Here are 100 books that Letters to Alice fans have personally recommended if you like
Letters to Alice.
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After spending all of my adult life repeating the same codependent, unhealthy relationship patterns, I made it a point to devote an entire year to dating myself—to learn to love my own company and to become a little more reliant on my own internal strength. Since then, I’ve been passionate about showing others that there is a way to build ourselves up, especially if romantic relationships have consistently torn us down, that doesn’t have to involve swearing off dating forever.
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
I read A Room of One’s Own after my divorce and having—for the first time in my entire life—a place that was mine alone to decorate as I pleased. While Virginia Woolf was speaking on the macro, sociological struggles that women were facing during that time (the early 20th century), her words resonated with me to the present day.
Likewise, while it might be easier now for a woman to open a bank account or attend college than it was in 1929, the struggle of having our stories told and our identities outside that of mother or wife celebrated is still prevalent.
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.
Stories, essays & dialogues about art, imagination & the erotic life. A young man named Charles writes a series of erotic tales, and his bookish friend Lisa offers light-hearted critiques of them.
Some stories feel like erotic meditations or random erotic moments in a young man's life. Others start with…
All my life I loved her novels and often reread them, but in secret. My friends—in the 1960s—scoffed at her plots. When I began my career as a classicist, I went on rereading her novels when I should've been reading academic articles. Then by a stroke of luck, I ran across a sentence in one of her letters that alluded to an obscure area of classical literature. This changed reading her novels from a guilty pleasure to scholarly research. I questioned why she and members of her family concealed her learning. The reason shocked me. The people of her day believed that women who knew Latin and Greek were sexually frigid, sexually promiscuous, man-crazy lesbians.
Gilbert and Gubar take the reader on an exhilarating ride through women’s literature from Jane Austen to Emily Dickinson. Women writers freed female characters from their stereotypes in novels written by men—angels and monsters, dull virgins, and evil temptresses—to become friends, or people I would choose for friends if only they were real. The book’s title alludes to the first Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre, a haunting specter of the thwarted woman author raging at her bars.
"A feminist classic."-Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review
"A pivotal book, one of those after which we will never think the same again."-Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Washington Post Book World
A pathbreaking book of literary criticism is now reissued with a new introduction by Lisa Appignanesi that speaks to how The Madwoman in the Attic set the groundwork for subsequent generations of scholars writing about women writers, and why the book still feels fresh some four decades later.
All my life I loved her novels and often reread them, but in secret. My friends—in the 1960s—scoffed at her plots. When I began my career as a classicist, I went on rereading her novels when I should've been reading academic articles. Then by a stroke of luck, I ran across a sentence in one of her letters that alluded to an obscure area of classical literature. This changed reading her novels from a guilty pleasure to scholarly research. I questioned why she and members of her family concealed her learning. The reason shocked me. The people of her day believed that women who knew Latin and Greek were sexually frigid, sexually promiscuous, man-crazy lesbians.
Figes argues that although women novelists did not directly challenge the rules of a patriarchal society, they challenged its assumptions by protesting the restrictions on women’s lives and severely criticizing the clergymen, enablers of the patriarchy. My favorite section of the book is her interpretation of the Gothic novels, which she calls the female equivalent of picaresque novels. Women, she points out, were not permitted to roam the world like Tom Jones, having adventures. Instead, these novels presented women, who, through no fault of their own, are imprisoned by evil men. Their adventures, as they find their way to safety in foreign lands, prove their courage and intelligence.
Stories, essays & dialogues about art, imagination & the erotic life. A young man named Charles writes a series of erotic tales, and his bookish friend Lisa offers light-hearted critiques of them.
Some stories feel like erotic meditations or random erotic moments in a young man's life. Others start with…
All my life I loved her novels and often reread them, but in secret. My friends—in the 1960s—scoffed at her plots. When I began my career as a classicist, I went on rereading her novels when I should've been reading academic articles. Then by a stroke of luck, I ran across a sentence in one of her letters that alluded to an obscure area of classical literature. This changed reading her novels from a guilty pleasure to scholarly research. I questioned why she and members of her family concealed her learning. The reason shocked me. The people of her day believed that women who knew Latin and Greek were sexually frigid, sexually promiscuous, man-crazy lesbians.
