Looking for great books by female authors

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greywalker
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Re: Looking for great books by female authors

Post by greywalker »

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith...some people call it a teen book, but it is a classic coming-of-age story

Margaret Atwood...start with The Handmaid's Tale

Toni Morrison...be warned about the content in her books though, if you're sensitive

Kate Chopin...a classic feminist

Mercedes Lackey...for fantasy genre books

Madeline L'engle...fantasy again
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Lover-of-fantasy
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Post by Lover-of-fantasy »

Several female authors in the Middle Grade/Young Adult writings have recently made a fan of me.
The first is Shannon Messenger who has a fantasy series called Keeper of the Lost Cities that is so captivating. Her imagination and writing style are so vivid that when you put down the book you feel like someone just turned off your favorite movie! You'll find adventure, emotion, humor and more. Great up-and-coming author.

The other I'd suggest would be Angie Sage who wrote the Septimus Heap series. This is about the 'seventh son of a seventh son' who is mixed up at birth and has amazing magical abilities. Angie gives a fun tale about this young boy who will grow to become the most powerful wizard in the Castle. The books can be quite lengthy (one is 720 pages). And at times descriptions can drag on a bit when you're eager to get to the conclusion. However, she at times uses such rich, and uncommon vocabulary that I had to forgive her. Hope this helps. Enjoy reading!
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Bad Macaw
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Post by Bad Macaw »

Agatha Christie and Jane Austen are two of my favorites.

Not my favorite author, but I loved "the God of Small Things", by Arundhati Roy.
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Post by ccschmidt »

Isabel Allende has a really great writing style and has been very popular. Of course, JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series, which I refuse to hear a word against and which has shaped the childhoods of my generation! It would be really quite interesting to study the Harry Potter series from a psychologist's point of view and try to figure out why they have had such a global impact and how they've grabbed hold of the imaginations of countless numbers of children and adults alike!
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Bad Macaw
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Post by Bad Macaw »

Isabel Allende has a really great writing style and has been very popular.
I Loved The House of The Spirits so much! I've re-read it a few times. For some reason, though, I've never enjoyed any of her other books. Why is that? Is it just me? Is it because I was comparing them to that one?
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Post by duckwood1092 »

I dwell within the classics myself. To Jane Austen, I would add the Bronte Sisters, Edith Wharton, Mary Shelley, Louisa May Alcott, George Eliot. Recently, I have read Kaylin McFarren, Sarah Woodbury, Tanya Anne Crosby.
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Post by Mashadar86 »

In fantasy genre

Robin Hobb
Trudi Canavan
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Post by innocentdemand »

My favorite as far as fantasy is Dianne Wynne Jones. The moving castle series is great, and I actually only started reading it when I was younger because of the Studio Ghibli movie of the first book. Her writing is lovely and I adore the phrasing she uses for things.

Amy Tan is another author I highly recommend. The Joy Luck Club is her most well-known work, but I highly enjoyed her other novels like The Bonesetter's Daughter. I suppose I'm a fan of the fact that her work explores mother-daughter relationships within a Chinese context.
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Post by Lincoln »

Rachaelamb1 wrote:There are a lot of excellent women writers. I love fantasy and my two favorite fantasy writers are Gail Carson Levine and Anne Elizabeth Stengl. :)
Great recommendations. Thanks!
Lincoln's book, Raven's Peak is the OnlineBookClub.org April 2017 Book of the Month.

View Raven's Peak on Lincoln's website.

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Post by Tmn126 »

Bad Macaw wrote:[quote
I Loved The House of The Spirits so much! I've re-read it a few times. For some reason, though, I've never enjoyed any of her other books. Why is that? Is it just me? Is it because I was comparing them to that one?
I don't know, but I feel the same way. I think maybe it's because I read The House of the Spirits first; and then, because I liked it so well, I tried her other works. Nothing quite seemed on par with it though, and I'm not even sure I managed to finish anything else.
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Post by AliceofX »

I'd strongly recommend Anne the forgotten Bronte sister. She had only two published novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and I loved them both. Elizabeth Gaskell is also a good one from the same period. I'd especially recommend her final book Wives and Daughters. And I just have to mention Margaret Mitchell even though she's only written Gone with the Wind. Jane Austen has already been mentioned. Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf I'd recommend for the brave.
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Post by TrishVincent80 »

EmersonRose wrote:I am a college student. I have been studying art, literature, and creative writing. Over the course of my time at college, I have begun to get frustrated because I seem to end up studying the same group of white men over and over again. Well I think there is a reason to study them, they made great advances in their fields, I want to step outside of this box. For my senior year (I am currently a Junior) I have the opportunity to design part of my reading list myself. So I want to read books by female authors. I want books written in a wide variety of time periods and I am looking for books that are either renowned for being well written or that are popular. I would love recommendations as I begin to build this list!

Who are your favorite female authors?
Do you love a specific book of theirs?
What makes them your favorite?

Jane Austen, The Bronte Sisters, Mary Shelley ~ those are just right off the cuff

Some others are Virginia Wolf, Agatha Christie, J.K. Rowling, Maya Angelou, Harper Lee
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Post by EugeniuszMosz »

EmersonRose wrote:I am a college student. I have been studying art, literature, and creative writing. Over the course of my time at college, I have begun to get frustrated because I seem to end up studying the same group of white men over and over again. Well I think there is a reason to study them, they made great advances in their fields, I want to step outside of this box. For my senior year (I am currently a Junior) I have the opportunity to design part of my reading list myself. So I want to read books by female authors. I want books written in a wide variety of time periods and I am looking for books that are either renowned for being well written or that are popular. I would love recommendations as I begin to build this list!

Who are your favorite female authors?
Do you love a specific book of theirs?
What makes them your favorite?

There are so many amazing female authors out there!! But im sure you'll never regret Anne Elizabeth Stengl's <3
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Post by Amagine »

Well you know the class female authors: Jane Austen, Virgina Woolf,Emily Dickenson, Mary Shelly, Alice Walker, Harper Lee, Flannery O'Conner... the list goes on and on. There are TONS of amazing female authors of the past and now. I wish that back when I was in college there was a class offered just on classic female authors.
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Post by godreaujea »

Zora Neale Hurston- Their Eyes Were Watching God
Alice Walker- The Color Purple
Margaret Atwood- Maddaddam Trilogy

The first two have very strong female characters, who deal with rising above the patriarchy in a sense. The color purple also deals with LGBTQ rights! And the Maddaddam Trilogy is just flipping awesome (pardon the language). It deals with a post-apocolyptic world that seems so plausible. The first book is okay, but the second and third books are amazing and have a variety of female narrators.
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