• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Female Writers

I think the only female writes I have read are Robin Hobb(Megan Lindholm) and Anne Rice.
 
Witchchild said:
I was wondering if there are any folks here who were just going along with their lives and for one reason or another realized that the vast majority of the books they read were authored by men.

Would anyone else like to share their favorite female authors? What type of books does she write? How did you find her?

Thanks,
Witch
Click to expand...


On the contrary. Just some of my favorites of many:

The Greater:
Iris Murdoch
Joan Didion
Cynthia Ozick
Virginia Woolf
Doris Lessing
Joce Carol Oates
Annie Proulx
Pat Barker
Jean Stafford

The Lesser:
Susan Minot
Mary Karr
Ann Beattie
Amy Tan

These are just the ones I came up with in two minutes off the top of my head. Many of them have written profound characters, both male and female.

I think anyone who hasn't experienced a decent female writer's work hasn't read very much at all.
 
I quite enjoy Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series and Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. Both are mystery writers with strong female leads. I agree that a man writing them just couldn't make it at all believable, for the main reason that both series' are written in the first person. There are just some times when a man has no idea about a woman's motivation to do this or that, and there is a lot of the main character's thought processes in these novels. I've even come across a couple of "inside jokes" that only a woman would get ;) .
 
novella said:
On the contrary. Just some of my favorites of many:

The Greater:
Iris Murdoch
Joan Didion
Cynthia Ozick
Virginia Woolf
Doris Lessing
Joce Carol Oates
Annie Proulx
Pat Barker
Jean Stafford

The Lesser:
Susan Minot
Mary Karr
Ann Beattie
Amy Tan

.
Click to expand...

Now this is a list I definately need to read more from.
 
I think anyone who hasn't experienced a decent female writer's work hasn't read very much at all.[/QUOTE]

I can only assume this is meant in jest and not intended to insult.
 
Atwood's not my cup of tea to be honest. I don't quite appreciate the way she portrays men (but I guess the ladies may find a number of male authors' portrayals of women strange as well).

Female authors that immediately spring to my mind include:
Robin Hobb
Agatha Christie (though she emphasises mystery elements over charater elements in a number of her stories)
Shelley (reading Frankenstein does make you wonder about her life experiences)
The Bronte sisters
Jane Austen
Du Maurier
Virginia Woolf
Sylvia Plath
 
A few more female authors I like - all Canadian, btw:
  • Margaret Laurence - No real explanation other than I just love her prose. This woman could write!
  • Carol Shields - Sadly, died of cancer last year but left a small, yet impressive body of work.
  • Anne-Marie MacDonald - I think she's just started on her literary path. It'll be interesting to see where she goes.
  • Lucy Maude Montgomery - For no other reason than creating such classic, memorable characters in her Anne of Green Gables series.
Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro I've mentioned in other threads, ad nauseam.
 
hulios67 said:
I can only assume this is meant in jest and not intended to insult.
Click to expand...

No, in fact that was a very straightforward comment. A person who has only read male writers (for reasons that I cannot fathom) has missed out on great books, irreplaceable points of view, and stirring writing.

Why woud you think I was joking?
 
Prolixic said:
Andre Norton--need I say more?
Ursula K. LeGuinn
Anne McCaffery

All SF and Fantasy writers
Click to expand...
Andre Norton is a *woman*? :confused: I mean, there's this long forgotten singer called Peter Andre, and then there's Andre Agassi...

ds
 
Haha, I suffered from a similar misconception until about 3 years ago when I found out (to my astonishment) that Joyce Carol Oates is a woman. Don't ask me how that came about (the misconception, not the discovery), it just did.

I really enjoyed Katherine Dunn's Geek Love.
 
Scratchy said:
Haha, I suffered from a similar misconception until about 3 years ago when I found out (to my astonishment) that Joyce Carol Oates is a woman. Don't ask me how that came about (the misconception, not the discovery), it just did.
Click to expand...
I only realized that a few months ago.
 
For Sci-fi, don't forget Catherine Asaro. She's won many deserved awards, including the Hugo and Nebula. Susan Grant also writes some great futuristic sci-fi stuff.
 
I've read tons of great writing by women, and I have to concur with the person who said that anyone who hasn't read a great deal of books penned by women hasn't read much at all! Not intended as an insult either, but I just haven't been able to help encountering good fiction by women. Here's a brief list of some of my favourites:

Katharine Kerr
Maeve Binchy
Sharon Penman
JK Rowling
Enid Blyton (yes, really!)
Jane Austen
Monica Dickens
Jean M Auel
Kelley Armstrong
Mary Janice Davidson
Laurell K Hamilton
Anne Rice
Fiona Walker
Jilly Cooper (bit sad, but great satire).

And I've actually found a man who is able to write effectively and movingly from the POV of a woman - this being Douglas Kennedy in A Special Relationship.
 
The original poster read mostly sci-fi/fantasy. IMO fantasy is a genre where you can determine the sex of the writer by reading the book with 99% accuracy. Male fantasy authors just cannot write believeable female characters. As a male it is one of my biggest annoyances with fantasy and has on occasion made me give up on the genre. While there are a few exceptions i often hope the female characters die early so i dont have to read more about them. The love scenes are also usually written in a extremely childlike manner. Sometimes i wonder if the likes of Robert Jordan is still a teenage boy that has never dared talk to a woman. Some authors are aware of their limitations regarding female characters and keep them more or less out of the story so you dont notice it, but others are not so smart. Male fantasy authors usually write more actionfilled stories than female authors, thats probably why many of them are still popular even with this obvious defect.

Outside of the fantasy genre i read mostly male authors. Partly because i mostly read classics (which are mostly written by men) and partly because their stories tend to interest me more than books by female authors. There are male writers out there that can write believable female characters (at least for me as a male), there are just very few of them that write fantasy.
 
i've read Margaret Atwood, Jean Auel, Jan Austen, Anne Rice and a few others. my list of favorite authors includes both men and women. it is true, though, that most of the books i've read are by men. my favorite genre is sci-fi and historical fiction action, and it seems mostly men write in those themes.
 
lies said:
I only realized that a few months ago.
Click to expand...
LOL, yeah but I bet the way in which I found out is much more embarrassing than yours.

The other female writer that I really like is Katherine Dunn (which I don't think anyone mentioned yet). She wrote Geek Love, a story about a circus freak family and the interactions that the characters have with each other. A really interesting book.
 
lies said:
Ah yes? Is it a story we would like to hear? *nudge* *nudge*
Click to expand...
Well, it isn't that interesting, but here goes anyway.

Used to work at a book store and a co-worker asked me to assist a customer who was looking for book recommendations, since I was in charge of the fiction section in the store. So I asked the customer a few questions about what kind of books she's read, or liked, and we got to talking for about 15 mins. So there I was showing off my "knowledge" of books, describing the writing characteristics of the authors, etc, when I mention Oates; I went on and on about "him" and she just stood there smiling politely at me. About 20 mins later, while I was attending to another customer, my co-worker passed me a piece of paper which said something to the effect of: Thank you so much for your help, it was a pleasure talking to you and, by the way, you might want to start referring to Oates as a "she" from now on...

Yup. That's how I found out. Your turn.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top