The 100 best easy books by women

No. 11 on this list. The Unwomanly Face of War · Svetlana Alexievich · 1985

Taught in schools: Lithuanian literature curriculum (lietuvių kalba ir literatūra), UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico)

Widely taught in university courses on Eastern European literature, WWII history, and oral history methodology, though not a fixture of secondary school curricula in the West. The 2015 Nobel Prize dramatically expanded its global reach and translation into forty-plus languages. Its canonical standing is growing rather than settled.

No. 12 on this list. Blasted · Sarah Kane · 1995

Now recognized as one of the most important British plays of the late twentieth century. A landmark of in-yer-face theater and a standard text in contemporary drama courses.

No. 13 on this list. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry · Mildred D. Taylor · 1976

Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council, Singapore-Cambridge GCE O-Level Literature in English (2065)

Newbery Medal winner and a cornerstone of Black children's literature. Widely taught and frequently appears on essential reading lists.

No. 14 on this list. History: A Novel · Elsa Morante · 1974

Included in: Bokklubben World Library

One of the most important Italian novels of the twentieth century. Controversial at publication but now widely recognized as a masterpiece.

No. 15 on this list. The Word for World Is Forest · Ursula K Le Guin · 1972

A fixture in SF studies, environmental humanities, and postcolonial literature courses at universities worldwide. Le Guin's work overall is more canonically established than this single novella — it appears regularly on SF syllabi and ecocriticism reading lists, taught alongside texts like Octavia Butler's Kindred and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, though without the 2000+ syllabus presence of Beloved or The Great Gatsby.

No. 16 on this list. The Earthsea Quartet · Ursula K Le Guin · 1968

Across four novels spanning decades, Le Guin builds the archipelago of Earthsea—a world of islands, sailing, and true-name magic where knowing a thing's true name gives power over it. A Wizard of Earthsea follows the young wizard Ged as he releases a shadow-creature and must pursue it across the world. The Tombs of Atuan follows a priestess freed from underground servitude. The Farthest Shore follows Ged, now Archmage, pursuing a wizard who has broken the boundary between life and death. Tehanu, written sixteen years later, returns to Earthsea with a feminist perspective, following the abused child Therru and the former priestess Tenar in a world where women's power has been systematically suppressed. Le Guin's magic system—where speaking a true name is the fundamental magical act—is the most elegant in fantasy. The prose is spare, rhythmic, and precise, closer to myth than novel.

No. 17 on this list. A Lost Lady · Willa Cather · 1923

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

One of Cather's most celebrated novels, widely anthologized and taught. F. Scott Fitzgerald admired it greatly.

No. 18 on this list. Live or Die · Anne Sexton · 1966

Anne Sexton arranged these thirty-three poems in the order she wrote them — January 1962 to February 1966 — and called the result 'a fever chart for a bad case of melancholy.' Each poem arrives with a date at the bottom, evidence rather than ornament. The collection opens with her father, a wool salesman who drank in his bedroom and died on the road; within pages she has checked herself into a psychiatric ward, addressed Sylvia Plath's corpse ('Thief!— how did you crawl into, crawl down alone into the death I wanted so badly'), mourned a son she never had, and watched her daughter call on God instead of her mother when a horse crushes her foot. Sexton's language stays in the body. She counts out eight pharmaceutical capsules each night, arranges them 'as in the laying on of hands or the black sacrament.' Suicides, she observes, 'have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build.' The hospital and the suburban kitchen share equal authority. God appears, and Mary, and Judas, and Sylvia, and none of them offer adequate answers. The final poem, 'Live,' turns the collection's entire argument on its axis. Eight Dalmatian puppies survive the pails of water that waited to drown them. 'I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann. The poison just didn't take.' The fever chart ends with a temperature that isn't, finally, fatal. This is the Pulitzer Prize-winning collection that defined confessional poetry as a form capable of sustaining both unbearable honesty and survival.

No. 19 on this list. Tracks · Louise Erdrich · 1988

A central work in Erdrich's interconnected cycle and widely taught in American literature courses. Considered one of her strongest early novels.

No. 20 on this list. Dear Life · Alice Munro · 2012

Munro's final collection, published the year before her Nobel Prize. Regarded as a fitting capstone to one of the great careers in short fiction.

No. 21 on this list. Adam Bede · George Eliot · 1859

Adam Bede appears regularly on Victorian literature and 19th-century British fiction syllabi at universities worldwide, and is the standard entry point to George Eliot's work in courses that cannot assign the longer Middlemarch. It is included in most survey courses of the Victorian novel. Its canonical status within the Eliot corpus is secondary only to Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, but within the broader Victorian canon it holds a secure if not dominant position — consistently anthologized, consistently in print, and consistently cited as a foundational work of Victorian realism.

No. 22 on this list. Anne of Green Gables · L.M. Montgomery · 1908

Anne of Green Gables holds a secure place in the literary canon as one of the most enduring works of children's and young adult fiction. First published in 1908, it has never gone out of print, has been translated into over 36 languages, and has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. It is widely taught in schools across Canada and globally, and its protagonist Anne Shirley has become a mythic icon of Canadian culture — a figure of comparable recognizability to Alice in Wonderland. While it sits firmly in the popular/children's classics tier rather than the prestige 'Great Books' canon, its canonical standing within its genre and cultural sphere is unassailable.

No. 23 on this list. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils · Selma Lagerlöf · 1906

On Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century, with a Wikipedia article in 39 languages. Commissioned as a geography reader for Swedish schools, it is a national classic in Sweden and a children's classic worldwide, though rarely on university syllabi.

No. 24 on this list. The Female Man · Joanna Russ · 1975

The Female Man holds a secure place in university curricula for feminist theory, science fiction studies, and American literature courses. No syllabus data was available in the database, but the novel's reputation as a foundational feminist SF text ensures regular academic assignment. It is substantially more taught than genre novels but has not reached the universal curriculum presence of mainstream canonical texts.

No. 25 on this list. Brown Girl Dreaming · Jacqueline Woodson · 2014

Brown Girl Dreaming is standard reading in American middle school and high school curricula, particularly in units on memoir, poetry, and Civil Rights-era literature. It appears on numerous recommended reading lists for young adults and is included in many school districts' required reading programs. Its canonical status is strong within YA and middle-grade education but has not yet reached the broader university literary canon.

No. 26 on this list. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant · Anne Tyler · 1982

Widely considered Tyler's best novel. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and frequently included in lists of the best American novels of the twentieth century.

No. 27 on this list. The Mermaids Singing · Val McDermid · 1995

Gold Dagger winner. Launched one of crime fiction's most acclaimed series.

No. 28 on this list. The Summer Book · Tove Jansson · 1972

Increasingly recognized as a Scandinavian masterpiece. A quiet classic with a devoted readership.

No. 29 on this list. Love in a Fallen City · Eileen Chang · 1943

Chang is recognized as a major figure in modern Chinese literature and is regularly taught in Chinese literature, Asian studies, and world literature courses. This Penguin Modern Classics edition and inclusion in the Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature signal canonical standing. Her syllabi presence in Western universities remains more limited than in Chinese-speaking academic institutions, where she is a curriculum staple.

No. 30 on this list. The Story of Zahra · Hanan al-Shaykh · 1980

Major work of Lebanese and Arab women's literature. Widely taught.