[ SECRET POST #3204 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3204 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 052 secrets from Secret Submission Post #458.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. http://i.imgur.com/C4bCkTl.png

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah like. The whole concept is pretty dumb. The specific things you're objecting to just fall out of the fundamentally stupid nature of the category.

[(Anonymous)]

Same. I want to read more stories authored by women, but it seems the editorial world will only publish stories written by women when they're about shopping and romance. I'm sure it's not the case and there's lots of published fiction that is awesome, but I can't find it! Any recs please?

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry, I really don't mean to be rude, but... Have you actually looked even at all?

The complaint you're making is accurate as regards fiction specifically labeled as For Women but I have no idea how you could get that idea about fiction in general.

[(Anonymous)]

If you like mystery and SF/fantasy: Sue Grafton, Mary Higgins Clark, Margaret Atwood, Faye Kellerman, Nancy Kress, Sujata Massey, Connie Willis.

There are tons of books written by women that aren't about shopping and dating.

[dreemyweird]

*rubs hands* let's do this.

Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South. An awesome Victorian lady who wrote this novel about a conflict of different British mentalities - Southern (countryside) and Northern (urban, industrial). She's amazing at describing the Victorians' daily life, and the moral messages in her writing are very ambiguous and subtle.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. Maybe you've read it; if not, do. It's a very mature book full of gentle melancholy pondering the self-contradictory aspects of human nature. Also, a ten-foot-tall dude who looks like a zombie and talks like Shakespeare.

Tatyana Tolstaya, The Slynx. She's a very charismatic and sarcastic Russian lady; The Slynx is a hilarious macabre dystopia with strong undertones of the Soviet realities. The action takes place in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion.

While we're at that, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby. This is a collection of modern horror fairy tales, if you're into this kind of thing.

Agatha Christie is pretty awesome!! I definitely recommend the Poirot and the Miss Marple series <3 For really good plot twists, see: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Murder on the Orient Express.

[(Anonymous)]

Not sure if you're still looking for more recs, but here's two:

The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia. Fab book, can't say enough about this urban fantasy/alternate history

The Benjamin January Mysteries by Barbara Hambly, set in 1830's New Orleans the protagonist is a "free man of color", trained doctor and solves murders. Awesome books

[(Anonymous)]

Margaret Atwood // Atwood is a literary treasure. Her novels are intelligent and they don't spoon feed you, but they're also engaging and enjoyable, not dry or tedious. Personally I like Alias Grace best of all her novels, but The Blind Assassin might be better place to start. Her Mad Addam series is really good, but be warned, the first book is by far the least enjoyable.

Donna Tartt // The Secret History is definitely her most accessible novel, and possibly her most engaging, so it's probably the one to start with.

A.S Byatt // This author will definitely not be to everyone's taste. She's extremely academic, and her novels can be overly intellectual, the the point where actual plot gets neglected or buried. However, her Booker winner Possession does not suffer from this problem, so it's what I would rec first. My personal favorite of Byatt's is The Children's Book, which is masterfully detailed and complex, but again, many readers may find it overly dry and directionless.

Edith Wharton // Wharton's writing has a kind of clever sharpness that almost makes it feel more like a modern novel set in the past than like an old classic. I like House Of Mirth the best.

Annabel Lyon // I often find historical fiction rather prosaic, but The Golden Mean was an excellent antidote to that. It's poetic but level-headed, and grim but not cynical. In writing about the interwoven lives of Aristotle and Alexander the Great, Lyon provokes questions about the nature of power, tragedy, depression, identity, intelligence, and aspiration. Her book of short stories, Oxygen, is also excellent.

Anne Michaels // Another author who may not be to everyone's taste, but she's long been a favorite of mine. My advice is, read the first twenty pages or so of Fugitive Pieces and if you don't like it, quit.

Jane Austen // I'm not madly in love with Austen, but I'm always happy to have read her works, and will probably read them all again at least once. They're very comforting, somehow - not for their romance, but maybe for their clear-eyed lack of cynicism. Her novels are smarter than they may at first seem and her writing doesn't take itself too seriously, so it never feels melodramatic. Personally I liked Sense and Sensibility the best, but I think it depends very strongly on which protagonist one most relates to, so YMMV. The only one I wouldn't recommend starting with is Northanger Abbey, as it was essentially intended as a bit of a send up of the Gothic romance novels of the time, and is therefore a little less substantial on its own merit.


Gillian Flynn // I'm only 100 pages into Gone Girl and I already have zero reservations about recommending this author. Her writing is smart, engaging, accessible, and exceptionally atmospheric.

Annie Proulx // The Shipping News was fantastic, very subtle and sensitive. A story about perserverance and growth for people who typically find such stories overly simplistic and saccharine.

Joyce Carol Oates // A strong and prolific writer who I've only just got started on. I recently finished reading Because It Is Bitter, And Because It Is My Heart, which I found impressive and powerful, though not wholly satisfying.

Geraldine Brookes // March was fantastic. The thing about history lessons is that they teach us what we should know about, but they aren't very good at getting us to care. This book opens up the American Civil War and just hits you with it so freaking hard.

