Below are some relatively fast reads, with a strong preference for female authors. It’s just a somewhat random list of books I have read within the last couple of years I really liked:
1. Anything at all by Carol Shields. Particular favorites include “Swann” and “The Stone Diaries” but every one of her novels is great.
2. “March” by Geraldine Brooks
3. “Suite Francaise” by Irene Nemirovsky
4. “White Teeth” and/or “On Beauty” by Zadie Smith
5. “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion
6. “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri
7. “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter” by Kim Edwards
8. “Hunger” by Elise Blackwell
9. “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen
10. Any book by Carolyn Heilbrun writing as Amanda Cross (her nonfiction works under her own name are great too)
11. For mystery fans, any book by Elizabeth George
12. “Bee Season” by Myla Goldberg
13. “72 Hour Hold” by Bebe Moore Campbell
14. “Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories” by Sandra Cisneros
15. “The Aguero Sisters” by Cristina Garcia
16. Anything at all (even a doodled napkin!) by Barbara Kingsolver
17. “In the Forest” by Edna O’Brien
18. “Into the Forest” by Jean Hegland
19. “The Interruption of Everything” by Terry McMillan
20. “What the Body Remembers” by Shuana Singh Baldwin
–Ann Bartow
