Women Unbound Reading Challenge

November 1, 2009, to November 30, 2010
Challenge Blog
Co-hosted by Aarti, Care, and Eva
Participants in this challenge are encouraged to read nonfiction and fiction books related to "women’s studies."

According to a Wikipedia entry, women's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. It often includes feminist theory, women's history, women's fiction, women's health, feminist art, feminist psychoanalysis, and the feminist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities and social sciences.

There are three levels for readers:

• Philogynist: Read at least two books, including at least one nonfiction.


• Bluestocking: Read at least five books, including at least two nonfiction.


• Suffragette: Read at least eight books, including at least three nonfiction.

I'm planning to read as a "suffragette." Here are some of the many books I'm considering:

Non-fiction

• 33 Things Every Girl Should Know About Women's History: From Suffragettes to Skirt Lengths to the E.R.A. by Tonya Bolden


• America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines by Gail Collins


• The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence by Rachel Simmons


• Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak


• No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women by Estelle Freedman


• Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons by Lynn Peril


• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi


• Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher


• The Silent Passage by Gail Sheehy


• Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

Fiction

• A novel by Margaret Atwood


• A novel by Natsuo Kirino


• The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff


• American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld


• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
  by E. Lockhart


• The Help by Kathryn Stockett


• The Kayla Chronicles by Sherri Winston


• The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg


• Sister Wife by Shelley Hrdlitschka


• The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera