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Summary and Reviews of 500 Great Books by Women by Erica Bauermeister

500 Great Books by Women by Erica Bauermeister

500 Great Books by Women

A Reader's Guide

by Erica Bauermeister
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  • Nov 1994, 426 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Covering a wealth of remarkable novels, narratives, biographies, and more, this resource for general readers offers more than 500 entries--capturing the flavor of each book. Includes seven cross-referenced indexes.

500 Great Books By Women: A Reader's Guide, is a wide-ranging and articulate guide to books by women authors from around the world and throughout history. This unique resource is co-authored by Erica Bauermeister, who has taught at the University of Washington and Antioch University; Holly Smith, the manager of an independent bookstore for over ten years; and Jesse Larsen, a working-class artist and writer now living in Vermont. Joining them are thirty other lovers of words -- from engineers to teachers to mothers to artists -- women writing about books that touched their lives. Each 200-250 word annotation is written to give the reader a sense of the book's style and content. The annotations are organized by theme with seven cross-reference indexes. From the 13th century novel/diary of Lady Nijo to contemporary works by Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer, Isabelle Allende and Diane Ackerman, 500 Great Books By Women offers a world of reading to all.

BookBrowse selects from the best and most popular books and features a substantial excerpt of each, usually a full chapter.

The excerptions to this rule are a handful of 'reading guide' books (including this title). In these cases, BookBrowse has included the book even though an excerpt was unavailable because we feel it has a contribution to make to this relatively specialized category.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

The Los Angeles Times
Even avid readers may be astonished at the breadth of works presented by Bauermeister, Smith and Larsen...A sense of celebration comes through in the light, swift prose.

Glamour
Meets the needs of the browser as well as the special-interest reader...the recommendations are inviting and the freshest picks sound truly grabby.

New Orleans Times
This lively and entertaining annotated book list would be a perfect gift for any book group member.

The Bloomsbury Review
[E]clectic but thorough...500 Great Books by Women will be a resource for teachers, educators, and book clubs, but it is also for anyone who loves great books.

Booklist
Although this work is a welcome addition to the numerous bibliographies pertaining to women, it is not without flaws. First, the compilers' decision to include only in-print works results in a distorted picture of good books by women. Only 51 of the titles included were published before 1900, while more than half were published between 1980 and 1993. Because the status of being in print is ever-changing, it would have been better to list works based on their merits and let users rely on their libraries for copies of out-of-print works. Secondly, the compilers themselves note that they make no claim to objectivity, and this seems particularly evident in their nonfiction selections, which appear to have been chosen with a bias toward works about women or women's issues.

Author Blurb Kathryn Cullen-Dupont,coauthor of Women's Suffrage in America
Imagine an unhurried afternoon spent browsing among the best possible selection of books by and about women. Imagine further that you're with friends who take the time to browse along with you, occasionally murmur over a prized find, 'you must read this' or 'I loved this book because...' Then buy this book, fix yourself a cup of tea, and enjoy.

Reader Reviews

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Read-Alikes

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