The other day we asked folks on Twitter what was the best thing they read this year. All women authors, of course. And woah, what a super-duper crowdsourced list emerged from this conversation. Enjoy, buy, borrow, read.
(Our list of your favourite new books released in 2016 is over here. Go check it out too.)
Short Stories
Graphic Novels
Novels
Crime Fiction
Science Fiction
Young Adult
Non-Fiction
Poetry
Short Stories
1. Public Library and Other Stories (2013) by Ali Smith
2. Fish in a Dwindling Lake (2007) by Ambai
3. In a Forest, a Deer (2000) by Ambai
4. The Ballad of Sad Café (1951) by Carson McCullers
5. Sleeping with Movie Stars (2011) by Gitanjali Kolanad
6. Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings (2008) by Kuzhali Manickavel
7. Things We Found During the Autopsy (2014) by Kuzhali Manickavel
8. The Inner Courtyard: Stories by Indian Women (1994) edited by Lakshmi Holmstrom
9. A Manual for Cleaning Women (2015) by Lucia Berlin
10. Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (2009) by Marilyn Chin
11. Thus Were Their Faces (2015) by Silvina Ocampo
12. Motherwit (2013) by Urmila Pawar
Graphic Novels
1. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006) by Alison Bechdel
2. Adi Parva (2012) by Amruta Patil
Novels
1. The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker
2. The Cosmopolitans (2015) by Anjum Hasan
3. The Green Road (2015) by Anne Enright
4. Gulab (2014) by Annie Zaidi
5. The Zoya Factor (2008) by Anuja Chauhan
6. Sleeping on Jupiter (2015) by Anuradha Roy
7. The God of Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy
8. The Poisonwood Bible (1998) by Barbara Kingsolver
9. Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
10. Americanah (2013) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
11. Palace of Illusions (2008) by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
12. Rebecca (1938) by Daphne du Maurier
13. The Neapolitan Novels (2011 – 14) by Elena Ferrante
14. Honor (2013) by Elif Shafak
15. East Lynne (1861) by Ellen Wood
16. Room (2010) by Emma Donoghue
17. The Sealed Letter (2008) by Emma Donoghue
18. Fear of Flying (1973) by Erica Jong
19. Human Acts (2014) by Han King
20. A Little Life (2015) by Hanya Yanagihara
21. Boy, Snow, Bird (2013) by Helen Oyeyemi
22. A Place of Greater Safety (1992) by Hilary Mantel
23. The Taj Trilogy (2002 – 10) by Indu Sundaresan
24. The House of Spirits (1982) by Isabel Allende
25. The Japanese Lover (2015) by Isabel Allende
26. The Lowland (2013) by Jhumpa Lahiri
27. Hausfrau (2015) by Jill Alexander Essbaum
28. Among Others (2011) by Jo Walton
29. My Sister’s Keeper (2004) by Jodi Picoult
30. Nineteen Minutes (2007) by Jodi Picoult
31. Hangwoman (2012) by K. R. Meera
32. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (2013) by Karen Joy Fowler
33. Zindaginama (1979) by Krishna Sobti
34. Seeing Red (2012) by Lina Meruane
35. The Door (1987) by Magda Szabo
36. Gone with the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell
37. To Bed with Grand Music (2009) by Marghanita Laski
38. All My Puny Sorrows (2014) by Miriam Toews
39. The Tale of Genji (1021) by Murasaki Shikibu
40. Paro: Dreams of Passion (1999) by Namita Gokhale
41. Shadow & Soul (2015) by Nandita Bose
42. Who Fears Death (2010) by Nnedi Okorafor
43. for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (1975) by Ntozake Shange
44. Close to Home (2014) by Parvati Sharma
45. The Fountain Overflows (1956) by Rebecca West
46. A Disobedient Girl (2009) by Ru Freeman
