The Year of Reading Women In Review

One year ago tomorrow, I announced my Year of Reading Women. The goal was to read books by twelve female authors whose books I'd never read before. And I did it! I read 12 books by 12 different female authors, and then I read three more. (If you're wondering how my numbering works below, I counted books that were written by one man and one woman as half a book. If you're wondering why I haven't linked to my thoughts on a book, it's because I ended up writing a full review of the book that hasn't been posted on the blog yet.)

1.0 - Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
1.5 - Dragon Wing by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
2.5 - Alice by Christina Henry
3.0 - Saga Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
4.0 - Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
5.0 - The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman
6.0 - Bad Houses by Sara Ryan and Carla Speed McNeil
7.0 - Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon
8.0 - Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
9.0 - A Natural History of the Romance Novel by Pamela Regis
10.0 - We Band of Angels by Elizabeth M. Norman
11.0 - The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
12.0 - Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan

13.0 - Live Alone and Like It by Marjorie Hillis
14.0 - This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein
15.0 - Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin

So I'm really happy that I did this. I had a great time with it, and it really forced me to pay attention to what I was reading and how rarely I tend to reach for women's work. I didn't love everything that I read by any means, but I read some great stuff, too. I learned some things, added some more books to my reading list both for the blog and just in general, and I ended up reading half a dozen other books by women whose work I'd read previously, too. I've read more books by women in the last year than I have in a very long time, and that's really exciting!

I won't be formally repeating the experiment again this year, though, only because I have lots of reading to catch up on for this blog so that I can finish it someday soonish. Still, I'm trying to concentrate as much as I can on female authors for the Random part of the project, if only to offset how many men are on The List.

Wish me luck.

And wish a happy 219th birthday to Mary Shelley tomorrow :)