance!

Kathleen wrote: "Hey Aubrey, I just wanted to celebrate that, after reading your profile note about not feeling well-read unless more than half of your books are by women, I counted my own. Thanks to an embarrassin..."

Ha ha, congratulations, Kathleen, and thank you for reminding me to update that count of mine. Focusing on women-written books has been more reflex than effort with me for a while now, so I rarely remember to adjust the goal posts with every applicable work. Frankly, nowadays I doubt I'd feel well read after I read the 223+ books by women required to balance my count out. I may change the end goal completely when I've done that, just to keep an overt sign of my progress around.

Hmmm, when I've got some time on my hands, I'll have to go count my own. I suspect I've got a pretty decent gender balance; I think I might be more interested in my people-of-color balance (which I am certain needs a lot of work).

Alexa wrote: "Hmmm, when I've got some time on my hands, I'll have to go count my own. I suspect I've got a pretty decent gender balance; I think I might be more interested in my people-of-color balance (which I..."

I definitely need to work on my PoC balance as well, Alexa. I actually tried calculating it once based on current world populations and estimating that white people make up 18% of the total, but I got scared off by the number in the thousands that I got. Later in more moderation, perhaps.

You could ease yourself into it - perhaps starting with the US number or an even more local number? Sometimes diversity needs to come in baby steps. :)

What down yesterday in the US is the exact reason why I founded this group. Nothing left to do but to keep fighting.