I never saw any of these puzzles before I read Mullan’s book. By solving them, he goes deep into Austen’s novels, examining her miniature world as if with a microscope, offering the reader insights into the subtleties of her art: how people inadvertently reveal through their words what they would prefer to keep hidden or how Captain Benwick, a major minor character in Persuasion, comes across as a solid human being without the reader’s hearing him utter a word. The aspiring novelist can learn much from her tricks.
Is there any sex in Austen? What do the characters call each other, and why? What are the right and wrong ways to propose marriage? And which important Austen characters never speak? In What Matters in Austen, John Mullan shows that you can best appreciate Jane Austen's brilliance by looking at the intriguing quirks and intricacies of her fiction - by asking and answering some very specific questions about what goes on in her novels, he reveals their devilish cleverness.
In twenty-one short chapters, each of which answers a question prompted by Jane Austen's novels, Mullan illuminates the themes that…
I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time when I was ten years old, and I loved the book so much that I reread it a few months later. In my teenage years and early twenties, I thought that I was like Elizabeth Bennet—she’s witty and opinionated, goes her own way, and loves to read books and play the pianoforte. As I grew older, I realized that in many ways I'm more like Mary Bennet (social situations can be difficult!). Jane Austen always offers me new insights into my life, and her stories have become a sort of mythology, providing fertile ground from which writers and filmmakers have created their own works.
Jane Austen wrote and revised most of her novels in a cottage lent to her by her brother in Chawton, England. This book is a fictional account of a group of individuals in post-World War II Chawton who are all lost—or have experienced great loss. They band together in an attempt to save Jane Austen’s home from destruction. I loved getting to experience the story from each of the character’s perspectives, and the author’s prose is delightful. This novel is a testament to how people from all walks of life have been changed by Jane Austen, and how reading Jane Austen can save us.
'A wonderful book, a wonderful read' Karen Joy Fowler, bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club
Only a few months after the end of the Second World War, a new battle is beginning in the little village of Chawton. Once the final home of Jane Austen, the Chawton estate is dwindling, and the last piece of Austen's heritage is at risk of being sold to the highest bidder...
Drawn together by their love of her novels, eight very different people - from a local farmer to a glamorous film star - must unite to attempt something…
I've been book-besotted my entire life. I've read, studied, taught, reviewed, and written books. I went to “gradual” school, as John Irving calls it, earning a PhD in literature before gradually realizing that what I really loved was writing. For me, books contain the intellectual challenge of puzzles, the fun of entertainment, the ability to fill souls. They have changed my life, and the best compliments I have received are from readers who say my books have changed theirs. I read widely and indiscriminately (as this list shows) because I believe that good books are found in all genres. But a book about books? What a glorious meta-adventure.
Natalie Jenner sets her story of post-World War II feminism in a bookstore in England.
Three women, each of whom has proved their worth during the war years, must now face the fact that men are taking the reins once again. And yet, as Jenner makes clear, it is the women who have the intelligence, the ideas, and the skills to make this stagnant bookshop a vibrant and thriving place.
Jenner has done her research, and I love the way the setting and characters come alive, as do some real-life literary characters (always wonderful when that works). It's never a question that things will change at the shop—but how that happens makes for a delightful and satisfying read.
*Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Katie Couric Media, the CBC, the Globe and Mail, BookBub, POPSUGAR, SheReads, Women.com and more!*
Natalie Jenner, the internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society, returns with a compelling and heartwarming story of post-war London, a century-old bookstore, and three women determined to find their way in a fast-changing world in Bloomsbury Girls.
Bloomsbury Books is an old-fashioned new and rare book store that has persisted and resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the general manager's unbreakable fifty-one rules.…
I am grateful to my maternal grandparents, immigrants from southern Italy, who instilled in me a love for the Bel Paese that has inspired me all my life. I began to travel to Italy 45 years ago, and after writing for television—on the staff of Everybody Loves Raymond—I turned to travel writing. I’ve written 4 books about Italian travel, along with many stories for magazines. I also design and host Golden Weeks in Italy: For Women Only tours, to give female travelers an insider’s experience of this extraordinary country.
I have always loved visiting the city of Naples – for the great food, the rich history, and the warm locals who remind me of my southern Italian relatives. Ferrante’s novels go deep into the complexities of a female friendship that spans many decades, while also bringing to life a wide range of characters who I grew to love and truly care about, while devouring this extraordinary series.
The complete four-volume boxed set of the New York Times–bestselling epic about hardship and female friendship in postwar Naples that has sold over five million copies.