47. Karachi, You’re Killing Me! (2014) by Saba Imtiaz
48. Fingersmith (2002) by Sarah Waters
49. The Little Stranger (2009) by Sarah Waters
50. The Paying Guests (2014) by Sarah Waters
51. Crowfall (2013) by Shanta Gokhale
52. The Invention of Wings (2014) by Sue Monk Kidd
53. God Help the Child (2014) by Toni Morrison
54. Sula (1973) by Toni Morrison
55. Life after Life (2013) by Kate Atkinson
56. A God in Ruins (2015) by Kate Atkinson
57. The Island of Lost Girls; Escape #2 (2015) by Manjula Padmanabhan
58. Crazy for You (1999) by Jennifer Crusie
59. Mr. Fox (2011) by Helen Oyeyemi
60. White is for Witching (2009) by Helen Oyeyemi
61. Eileen (2015) by Ottessa Moshfegh
62. The Gypsy Goddess (2014) by Meena Kandasamy
Crime Fiction
1. The Daughter of Time; Inspector Alan Grant #5 (1951) by Josephine Tey
2. The Secret Gardener (2013) by Kalpana Swaminathan
3. The Girl on the Train (2015) by Paula Hawkins
Science Fiction
1. Ancillary Justice; Imperial Radch #1 (2013) by Ann Leckie
2. The Natural Way of Things (2015) by Charlotte Wood
3. To Say Nothing of the Dog; Oxford Time Travel #2 (1998) by Connie Willis
4. Remnant Population (1996) by Elizabeth Moon
5. Station Eleven (2014) by Emily St. John Mandel
6. MaddAddam Trilogy (2009 – 13) by Margaret Atwood
7. The Heart Goes Last (2015) by Margaret Atwood
8. Kindred (1979) by Octavia E. Butler
9. Wild Seed; Patternmaster #1 (1980) by Octavia E. Butler
10. The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin
Young Adult
1. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (2015) by Becky Albertalli
2. The Lie Tree (2015) by Frances Hardinge
3. Talking of Muskaan (2014) by Himanjali Sankar
4. House on Mango Street (1984) by Sandra Cisneros
5. Ashwathy and the Boot of God (2015) by Sowmya Rajendran
Non-Fiction
1. Karukku (1992) by Bama
2. ain’t i a woman (1981) by bell hooks
3. Tiny Beautiful Things (2012) by Cheryl Strayed
4. Farewell Kabul (2015) by Christina Lamb
5. My Life on the Road (2015) by Gloria Steinem
6. Folded Clock (2015) by Heidi Julavits
7. Hard Choices (2013) by Hillary Clinton
8. Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood (1995) by Jan Marsh
9. Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (2005) by Jeanette Winterson
10. Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012) by Katherine Boo
11. Lioness Arising (2010) by Lisa Bevere
12. This Sex Which is Not One (1977) by Luce Irigaray
13. The Argonauts (2015) by Maggie Nelson
14. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (2011) by Mindy Kaling
15. Why Not Me? (2015) by Mindy Kaling
16. Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2014) by Mona Eltahawy
17. I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (2006) by Nora Ephron
18. Talking About Detective Fiction (2009) by P. D. James
19. Seasons of Trouble: Life Amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Civil War (2014) by Rohini Mohan
20. A Handbook for My Lover (2015) by Rosalyn D’Mello
21. Lafayette in the Somewhat United States (2015) by Sarah Vowell
22. Chernobyl Prayer (1997) by Svetlana Alexievich
23. Second-Hand Time (2013) by Svetlana Alexievich
24. Cut-outs, Caste and Cine Stars (2008) by Vaasanthi
Poetry
1. Dream Girl (2015) by Clementine von Radics
2. Geographies of Light (2009) by Lisa Suhair Majaj
3. Faithful and Virtuous Night (2014) by Louise Gluck
4. A Stranger’s Mirror (2015) by Marilyn Hacker
5. A Poetry Handbook (1994) by Mary Oliver
6. milk and honey (2014) by Rupi Kaur
7. Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth (2011) by Warsan Shire