Poll
[2016] Which book would you most like to read in July & August?
HOW TO VOTE:
Click the book cover of the title you'd like to vote for.
**Please do not submit duplicate write-ins.**
HOW TO VOTE:
Click the book cover of the title you'd like to vote for.
**Please do not submit duplicate write-ins.**
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl
by Carrie Brownstein
Mom & Me & Mom
by Maya Angelou
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
by Judy Blume
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(write-in)
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
by Jeanette Winterson
We Need New Names
by NoViolet Bulawayo
I Am Malala
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity
by Julia Serano
The Handmaid's Tale
(write-in)
Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Again
by Norah Vincent
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
(write-in)
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
(write-in)
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
(write-in)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
(write-in)
Annie John
by Jamaica Kincaid
Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman by Lindy West
(write-in)
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
(write-in)
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
The Bell Jar
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
(write-in)
To Kill a Mockingbird
(write-in)
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
(write-in)
Anne Frank's diary
(write-in)
The Geek Feminist Revolution
(write-in)
Wild - Cheryl Strayed
(write-in)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
(write-in)
The Red Tent
(write-in)
Homegoing
Sex Object by Jessica Valenti
(write-in)
Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe
(write-in)
I Call Myself A Feminist: t: The View from Twenty-Five Women Under Thirty
(write-in)
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
(write-in)
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
(write-in)
Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou
The Way We Weren't: A Memoir
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
(write-in)
The Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsberg by Irin Carmin and Shana knizhnik
The Woman That I Am: The Literature and Culture of Contemporary Women of Color
(write-in)
'The Awakening' by Kate Chopin
Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa
#GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso
Girl in a Band
(write-in)
Girl Interrupted!
(write-in)
The Beauty Myth by Virginia Woolf
VAGINA by Naomi Wolfe
UNDERSTANDING SEXUAL VIOLENCE A STUDY OF CONVICTED RAPISTS BY DIANA SCULLY
(write-in)
Reading Lolita in Teheran
(write-in)
Little women
(write-in)
Women Who Run With the Wolves - Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
(write-in)
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
Scarlet Sisters
Like water for chocolate
(write-in)
Asking For It by Louise O'Neil
(write-in)
Lean In - Sheryl Sandberg
(write-in)
Women and the Priesthood by Sheri Dee
(write-in)
The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
(write-in)
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
(write-in)
Stone butch blue
Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski Ph.D.
Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jennifer Lawson
(write-in)
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
milk and honey - rupi kaur
(write-in)
The Only Woman in the Room by Eileen Pollack
(write-in)
Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates
(write-in)
Girl Up by Laura Bates
(write-in)
Girl in the Woods: A Memoir by Aspen Matis
(write-in)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
(write-in)
The underground girls of Kabul : in search of a hidden resistance in Afghanistan / by Nordberg, Jenny
(write-in)
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
(write-in)
Asking For It by Louise O'Neill
(write-in)
We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement by Andi Zeisler
False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton Edited by Liza Featherstone
(write-in)
Virgin: The Untouched History by Hanne Blank
(write-in)
I Am An Emotional Creature by Eve Ensler
The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
(write-in)
H is for Hawk
(write-in)
Kindred - Octavia E. Butler
(write-in)
Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes
Frida by Hayden Herrera
(write-in)
I Love Dick
House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
(write-in)
The Adventures of Copper Wild
(write-in)
Kicking Butt in Computer Science: Women in Computing at Carnegie Mellon University
(write-in)
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
(write-in)
Ask The Passengers by A.S. King
(write-in)
Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
(write-in)
The summer without men
(write-in)
It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War- Lynsey Addario
(write-in)
Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistlestop Cafe
(write-in)
The Kite runner
(write-in)
A Woman by Sibilla Aleramo
(write-in)
Into the Forest by Jean Hegland
Desert Flower by Waris Dirie
(write-in)