Beginning with My Brilliant Friend, the four Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante follow Elena and Lila, from their rough-edged upbringing in Naples, Italy, not long after WWII, through the many stages of their lives―and along paths that diverge wildly. Sometimes they are separated by jealousy or hostility or physical distance, but the bond between them is unbreakable, for better or for worse.
This volume includes all four novels: My Brilliant Friend; The Story of…
I am a science journalist and magazine editor. I feel really lucky to be a bioscience specialist – it really is at the forefront of solving some of the great challenges of our time, from making sustainable fuels and materials, to climate change mitigation, age-related disease, pandemics, food security, habitat restoration…plus there’s an incredible diversity of life on our planet still to be discovered. I always try to relate scientific progress to our everyday lives: it’s not just about creating new knowledge, it is about how that knowledge might improve our health, change our outlook, transform society, or protect the planet.
I’ve dipped into books about writing, storytelling, and scriptwriting before, and I’ve always found them to be utterly uninspiring, and in fact quite depressing – little more than a set of formulas to ensure your story’s structure is like other stories.
But Will Storr’s excellent book uses insights from evolutionary biology and psychology to help you get to understand why human minds love stories, and what it is about great stories that keeps readers turning the pages. His advice is powerful, simple – primal, even.
I’ve used this excellent book to help improve my writing and ensure my first book was a real page-turner. But The Science of Storytelling has also left a huge mark on me in terms of thinking about how and why we communicate. It’s for our own survival, after all.
'If you want to write a novel or a script, read this book' Sunday Times
'The best book on the craft of storytelling I've ever read' Matt Haig
'Rarely has a book engrossed me more, and forced me to question everything I've ever read, seen or written. A masterpiece' Adam Rutherford
Who would we be without stories?
Stories mould who we are, from our character to our cultural identity. They drive us to act out our dreams and ambitions, and shape our politics and beliefs. We use them to construct our relationships, to keep order in our…
I’ve loved the Regency era since first reading Jane Austen’s novels, but in writing my series of 19th-century adventure fantasies, I discovered there was so much more to the period than I’d ever dreamed. Though their culture and traditions aren’t like ours, I’m fascinated by how much about the lives of those men and women is familiar—the same desires, the same dreams for the future. I hope the books on this list inspire in you the same excitement they did in me!
Any tour of Regency England needs to start with the familiar, and Jane Austen’s Englandprovides an excellent overview of the geography, traditions, and politics of the period. Though the title says Jane Austen, I love how much detail it has on things Austen never wrote about, like childrearing and crime (especially counterfeiting, which you’ll have to read to believe!). Whether you read it cover to cover or search out interesting facts, this book has everything you need to start your journey.
An authoritative account of everyday life in Regency England, the backdrop of Austen's beloved novels, from the authors of the forthcoming Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege in British History (March 2018)
Nearly two centuries after her death, Jane Austen remains the most cherished of all novelists in the English language, incomparable in the wit, warmth, and insight with which she depicts her characters and life. Yet the milieu Austen presents is only one aspect of the England in which she lived, a time of war, unrest, and dramatic changes in the country's physical and social landscape. Jane Austen's England offers a…
I've been hooked on Jane Austen ever since my mom took me to see the movie Pride and Prejudice in theaters.After watching the movie, I bought all of her books and devoured them. I still wanted more, but what do you do when your favorite author has been dead for over 200 years? Well, you turn to fanfiction! After reading numerous sequels, twists, and retellings of my favorite novels, I began writing my own stories. As a stay-at-home mom of three kids, I've been blessed to be able to pursue my passion for storytelling while raising a family. Jane Austen continues to be my primary source of inspiration for my historical and contemporary romances.
This book also falls into the mystery subgenre of Jane Austen variations. The story takes place as a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, with Elizabeth and Darcy at the center of it. I found this story to be completely chilling, with a surprise twist at the end that I did not see coming. Ms. Jeffers delivered a page-turner that I couldn’t put down!
HAPPILY MARRIED for over a year and more in love than ever, Darcy and Elizabeth can’t imagine anything interrupting their bliss-filled days. Then an intense snowstorm strands a group of travelers at Pemberley, and terrifying accidents and mysterious deaths begin to plague the manor. Everyone seems convinced that it is the work of a phantom—a Shadow Man who is haunting the Darcy family’s grand estate.
Darcy and Elizabeth believe the truth is much more menacing and that someone is attempting to murder them. But Pemberley is filled with family guests as well as the unexpected travelers—any one of whom could…
