Okay, good advice, but hardly needs an entire chapter devoted to it. He then goes on to fill the bulk of the chapter with a list of 80 books that he thinks are essential reading for an aspiring writer, books that inspired him and are worth encouraging others to read. The list is pretty good in that it covers high brow and low, various genres, current writers and past. But on the list there are only FOUR books by women. Four out of 80! Joyce Carol Oats, Shirley Jackson, Eudora Welty
This seems incredibly remiss in my mind, and though I have no business offering advice to potential writers, I have read many many books in my life, and I have a very good education, and that chapter generally pissed me off. So here is a list of writers that I think he may have overlooked. It's not exhaustive because, well how could anyone write an exhaustive list of talented, interesting, inspired and inspiring women writers? There are too many to count. But here are some (in no particular order):
Jane Austin, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Alice Walker, Iris Murdoch, AS Byatt, Angela Carter, Donna Tartt, Lionel Shriver, Joanna Trollope, Ursula K Le Guin, Zadie Smith, Jane Smiley, Jean Rhys, Margaret Atwood, Willa Cather, Olive Senior, Louisa May Alcott, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Dodie Smith, Agatha Christie, PD James, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Kate Atkinson, Alice Munro, Muriel Spark, Marjane Satrapi, Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison, AL Kennedy, Zee Edgell, Pearl S Buck, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, Sarah Waters, George Elliot, Rosa Guy, Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Hurston, Harper Lee, Madeleine L'Engle, Margaret Mitchell, Edwidge Danicat, LM Montgomery, Paule Marshall, Kate Chopin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susanna Clarke, Elizabeth Nunez, Edith Wharton, Amy Tan, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Diane Glancy, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Arundhati Roy, Hilary Mantel, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gisele Pineau, SE Hinton, Val McDermid, Flannery O'Connor, Marguerite Duras, Betty Louise Bell, Simone de Beauvoir, Natsuo Kirino, Joan Didion, Jhumpa Lahiri, Patricia Highsmith, Jung Chang, Azar Nafisi, Carol Shields, Jacqueline Susann, Daphne du Maurier, Anita Brookner, Eleanor Catton, Lydia Davis, Monica Ali, Gaynor Arnold, Beryl Bainbridge, Joanne Harris, Pat Barker, Nicola Barker, Nina Bawden, Louise Erdrich, Dorothy L Sayers, Pamela Dean, Mary McCarthy, Marisha Pessl, Callie Wright, A M Homes, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Curtis Sittenfeld, Jane Gardham, Penelope Fitzgerald, Collette, Lan Samantha Chang, Louise Welsh, Heidi Julavits, Leanne Shapton, Gillian Flynn, Helen Oyeyemi, Octavia E Butler, Alice Sebold, Barbara Mujica, Jeannette Winterson, Naomi Wood, Deborah Kay Davies, Joanna Russ, Emma Donoghue, Isabel Allende, Siri Hustvedt, Denise Mina, Linda Medley, Cathi Unsworth, Rosamund Lupton, Anne Beattie, Francine Prose, Sandra Jackson-Opoku, Christina Stead, Susan Choi, Alison Lurie, Leila Aboulela, Roquia Sakhawat Hussain, Stella Gibbons, Ann Nocenti, Gail Simone, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, Lorna Moon, Rutu Motan, Audrey Niffenegger, Karen Maitland, Willa Muir, Dorothy Whipple, Adeline Yen Mah...
I know there are many more deserving of attention - who have I missed out?
#readwomen2014