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
(write-in)
The Creation of Patriarchy
(write-in)
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
(write-in)
Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women - Christina Hoff Sommers
A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
Christiane F
(write-in)
The Left Hand of Darkness
Spinster by Kate Bolick
(write-in)
Cunt, Inga Musico
(write-in)
All the single ladies by Rebecca Traister
(write-in)
Wild swans
The Awakening
(write-in)
The Vagena by Rhiannon Lucy Cossley and
The Book of Memory, by Petina Gappah
(write-in)
Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, by Inga Muscio
(write-in)
The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood
Sula by Toni Morrison
(write-in)
A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft
I, Bificus
(write-in)
Widows - Ariel Dorfman
(write-in)
Letter To a Child Never Born - Oriana Fallaci
A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston
(write-in)
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
(write-in)
Game-Faint Signals by Alice N. York
(write-in)
How to Suppress Women's Writing - Joanna Russ
When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
The Oldest Soul - Animus by Tiffany FitzHenry
(write-in)
Princess Sultana's daughters by Jean Sasson
(write-in)
Mama's Girl by Veronica Chambers
(write-in)
The House of Hidden Mothers - Meera Syal
Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo
(write-in)
Hats and Eyeglasses, by Martha Frankel
(write-in)
A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout
The Shaded Side by Janet M Brown
(write-in)
Vaddey Ratner - In The Shadow Of The Banyan
(write-in)
It's Okay to Laugh: (Crying Is Cool Too) by Nora McInerny Purmort
(write-in)
The evolution of Calpurnia Tate
The Whole Woman - Germaine Greer
A Woman of Independemt Means
(write-in)
Egalia's Daughters: A Satire of the Sexes by Gerd Brantenberg
(write-in)
Olympe de Gouges par Catel & Bocquet
(write-in)
The Untold Tale by J.M. Frey
In the Beginning, She Was by Luce Irigaray
(write-in)
Trail of Broken Wings by Sejal Badani
(write-in)
fast forward by melanne verveer and kim k. azzarelli
(write-in)
The Sisters are Alright
(write-in)
Why does E=mc^2?
It'll Feel Better when it Quits Hurting
(write-in)
The Breadwinner by Doriah elis
(write-in)
Mighty be our powers by Leymah Gbowee
(write-in)
Paralian - Not Just Transgender
(write-in)
Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life : A Novel
(write-in)
Double Teenage - Joni Murphy
(write-in)
How to be Both
(write-in)
strayed
(write-in)
Love Sick by Cory Martin
(write-in)
Dietland by Sarai Walker
(write-in)
Moral Infidelity
(write-in)
Angela Davis: An Autobiography
Lynda La Plante - Twisted
for one more day
Jailbreaking the Goddess: A Radical Revisioning of Feminist Spirituality
(write-in)
Emel Akal - Kızıl Feministler
Stalin's Cows by Sofi Oksanen
La Question Du Hijab
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
(write-in)
The Stargazer's Sister by Carrie Brown
(write-in)
7762 total votes
Poll added by: Emma
This Poll is About
Books:
Comments Showing 1-50 of 102 (102 new)
message 1:
by
Tiaan
(new)
Jun 07, 2016 09:08AM
A male author? It probably won't be chosen, but at least the option is actually there...
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Do I get it right that all of these were originally written in English?
Wow Emma that's an impressive lineup, since I'm one of the few able to find this poll :) this gives me the power to choose for... Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Sex mixed with religion seems appealing. Cons: it seems quite thin but hey only the best can make their point in fewer words.
so many good choices, anything will be great!
Emma great idea to do a poll! Excited to see which book will be selected :D
What you swapped your friend for Tolstoy? He's dead so no interviews also! Incidentally I read a scathing article about contemporary English translations of Russian literature by the Pevear-Volokhonsky duo, but I would be reading it in a Dutch translation anyway, since if something is written in not-your-native-language it doesn't make sense to read a translation in another language that's also not your native language...
That's offtopic but reading a translation into a non-native language makes perfect sense :) See this blog post for example: https://bookboundpolyglot.wordpress.c...It helps you learn a new language, and a translation into a different language may be better or easier to get. And of course in many cases there's a translation into a big language like English or Spanish but nothing else.
I recently bought Carrie's book and although I haven't gotten very far in it (I'm a middle school librarian beholden to read a lot of YA), the summer is just about here and I'm going to start reading more adult literature. It would be great to also have a lively discussion about it here.
I have read Half the Sky, and it is a fascinating and informative read. So many great options of books I haven't read as well.
Cool. So many good choice for the next book. :)
Hey Emma, I just joined! :)It's quite difficult to say, with only the summaries, but I think I'd like to check out Annie John & Are you there God?