Janet Fitch // Fitch may have been something of a one-hit wonder with White Oleander, but what a hit. White Oleander is vivid, harsh, lyrical and affecting. It put me under its spell. (I have read her most recent novel, Paint It Black, but would not recommend it. It came off like the extremely wobbly first novel of a young but promising writer with many years yet to hit their narrative stride - sadly an almost irreparable step back from the powerhouse that was her previous work.)

[(Anonymous)]

It also makes the implication that the default setting of literature is for men.

[(Anonymous)]

Which is quite amusing since women read more literature than men. At least from what research in the USA has shown. Don't know about other countries.

[a_potato]

Yup. And you see that with other forms of media, as well (e.g. "chick flicks").

[(Anonymous)]

Yep.

[dinogrrl]

Wait, what? This exists? When did this happen?

[(Anonymous)]

"Chick Lit" as a genre, meaning fluffy romance/relationship stuff has been around for a while, despite the plethora of female writers and readers writing and reading all kinds of stuff.

[kallanda_lee]

Yes. More so because I hate the genre. I also loathe romantic comedies. TBH, I sort of hate 90% of everything that s targeted at women (though I am a total girl about shoes and squeeing about shipping), but yeah.

It bothers me, because I actually find it alienating that this is the stuff I s"should" like, while it's one of the most boring things in fiction for me.

[(Anonymous)]

I also hate how so many books targeted at women have typically feminine-looking covers, with lots of pinks or reds or lighter shades of other colors or whatnot. It'd be really nice to see more books targeted at women that don't follow such a stereotypical cover design and color scheme.

[diet_poison]

eesh. yeah, I think that's pretty dumb too. The whole thing.

[(Anonymous)]

Not OP, but I just want to give a quick THANK YOU to everyone who rec'd something in this thread. I look forward to checking them out.

[sabotabby]

I know the feeling. Growing up, I got the impression that "Women's Literature" (as opposed to, say, genre fiction written by women, addressed in other comments) was Not For Me, because I had zero interest in domesticity. Of course, there's plenty of amazing literature written by women that's about something other than dating and children, but it's often packaged and marketed as chick lit even when it's not, so I missed out on a lot of excellent books as a result.

Immigration stories

[(Anonymous)]

As a science fiction fan, one of the kinds of non genre novels I like best is about a person who moves from one country to another. Some of the same features and appeal. I recommend Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie, If Today Be Sweet by Theory Umrigar, and most anything by Amy Tan.

[amanuensis1]

I feel frustrated because as a woman I want to see media featuring women--particularly filmed media, to employ more female actors, and when activists promote this I'm delighted at first--but then they're pushing for ALL THE STORIES THAT BORE ME. Romance and romantic comedies and comedies and dramas about divorced housewives and struggling mothers and, ugh. As if that's what "women's media" must be limited to. Give me all the SF featuring starships piloted by 90% women! Fantasy featuring female rogues and paladins! Historical epics with matriarchal societies! Female spy rings not played for comedy! BRING IT.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, this is my feeling, too. I like romance. A good romantic story is totally fine with me. But I want to see a lot of the creative, varied, imaginative sorts of things you mentioned, too.

And the whole "dramas about divorced housewives and struggling mothers" thing-the thing that tends to irk me about a lot of those kinds of movies is that it just so often reads like "upper class midlife crisis" material, like the books you see in stores from writers who took a year to "find themselves" and went on some exotic journey. I'm kind of tired of those stories, too.

If we are going to go with the "realistic drama" stuff, I'd like to see more stories involving low-income women and the issues they deal with. Women who are working in dead end jobs who aren't fortunate enough to have the Prince Charming model guy come along and sweep them off their feet to a land of riches and happiness. Women who can't afford to take exotic trips to "find themselves" when they go through some sort of crisis. Things like that. It'd be interesting to see more stuff like that, and how women in those settings deal with whatever issues come their way.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree, it's pretty dumb. They do it for marketing purposes and because it's easier (albeit lazier) to slap a label on this subset of fiction but it's inaccurate at best and at worst, rather insulting.

And don't tell male writers they write Chick Lit

[(Anonymous)]

It also pisses me off that male writers who write stuff that falls into the women's fiction genre i.e. romance etc get more respect than the female writers if the same thing.

In Australia there has been hugely popular book called The Rosie Project which has won all kinds of awards and been on the bestseller list forever. It's well-written and amusing but ticks all the trope boxes of your average romantic comedy novel.

Because it was written by a man and has a man as the main character critics and readers seem to think it is something special and different.

[(Anonymous)]

Being oblivious as always, I didn't know it was a special genre!

And I didn't know that I was supposed to read special types of literature because I am female, but about a month ago when me and my boyfriend went to the US, we talked with a guy selling books (sci-fi and fantasy), and he suggested some (sci-fi) books for my boyfriend - and then he turned to me and said, so, you like fantasy, right?

And I was like wut? No, I don't, I hate it. Why? Guy looks strangely at me, and says something like "but you're female..."

*grumbles*