10 Great Books by Female Authors

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You may have heard some of the kerfuffle this week as Publishers Weekly announced their top 10 books of 2009, and there was not a female writer among the bunch.

There’s been a lot of response to this, most of it said better than I ever could. (Take that last sentence as your proof right there.)  So go read everybody else’s commentary and check out the huge list being compiled by WILLA.

The BoG would like to contribute this:  10 books we loved this year, by women writers.  I’m not saying they are better than the PW list, I’m not even saying they are my favorite (I know I’ll be kicking myself for forgetting something the minute I hit publish), but if you were to mix these with the PW list and divide by two, I think you’d have an awesome list.

*And now that I’ve written the list, I’m adding… this list has the input of 4 people with widely varied tastes, so don’t be shocked that they don’t all match… and, being the children’s book person, I couldn’t help but slip in one kid book, despite the fact that the best children’s books list is nice and diverse, but it’s one that every adult I know who has read it has loved, so I think it deserves a place on this list too*

In no particular order:

1. Lark & Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips

2. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

3. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

4. The Children’s Book by A S Byatt

5. The Legend of Colton H Bryant by Alexandra Fuller

6. Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti (out before 2009 abroad, but since it was published in US in 2009, I’m allowing.)

7. The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones

8. Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

9. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

10. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

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