#VOTE100BOOKS: A Century of Memorable Books by Women Writers

Dubbed the “starting point for the greatest bookshelf of all time”

In honour of 2018 being the one-hundredth-year since some British women were first given the right to vote, the Hay Festival partnered with The Pool to create a public voted list of the 100 greatest books written by women in the last century.

Included on the list are all genres, fiction and non-fiction, written by women and published between 1918 and 2018 (with just one book permitted per author). The organizers describe it as “a greatest hits of the last 100 years of literature.”

I thought it would be satisfying to gradually read my way through the chosen books (shown below), but to do so without setting myself a time limit. Therefore, in no particular order, I intend to read and tick as I go. I can immediately put a ✓ next to a few entries. Far less than I had hoped. While I have read works by many of the selected authors, embarrassingly few of these appear in this top one-hundred.

Do you agree with the final #Vote100Books selection? Is there something of importance missing? Are there names undeserved of a place on the list? Perhaps you feel in some instances that the right author but the wrong title was chosen. Please feel free to share your thoughts.

I can’t imagine how long it will take me to work my way through all these books – I may never do so. Let me know if you are attempting to do the same.

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1918 – 2018

Running total: 25/100

1. A Book of Mediterranean Food by Elizabeth David (1950)
2. A Girl is a Half Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (2013)
3. A Greater Place of Safety by Hilary Mantel (1992)
4. Ain’t I a Woman by Bell Hooks (1981)
5. Ariel by Sylvia Plath (1965) ✓
6. At The Source: A Writer’s Year by Gillian Clarke (2008)
7. Babette’s Feast by Karen Blixen (1950)
8. Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill (1988)
9. Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak (2006)
10. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
11. Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan (1954)
12. Brick Lane by Monica Ali (2003)
13. Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding (1996) ✓
14. Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx (1999)
15. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)
16. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill (2014)
17. Enough Rope: Poems by Dorothy Parker (1926)
18. Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates (2014)
19. Falling Awake by Alice Oswald (2016)
20. Frost in May by Antonia White (1933)
21. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2004)
22. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)
23. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)
24. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi (2006)
25. Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling (1999) ✓
26. Headscarves and Hymens by Mona Eltahawy (2015)
27. Heartburn by Nora Ephron (1983)
28. Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin by Anais Nin (1986)
29. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (2016)
30. How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran (2012)
31. How to Eat by Nigella Lawson (1998)
32. How we Survived Communism and Even Laughed by Slavenka Drakulic (1993)
33. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)
34. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969)
35. Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny (1974)
36. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (1989)
37. Lullaby by Leila Slimani (2016)
38. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor (1971)
39. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2011)
40. Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller (2003)
41. Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman (2001)
42. Oranges are not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (1985) ✓
43. Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928) ✓
44. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2000)
45. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (1945)
46. Possession by AS Byatt (1990) ✓
47. Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes (1997)
48. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
49. Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker (1991) ✓
50. Selected Stories by Alice Munro (1996)
51. Small Island by Andrea Levy (2004)
52. Standing Female Nude by Carol Ann Duffy (1985)
53. Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith (1950)
54. Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933) ✓
55. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (2015)
56. The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie (1942) ✓
57. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982) ✓
58. The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien (1960)
59. The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives by Carole Hillenbrand (1999)
60. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947) ✓
61. The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970) ✓
62. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963)
63. The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West (1956)
64. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (2005)
65. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997)
66. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)
67. The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson (1999)
68. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985) ✓
69. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959) ✓
70. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (1982)
71. The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (1958)
72. The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson (2003)
73. The Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller (1994)
74. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)
75. The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson (1945) ✓
76. The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector (1964)
77. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998) ✓
78. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961) ✓
79. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford (1945)
80. The Road Home by Rose Tremain (2007)
81. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
82. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend (1982) ✓
83. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992) ✓
84. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007)
85. The View From the Ground by Martha Gellhorn (1988)
86. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005) ✓
87. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
88. Three Strong Women by Marie Ndiaye (2009)
89. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters (1998) ✓
90. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
91. Train to Nowhere by Anita Leslie (1948)
92. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch (1954) ✓
93. Unless by Carol Shields (2002) ✓
94. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (2003)
95. What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt (2003) ✓
96. White Teeth by Zadie Smith (1999) ✓
97. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)
98. Wild Swans by Jung Chang (1991)
99. Wise Children by Angela Carter (1991)
100. Women & Power by Mary Beard (2017)

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