"A girl was never ruined by books," my mother used to say. I've spent most of my life trying to prove that wrong.

Saturday, November 21, 2020

What to Do on a Dark Winter Day...

 


What to do these long, dark days when you may be in semi-lockdown: Elena Ferrante's top 40 novels by women (from The Guardian) I've read 13, how about you?

Elena Ferrante’s top 40 books by female authors

  • Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate)
  • The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (Virago)
  • The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar, translated by Anonymous (Europa Editions)
  • Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Philip Boehm (Penguin Classics)
  • A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin (Picador)
  • Outline by Rachel Cusk (Faber)
  • The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (Harper Perennial)
  • A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, translated by Ann Goldstein (Europa)
  • Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated by Tina Kover (Europa Editions)
  • The Lover by Marguerite Duras, translated by Barbara Bray (Harper Perennial)
  • The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison Strayer (Fitzcarraldo)
  • Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg, translated by Jenny McPhee (Daunts)
  • The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer (Bloomsbury)
  • Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (Windmill Books)
  • Motherhood by Sheila Heti (Vintage)
  • The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, translated by Joachim Neugroschel (Serpent’s Tail)
  • Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd (Picador)
  • Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (Flamingo)
  • The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing (Flamingo)
  • The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector, translated by Idra Novey (Penguin Classics)
  • Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (Fourth Estate)
  • Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante, translated by Ann Goldstein (Pushkin)
  • Beloved by Toni Morrison (Vintage Classics)
  • Dear Life by Alice Munro (Vintage)
  • The Bell by Iris Murdoch (Vintage Classics)
  • Accabadora by Michela Murgia, translated by Silvester Mazzarella (MacLehose Press)
  • Le Bal by Irene Nemirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith (Vintage)
  • Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (Fourth Estate)
  • The Love Object: Selected Stories by Edna O’Brien (Faber)
  • A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (Faber)
  • Evening Descends Upon the Hills: Stories from Naples by Anna Maria Ortese, translated by Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee (Pushkin)
  • Gilead by Marylinne Robinson (Virago)
  • Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber)
  • The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (Harper Perennial)
  • White Teeth by Zadie Smith (Penguin)
  • Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Simon & Schuster)
  • The Door by Magda Szabò, translated by Len Rix (Vintage Classics)
  • Cassandra by Christa Wolf, translated by Jan van Heurck (Daunts)
  • A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Picador)
  • Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, translated by Grace Frick (Penguin Classics)