Author Marilynne Robinson (Born 1943)

I dedicated last month to reading books only written by women. On March 5, I posted a TBR (To Be Read) list from which I would choose the titles I would undertake to read and review. As was typical, I wound up reading about half the books on the list, adding to them some last-minute choices. Here is the list of what I read:

• Celeste Ng (United States), Little Fires Everywhere **** †
• Joyce Carol Oates (United States), The Man Without a Shadow ****
• Virginia Woolf (Britain), The Waves *****
• Marilynne Robinson (United States), Gilead ***** †
• Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (Russia), The Time: Night ****
• Patricia Highsmith (United States), The Black House (Short Stories) *****
• Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexico), Gods of Jade and Shadow ***** †
• Colette (France), The Pure and the Impure ****
• Eve Babitz (United States), L.A. Woman ****
• Sofi Oksanen (Finland/Estonia), The Purge **** †
• Rosario Santos—Editor (Bolivia), The Fat Man from La Paz (Short Stories) **** †
• Clarice Lispector (Brazil), The Hour of the Star *****

There wasn’t a stinker in the bunch, and four of the choices were superb (Woolf, Moreno-Garcia, Highsmith, and Lispector). Five of the books marked with a dagger [†] were by authors I had never read before (Ng, Robinson, Moreno-Garcia, and Santos). On my original TBR list, I thought I had never read any Ludmilla Petrushevskaya before, but I was mistaken.

I will continue to read more books by women authors than I have in the past, though I may not repeat the intensity of March’s reading project. It was an interesting experiment, as all the choices were pretty high quality.