№ 25 reading list: women only

Happy New Year! I would like to start the year with a new reading list, consisting of books by women only. As you probably know, Elizabeth Hardwick is a great favourite; her essay collection Seduction and Betrayal features female writers and women in literature. It so happens that Joan Didion, who has a book on the list, writes the introduction to the collection, which includes an essay about the Bloomsbury group and Virginia Woolf, who is also on the list.

№ 25 reading list:

1  Seduction and Betrayal  · Elizabeth Hardwick
2  Ninth Street Women  · Mary Gabriel
3  Approaching Eye Level  · Vivian Gornick
4  Intimations: Six Essays  · Zadie Smith
5  On Beauty  · Zadie Smith
6  The Waves  · Virginia Woolf [rereading]
7  Slouching Towards Bethlehem  · Joan Didion [rereading]

I have to confess that the list has been so long in the blog's draft that I have already read five of the seven books. I'm not far into the Mary Gabriel one - its snappy full title is Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art - but can already recommend it. Gail Levin's biography of Lee Krasner was on my № 24 reading list. I can also recommend that one but if I had to choose between the two I would pick Ninth Street Women. Even though Gabriel doesn't go into details about the artists' childhoods, I find her book more enjoyable to read. It's also better designed and images of artworks are in colour. Levin's book about Krasner is obviously well researched but the text is sometimes too academic for my taste which restricts its flow. In my copy, a William Morrow paperback, the paper is of poorer quality and the images of Krasner's artwork are in black and white only.

Lee Krasner, The Seasons, 1957

images mine, the 2nd appeared on Instagram 05/11/20 | Lee Krasner artwork, Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Whitney Museum of American Art via Haus der Kunst