1) Male and female reading meme:

Originally from here here. (And I think a couple of others, but can’t find them.)

I rather agree with much of the criticism of these lists, but here goes anyway.

The girls’ list:

Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
The Handmaid’s Tale
Middlemarch
Pride and Prejudice
Beloved
The Golden Notebook
Catch-22
Remembrance of Things Past
Persuasion
Frankenstein
Oranges Are Not The Only fruit
One Hundred Years Of Solitude
Mill On The Floss
Little Women
Madam Bovary
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe
Gone with the Wind
Heart Of Darkness
To Kill A Mockingbird

That’s 13 out of 20 – am a bit surprised to see Catch-22 and Heart of Darkness on that list, I wouldn’t have thought of either as being particularly appealing to women.

The boys’ list:

The Outsider
Catcher In The Rye
Slaughterhouse 5
One Hundred Years Of Solitude
The Hobbit
Catch-22
1984
The Great Gatsby
The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting
To Kill A Mockingbird
Lolita
Lord Of The Rings
Crime and Punishment
Brighton Rock
High Fidelity
Ulysses
Huckleberry Finn
Heart of Darkness
Metamorphosis (presumabvly Kafka rather than Ovid, though I have read both)
Grapes of Wrath

That’s 17, and I suspect I may in fact have read Brighton Rock though I’m not sure. Rather surprised to see L’Étranger on this list. I have always thought of it as more of a “girl’s book”, largely because I read it at the urging of a former girlfriend. But I see Marcel Berlins singing its praises.

2) Women’s writing meme

Originally from , I think, but I saw it chez here (and again I think elsewhere but can’t find it right now). This one is a bit more confessional – includes the possibility of saying not just what you have read but admitting what you haven’t.

Instructions: Bold the ones you’ve read
Italicize the ones you have wanted/might like to read
* = Another book by this author read, but not this
?? = Any titles/authors you’ve never heard of
*** = I’ve tried it and abandoned it
XXX = Life Is Too Short

Alcott, Louisa May–Little Women
Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
* Atwood, Margaret–Cat’s Eye
* Austen, Jane–Emma
?? Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters
?? Barnes, Djuna–Nightwood
de Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
* Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret
Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.–Possession
Cather, Willa–My Antonia
Chopin, Kate–The Awakening
* Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
?? Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History
?? Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South
?? Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory
?? Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics
Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
Eliot, George–Middlemarch
?? Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen
?? Erdrich, Louise–Tracks
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper
Gordimer, Nadine–July’s People
Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence
?? Hamilton, Edith–Mythology
Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
?? hooks, bell–Bone Black [Having looked the author up on Wikipedia, I’m fascinated]
?? Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road
?? Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
?? Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House – in fact I think I bought it in Dublin last month
Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them)
?? Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
?? Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy
Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
?? Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
?? Larsen, Nella–Passing
L’Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time
Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
* Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
* Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger
?? Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals
XXX Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series (any of them)
?? McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
?? McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts
?? Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve
?? Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables
?? Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji
Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women
* Murdoch, Iris–Severed Head
Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller’s Wife
Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys
O’Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time
?? Picoult, Jodi–My Sister’s Keeper
Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
?? Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools
Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
XXX Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead
?? Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
?? Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping
?? Rocha, Sharon–For Lac
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones
Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
?? Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie–White Teeth
Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
?? Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle
Steel, Danielle–The House
Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah–You’re Wearing That
?? Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife’s Tale
?? Urquhart, Jane–Away
Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora–One Writer’s Beginnings
Wharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One’s Own

I obviously have some way to go.