Sorry, couldn't pick up just one. :p
Anna Karenina is often called Tolstoy's greatest work, better even than war and peace. Although I disagree with that opinion, Anna Karenina is still a literary marvel imho. Having read it some time ago, I can confidently say that it has the power to give one sleepless nights if one carefully follows the deeply philosophical discussions taking place between the characters. I will love to read it again. And yes it's not the smallest of novels and requires the two months for a deep read.
Excited for the male author on feminism! Will be a great but different expression of feminism!:)
Marina wrote: "Do I get it right that all of these were originally written in English?"Anna Karenina was DEFINITELY not originally written in English.
'Anna Karenina' stands out in this list for some reasons, compared to the others it is I think the most well-known and up-front does not seem to have a very feminine perspective moreover being written by a man, perhaps Emma can explain her motivation for including it. While nothing would stop you perusing Tolstoy as you wish, the general objective as I perceive it seems to be bringing hidden gems with a female perspective to the forefront, not to dust off the classics.
I was wondering if people would like to share their thoughts on why they choose to vote for a title? Partly because I find it really interesting and partly because I'm having a really hard time deciding myself (and I think I'm not alone). Three different titles (at the time of writing) stand out to me:Whipping Girl - because I feel terribly uneducated when it comes to trans issues and would like to learn more.
Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl - I've wanted to read this for some as it seems really interesting (feminist punk!!!!) but at the same time I feel there's been a lot of biography/memoir-ish titles so far and it would be nice to read and discuss something else, maybe a fiction title.
Anna Karenina - because it is a classic I'd really like to read someday and I think there could be some interesting discussions, especially since people seem to have very different opinions on Tolstoy's portrayal of women. It could also be good to read a heavier title during the summer when many people have some time off.
I'm also considering adding a suggestion of my own (members could do that right?: Out by Natsuo Kirino- Four out of six titles in OSS have been written by American authors and some more variety would be nice. Personally I'd like to read more Asian authors and this one seems really great! And in my opinion the best books for reading on the beach usually have a dead body or two in them ;)
Robert Galbraith isn't actually a male author (if that's who you're referring to) but J. K. Rowlings pseudonym. :)
Mod
So many amazing books Emma, had a hard time choosing ☺️❤️
I'm only 14, I haven't even heard of half of these books; but I think I want to do I Am Malala, although it wasn't in the poll.
I've read the Judy Blume book, and it is very good. But, I went with Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden. I hope it is available in other countries. I wasn't so sure if the Judy Blume book would be because some people were offended that my God was in it. lol Annie on my Mind is about two Lesbians. Its a coming out story about one lesbian who did not know that she was one, originally. Its very well done.
Midhat wrote: "I'm only 14, I haven't even heard of half of these books; but I think I want to do I Am Malala, although it wasn't in the poll."I'm 51 yrs old and can't remember half of those titles. So don't feel bad. ;) :D
AHHH it was so hard to choose! But I've always loved A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and I'd love to read it again.
I've only read one title from this poll, but I think it's an interesting story which isn't often brought up in society. Hopefully, I'll get to join in on the discussion this time ;)
I don't know who added a Helen Oyeyemi book to this poll, but you got my vote! She's become a favorite of mine since I read Boy, Snow, Bird last year. Brilliant writer, would love to see her book chosen this month or in the future.
The Beauty Myth is by Naomi Wolf, not Virginia Woolf.
Kytriya wrote: "Midhat wrote: "I'm only 14, I haven't even heard of half of these books; but I think I want to do I Am Malala, although it wasn't in the poll."I'm 51 yrs old and can't remember half of those titl..."
Lol, yeah okay. Do you have any ideas of what book you want to read?
Amanda wrote: "Marina wrote: "Do I get it right that all of these were originally written in English?"Anna Karenina was DEFINITELY not originally written in English."
Haha I know, I'm Russian (though I haven't read it). I was referring to the titles chosen by Emma.
The Only Woman in the Room is about women in science and technology fields and is a really good perspective on what it is like to have an aptitude for those traditionally male dominated fields and how we as a society can change our mentality to encourage women to succeed in them. As a female rocket scientist this book really spoke to me and helped me quantify and explain to my male peers what we go through. The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys' Club
I believe strongly that everyone should read at least one Margaret Atwood book. So my vote is for "The Handmaid's Tale". I've re-read it every so often & it's terrifying to see how much closer to this post-apocalyptic future we get as time passes, but it's urgently needed food for thought.
