If you've decided to focus your group on a particular aspect of women's history, these book lists will help to get you started.
I've included books that I've read and have found useful, inspiring, or otherwise a "good read." Your tastes may be different, of course.
Wherever possible, I've linked to a means for ordering the books. You may also want to investigate ordering a quantity of the books from your local independent women's bookstore. They may be able to give you a discount on 10 or more copies.
And don't forget the library -- though you probably don't want to limit yourself to books from the library, or not all your group members can read the same book the same week.
- General women's history
- Books (by women) that changed the world
- Women's lives through fiction
- Women from many cultures (fiction and nonfiction)
- Early women writers
- Women poets through the ages
- Issues facing women in history
- Women's point of view on history and historical events
- Goddesses, heroines, and other mythical women
- 1960s/1970s women's liberation classics
- Feminist classics (pre-1950)
- Feminism since the 1970s
- Southern women
- Women and religion
- Science fiction: possible futures
- Biographies of famous women
- Biographies of ordinary women
- Willa Cather books (an example of focusing on one author)
- On the art of writing
If you want more ideas, here are some additional books that may provide ideas for your reading group or personal reading plan:
- 500 Great Books by Women : A Reader's Guide
by Erica Bauermeister, Jesse Larsen (Contributor), Holly Smith (Contributor).
- The Reading Group Book : The Complete Guide to Starting and Sustaining a Reading Group, With Annotated Lists of 250 Titles for Provocative Discussion by David Laskin, Holly Hughes (Contributor).
- The Reading Groups Book by Jenny Hartley and Sarah Turvey.
