Feminist book lovers...need book recs.

[BlueIris]

I need some book recs, can be fic or non-fic, that aren't too heavy and that aren't anti-feminist, anti-woman, filled with sexist stereotypes or triviality.

You'd think I'd be able to come up with some on my own, book nerd that I am, but my last several attempts to read feminist friendly books have been total duds.

[Scout]

1. try Marge Piercy "Gone to Soldiers"

if you like mysteries, i really like the Anna Pigeon series by Nevada Barr.

[seabeyond]

2. i read tons of books. the worst i find are some of the male authors

almost consistently male authors, create the female in a misogynist manner, so i am selective with male authors. not saying all. childs, koontz are a couple that don't do tht to women. i see a bet with sanford so have pretty much been turned off by him, BUT

many authors are not anti feminism. i dont know about authors that are pro. i will have to think about it. can you clarify a bet, what you are talking about. like i say, tons of authors

[BlueIris]

3. Okay, to clarify, I'm looking for late summer beach reading.

Can be mystery fic, can be fiction about relationships, can be non-fiction (or memoir) but nothing too heavy (this isn't the time for me to tackle a 500 page reminiscence on cannibalism.) That would be interesting to a feminist, or at least, not offensive to one.

Things I've tried to read lately that my feminist brain has not liked: Stephen King's Full Dark, No Stars, and Sophie Hannah's Little Face, which were badly written and did not take me to a good place mentally. Plus, though it was not overt, I thought the gratuitous emotional and physical violence in them was upsetting from a feminist standpoint. It was like the female characters were getting excessively brutalized.

[seabeyond]

4. gotcha...

i hear ya, and feel the same. a fun series i just read by accident was nina bruhn... shoot to kill, if looks could chill and a kiss to kill. really enjoyed.

(i like series)

susan mallery, not big deal stories, but fun gentle type reading

monica mccarty, highlander fun series.

dee davis

carla neggers, though i started getting bored with her style... but the first handful fun.

melissa mayhue, past/present highland. fun series

suzanne brockman... but that is really series that plays off the same people

linda howard

tara janzen is fun. another series, lol, but lots of fun. friend and i love this one.

christina dodd, http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/d/christina-dodd/ , texas series, fortune, and chosen series good. also, this is a site i use once i find an author i like i can get their other books that they wrote.

jayne ann krentz, under three authors, hers are good.

tami hoag (not a series and have enjoyed all her books)

elizabeth lowell " "

again, lee childs and koontz is pretty good.

also, if you have a kindle, i have some good authors that i have found. cheap or free. i dont like to spend money and get a lot of books from libraries or kindle.

[iverglas]

5. do you like kids' books?

I re-read a favourite series of mine a couple of years ago (read them every summer as a kid): Half Magic and the rest by Edward Eager. They are witty and clever, and three of the four kids in the family it's about are girls, nice strong smart girls. They're slim volumes, but you might know a kid you'd want to pass them on to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Eager

Magic Series

Half Magic (1954)
Knight's Castle (1956)
Magic By the Lake (1957)
The Time Garden (1958)
Magic Or Not? (1959)
The Well-Wishers (1960)
Seven-Day Magic (1962)

But they take place in about the 1920s, I think. The line drawings are terrific.

A bit of a silly suggestion, but if you're up for silly reading ... ;)

... Interesting: an article that can be read on line -- I can only get Google's cached version:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:U7_B6k4amz0J:www.archive.org/stream/hornbooksamplero011873mbp/hornbooksamplero011873mbp_djvu.txt+%22A+Father%27s+Minority+Report.%22+eager&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca

A FATHER'S MINORITY REPORT
By Edward Eager

THIS is a minority report because in most families I know the father doesn't do the reading- aloud; the mother does. In our house it's different. My wife Jane doesn't like children's books, apparently never did. Except for a burning interest in the doings of one Flaxie Frizzle (unknown to the lists of Miss Moore and Miss Eaton) her formative years seem to have been spent absorbing the complete works of Shaw, Sheridan and Thackeray. ...


I don't read books much any more. Too much brain work during the day; I like a good murder mystery on television at night.

One I can think of to recommend is Asta's Book (may be called Anna's Book in the US) by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine. Do not read anything about it before reading it. It is similar in technique to The Quiet American (Graham Greene is another favourite of mine) in that there are surprises in terms of what is actually going on, so reading reviews spoils that.

While I'm on the oldies: Muriel Spark.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girls_of_Slender_Means

I read it ages ago and don't really remember it, except that I was thrilled that I'd picked it up in a thrift shop, not having heard of Spark before. I used to buy anything that came in an old British Penguin cover. ;)

[BlueIris]

6. Oooh, good call. Those sound fun. Thanks. nt

[iverglas]

7. a new one you might like

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1081900

And while we know much today about the French Resistance, we know little about the women who played a surprisingly large role.

British biographer Caroline Moorehead decided to explore this area and The Star interviewed her earlier this week about her new book, A Train In Winter, An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship and Survival in World War Two. The interview with Moorehead has been edited for length.

... Star: Very few women survived. And when they did survive, their lives were so sad. Tell us about that.

Moorehead: When I embarked on the book, I had the idea that the survivors — 49 out of 230, an exceptionally high number for Auschwitz — would have come back to France in 1945 and become happy again. But they had seen too many terrible things, been too hungry, too cold, too frightened.

Well, not light reading, but I thought it sounded interesting when I read the article today.

On that line, there are two British television series that can be found for downloading on line -- I watched them on PBS many years ago.

Tenko -- British, Australian, Dutch coproduction, about 5 or 6 seasons long, about women in a Japanese prisoner of war camp after the fall of Singapore, and after liberation.

Secret Army -- British Belgian coproduction, about "the line" that returned Allied airmen downed behind German lines; several of the main characters are tough women. (If you've ever seen Allo Allo or the episode of Star Trek: Voyageur where Seven of Nine is a singer in a WWII cafe-tavern and the bad aliens are Nazis, they're both modeled on Secret Army.)

Apart from the fact that they're about women, unusual when it comes to WWII things, they also have very interesting characters on the "bad guy" side, and deal well with all the morally ambiguous elements of the situations.

[BlueIris]

8. Awww, thanks. I didn't think anyone would post anymore in this thread. nt