Happy Wednesday, friends! It’s raining as I write this, and it’s been raining most of today. It was a lovely temperature earlier, so I read outside in order to meet my daily goals of reading and getting outside (still going strong on both fronts!). One of my absolute favorite things to do actually is to read outside while it’s raining, and I’m so thankful for a porch to be able to do so. And yes, the toddlers also came outside. I tried to convince them to bring some books and we’d all read outside together, but they wanted snacks and chalk drawings instead. A good alternative, I think.
International Women’s Day is just around the corner, so I thought it would be fun to pull together some of my favorite reads featuring strong female main characters (because absolutely no one else has done anything similar, haha). While these particular reads are fictional, I found so much strength and inspiration within these stories.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh
Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy
The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye by Briony Cameron (thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for my copy to read; this book will publish in June of 2024)
Legendborn and Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn
The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson (thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for a copy to read)
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn
Woman on Fire by Lisa Barr
Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi
The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Stephanie Dray
We Begin At the End by Chris Whitaker
Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
I have found these types of lists often are done with fictional characters, so next are a few nonfiction reads with amazing female stories.
My Side of the River by Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez (thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this book to read)
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair (thanks to Simon & Schuster and Snail on the Wall for this book to read)
The Double Life of Katharine Clark by Katharine Gregorio (thanks to Sourcebooks and Snail on the Wall for this book to read)
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang
A Face for Picasso by Ariel Henley — go for the audio here!
My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg — again, highly recommend the audio!
The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore (thanks to Sourcebooks and Snail on the Wall for this book to read)
Maid by Stephanie Land
Educated by Tara Westover
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone
I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
There are some amazing people out there, and even more we probably don’t know about yet. What books (fictional or nonfictional) would you add?