What have you been reading during the pandemic?
With so much going on in the world, I’ve found it necessary to escape to other worlds through the power of the written word.
This year I read so many books! I read a book every week! And my goal is to keep it up in the New Year.
To keep your brain analyzing and to help you with that resolution to “read more” I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite feminist books that I read last year, let me know what you think of them!
1. The Power by Naomi Alderman is a book I can’t get out of my head. What if all girls were able to release electrical jolts from their fingers and became the dominant gender? What if women ruled the world? What would it look like? This is a novel that keeps me up at night and talking with my girlfriends, a stunning portrait of power and womanhood.
2. Circe by Madeline Miller is set in the world of Greek Mythology about Circe, the witch who turned Odysseus’ crew into pigs, and how she came to be. In this feminist retelling, we learn more about goddess and the rules and dynamics of being a powerful woman in a mans world.
3. Home Before Dark by Riley Sager is a horror thriller that has a novel within the novel. A woman inherits a home that’s really a haunted house, you’ll breeze through this book with it’s excellent prose that keeps you on your toes.
4. Untamed by Glennon Doyle, this memoir and galvanizing feminist wake-up call is sure to have you on your feet, ready to change the world. This book celebrates womanhood and is packed with lessons about modern feminism.
5. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is about a family of Koreans who move to Japan in the early 1900’s where they are rejected because of their nationality. This moving book tells the story of love, ambition, sacrifice, and loyalty in a book that creates legends in this historical fiction genre.
6. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi is a book about a Ghanaian family who moves to the United States and their struggles as a family when the son dies of a drug overdose and Gifty, his sister, a PhD student at Stanford in neuroscience attempts to understand addiction and the world around her. As she goes down this path she starts to reconnect with the evangelical world she left behind and finds the idea of salvation tantalizing. Transcendent Kingdom is the second novel by Yaa Gyasi, whose debut book Homecoming topped charts and received rave reviews.
7. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is a story about how twins lives mingle and diverge in this book reflecting black identity, family relationships, and how the past can inform our current time. The story weaves together multiple strands and generations of the family from the mid 20th century until the present and explores the ways in which people live from California to the American South. One of the top books of the year, it’s sure to get you thinking about the US in new ways.
8. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell is a fictional account about William Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, who died at eleven years old. This novel won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in December and fictionalized how the death of Shakespeare’s son pushed him artistically during the bubonic plague.
9. More Myself by Alicia Keyes is an autobiography where the singer/songwriter talks about her journey towards better understanding herself and how she finds inspiration in her work. This look at the creative process is a great book for anyone with an artistic streak, whether it be music or something else.
10. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a gothic suspense novel that draws on the horrors of colonialism in this gorgeously written take on the horror genre. You won’t want to stop reading this book and you’re whisked away to the Mexico of the early 1900’s in this story about family, mysteries, and destiny.
