Since our book club has ended a number of people have asked us to compile a sort of ‘Recommended Reading List’ so I thought I would kick this off with a list of books that have been recommended to me. I should point out that I haven’t read most of these!
- Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism, Laurie Penny
- Bringing the Equality Authority to heel, Niall Crowley
- Going Gray: What I Learned About Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity and Everything Else that Matters, Anne Kreamer
- Living Dolls, Natasha Walters
- Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards
- Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters, Jessica Valenti
- Impossible Motherhood, Irene Vilar
- Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and our Families, Pamela Paul
- Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, Laurel Ulrich
- Sappho’s Leap, Erica Jong
- Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body, Courtney E Martin
- Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein
- Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, Bell Hooks
- Woman: an Intimate Geography, Natalie Angier
- The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver (have read – would recommend!)
- Bonk, Mary Roach
- Shoot the Damn Dog, Sally Brampton
- The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
- Half the sky, Nichos Kristof & Sheryl Nudunn
- A room of one’s own, Virginia Woolf
- The second sex, Simone de Beauvoir
- Backlash, Susan Falaudi
- The Whole Woman, Germaine Greer
- The live of the single girl, Abbey Lee
- Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election That Changed Everything For American Women, Rebecca Traister
- Read my pins, Madeleine Albright
- Bossypants, Tina Fey
- Man made language, Dale Spender
- The Feminist Reader, edited by Catherine Belsey & Jane Moore
- The Women’s Room, Marilyn French
- How to be a woman, Caitlin Moran (have read, would recommend)
- The Equality Illusion, Kat Banyard (have read, would recommend)
- The F Word, Catherine Redfern and Krisitn Aune (have read, would recommend but v similar to the Equality Illusion so just pick one really)
- Wetlands, Charlotte Roche (highly recommend personally)
When we started the book club, we asked people to make some recommendations which we posted to our Facebook page. We’re re-posting those here (sorry for any repeats!):
- The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard;
- Reclaiming the F Word by Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune;
- The Spirit Level – why more equal societies nearly always do better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (A lot of graphs and stats but compelling research)
- Where Are We Now? New Perspectives on Women in Contemporary Ireland, edited by Ursula Barry
- Manifesta: Young Women and Feminism, by Amy Richards
- Feminism is for Everybody, by bell hooks
- Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel (graphic novel)
- The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf
- The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood (novel)
- Full Frontal Feminism, by Jessica Valenti
- Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, by Julia Serano
- Mna na hEireann, Nicola DePuis
- Living Dolls, by Natasha Walter
- The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
- Sisters, June Levine (autobiography)
- Burning Your Boats, Angela Carter (short stories)
Please let us know if you have any other recommendations!
