Monday, May 30, 2022

Books I've Read by Women

If you've been on Twitter, you've probably seen this controversy about men discussing books by women.  (I think it started with this Guardian article: Books by women that every man should read).  The whole discussion is silly, of course.  I think even on Twitter, most of the people discussing it are discussing it ironically.  

...but, it did get me genuinely curious--what does my percentage look like?  So I thought it would be a fun excuse to go back through my reading list and see.  
For the sake of simplicity, I've included all genres.  (I have a feeling the Twitter discussion is mostly geared towards novels, and not technical books, but it was simpler just to include everything.)  Also for the sake of simplicity, I only counted books that were written by a single author.  (Books that were co-authored by a man and a woman, or even books that were co-authored by 2 women, I didn't count.)
With those caveats, it looks like since I started my book review project, I've read 44 books by women. That's out of (as of this writing) a total of 383 books.  So 9% of my reading.
I'm also ashamed to say a lot of the reviews I've written for these books are somewhat sexist in nature.  (e.g. something along the lines of "the book was pretty sappy and emotional.  I wonder if that was because it was written by a woman.")  I will try to be better in the future.

Below is my list:

A Framework for Task-Based Learning by Jane Willis ,
A World on Fire by Amanda Foreman,
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min
Beloved by Toni Morrison,--Addendum
Caesar by Colleen McCullough
Conspirator: Lenin in Exile by Helen Rappaport,
DC Universe: Inheritance by Devin Grayson
Designing Language Courses: A Guide for Teachers by Kathleen Graves ,
Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault ,
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley ,
Funeral Games by Mary Renault,
Learning One-to-One by Ingrid Wisniewska
Shanghai Baby by Zhou Wei Hui
Teaching English as an International Language by Sandra Lee McKay,
Teaching Young Language Learners by Annamaria Pinter,
Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching by Diane Larsen-Freeman [Second Edition]--Revisited ,  
The Enchanted Castle by Edith Nesbit ,
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie,
The October Horse by Colleen McCullough
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, Addendum 

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