Friday 24 September 2010

2011: The "Women of Fantasy" & "Women of Science Fiction" Book Clubs!

I've (already!) signed up for participation in two book clubs next year that I would like to mention here in case anyone else want to join in the fun too.


Firstly, Erika from Jawas Read, Too! is running the "Women of Fantasy" book club where each month we'll be reading a book published by a female author in the Fantasy genre. The perfect accompaniment to this is that TJ, from Dreams & Speculations, is hosting "The Women of Science Fiction" book club. I think that both the reading lists look fantastic and I am really struggling to resist the temptation to dive in to the selection right now.

These book club announcements have come at the perfect time for me. One of the (many) wonderful things about moving to this house is that I now have a room (rather grandly referred to as my "Library"!) in which all my books live. All of my books. In one room. In genre-themed sections. Bliss. As I unpacked box after box after box of books a couple of months ago, and settled them into their new homes, I realised that I have very little Sci-Fi and Fantasy by female authors and started to actively seek to redress that balance.

Although I have read four of the books Erika and TJ have selected that does leave 20 new books (and between them fourteen female authors whose work I have never read!) to get me going and that is a great start in the right direction - although I might need a bigger "library"...

3 comments:

Jodie said...

Jealous of the library (very happy for you really!). I knew about women of sci-fi, but had no idea there was a sister challenge. Yay! I'm signed up for both now. My minimum goal is to read the Jo Walton and Elizabeth Bear selections from each list. Do you ahve any books you particularly want to get to?

Peta said...

Yay! Jo Walton def on the list, as are the Elizabeth Bear ones (hard to resist buying both Tooth & Claw and Windwracked yesterday).

Other "most exciteds" are Elfland by Freda Warrington, The Dark Mirror by Juliet Marillier and I have not read anything by Cherie Priest but everyone seems to be raving about her.

From the WoSF list, I've been meaning to try Connie Willis for a while and might sneak To Say Nothing of the Dog as a pre-book club read this year. Lois McMaster Bujold had also been on my "women to read" list and this seems like the perfect excuse to do so.

Carl V. Anderson said...

That looks fun. There are a couple of books on the planned reading list that I am wanting to get to, most notably The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. I might just sign up!