that list is another one of those, let's take a representative selection from each woman writer, throw in a few men writing about women, and call it an essential list.
Yeah, the fact that most of the books were suggestions from comments really shows. I mean, And Then There Were None is fun and all, but essential reading for women? And Angela's Ashes? Seriously?
There's stuff I'd quibble with on the The Esquire list, but nothing that seems quite so "I've lost the point and am just listing books I liked."
I won't hold you to that
I'll content myself with my turquoise pashmina, then.
I'll content myself with my turquoise pashmina, then.
That's much more your style than a pink cardigan -- even in the dream, I wondered why you were wearing it!
I wondered why you were wearing it!
Was it paired with rhinestone cat's-eye glasses?
This list is way too skewed for books that I suspect will be forgotten in 50 years.
Any list that doesn't have
Sexual Politics
or
The Awakening
is suspect. Other omissions:
Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair, Moll Flanders, Uncle Tom's Cabin,
Emily Dickinson, Sarah Orne Jewett and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Jane Eyre was on there. But Emily Dickinson is a huge omission! I guess it was tending towards fiction, but Dorothy Parker was on there, who I think of mostly as a poet and a quipper.
24 books on the women's list
14 on the men's
Gone with the wind you have to read between age 13-and 15 to enjoy.
10 on the men's list. 6 of those were because they were assigned in high school (Rabbit, Run; For Whom the Bell Tolls; Heart of Darkness; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Moby Dick; and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold).
Well, it was a reader submitted list. It makes you wonder who the readers are who submitted book titles.
Gone with the wind you have to read between age 13-and 15 to enjoy.
Heh. I first read it in sixth grade and loved it. I still go back and reread it every few years -- I don't love the same things that I loved then, but it's still a great story. Plus, I've now got the vocabulary to express exactly why I think Ashley's an idiot, whereas then, I mostly just got irritated without being able to explain why.