I voted for "Ana Karenina" mainly because I own the book and I'd be delighted to finally be able to read it, as it is a classic.There are books on the list that really draw my attention, such as "Mom & Me & Mom" and "I am Malala", but I don't think I would be able to purchase or borrow any of them.
Anyway, I hope I'm able to join this time (for the first time) and to read as well the books from the past months. I'm also glad that this will be done bi-monthly because some of us lack the time or the money for acquiring or reading a new book each month, even if we really have the enthusiasm.
Regardless if I'm able to keep up (busy as we all are with so many books) I love having each months book in my TBR pile! :) only missed one month so far but definitely was behind several times. Love this club Emma!
Add Fun Home by Alison Bechdel in the choices. Really good graphic novel. :)
Love the idea of members picking the book for the next time and looking at the list, had a terrible time deciding which one to pick. So many great titles and many that I have wanted to read. Finally decided on one but whatever the final book is, I will be happy cuz there isn't any book in the list I don't care to read. Although I am unfamiliar with some of the writers, I always love reading someone new. So whatever the book is, I can't wait! Thanks for such a great list. Planning to look at some of the titles I know nothing about and am sure I will find some great reads.
Malala, Bad Feminist and The Handmaid's Tale were posted twice. Great poll, though, I had a difficult time picking!
I went for Half the Sky because it sounds very interesting!
I'd be happy with any of the books suggested by Emma, a couple I've read and would re-read, another is deep in my pile of books that I've started but not finished reading. But I think 'How to Suppress Women's Writing' by Joanna Russ, is an excellent starting point in some ways for understanding the importance of reading women's books and women's writing and by extension, reading non-white authors and from all kinds of cultural backgrounds, reading queer and non-gender-binary authors. Although it's academically presented, it doesn't have that heavy and impenetrable style. It's short - though packs a punch and I've never looked at books, reading, reviews, critiquing, and really the world at large, the same again after reading it.
I got better at understanding the context of feminism(s) and my own learning and way of finding my space in that thinking through this books. Most of all I could see the glaring holes in history where the stories of women should be and aren't. So now I look for books that fill those gaps and I try and elevate them in some way.
I've read a few of these and actually picked We Need New Names BECAUSE I've read it. It was beautifully written and I feel it deserves much more exposure. The treatment of immigrants in many areas of the world is awful. If more people understood that they are human beings with stories maybe things would start to change.
I, Tituba... Black Witch of Salem (Moi, Tituba sorcière....) by Maryse Condé
The underground girls of Kabul : in search of a hidden resistance in Afghanistan /by Nordberg, Jenny
This book is by an investigative reporter, a woman who found that many women in Afghanistan were raised as boys. Its a fascinating look at what happens in a society that denies girls the same opportunities as boys.
Carol wrote: "The underground girls of Kabul : in search of a hidden resistance in Afghanistan /by Nordberg, Jenny
This book is by an investigative reporter, a woman who found that many women in Afghanistan we..."
Melissa wrote: "I believe strongly that everyone should read at least one Margaret Atwood book. So my vote is for "The Handmaid's Tale". I've re-read it every so often & it's terrifying to see how much closer to t..."
Charlotte wrote: "The Only Woman in the Room is about women in science and technology fields and is a really good perspective on what it is like to have an aptitude for those traditionally male dominated fields and ..."
I'm putting this in my must read !
Urgh I really wanted to vote for 3 or 4 at least and add one of my own xD
I have always wanted to read Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie Ngozie. I guess it is about time. I am glad to see it among the suggestions.
We've had this thread for international books :)https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
(On goodreads, nearly all of Emma's pick explicitly list English as the original language)
I'm all for "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret". It explained bras, periods, and the whole concept of puberty to me better than any health book or talk I had with my mom, plus it's fascinating to revisit it as an adult (or young adult in my case haha).
I would vote Are you there, God. It's me Margaret. But I would also like to suggest All That Is Bitter and Sweet by Ashley Judd or Maybe The Secret Life of Bees (people were asking for fiction). I could give many more! LOL! And I love the fact that we now have 2 months to read and discuss each book :D
I voted for Carrie Brownstein's book. I saw Sleater Kinney a month or two ago and they were fantastic.
