Just a quick note on this. I just (re)finished one of my favourites - 'The Womens Room' and once again, loved it. It's a book I found by accident - it was on the sale rack of the used bookstore - and it's one that speaks to me on so many levels.
Great question!!

Very timely. I just finished a pretty good feminist non-fiction book, although I wouldn't necessarily call it a favorite. I'll have to think about this question - my immediate response is that "Our Bodies, Ourselves" was extremely formative in the development of my feminist thought.

I have just finished reading The Story of Jane Doe: A book about Rape. Brilliant. She was raped by a serial rapist in Toronto and then sued the police for failure to warn women about the rapist. In the book she discusses her treatment by the police and the court system with a feminist analysis that highlights how these systems are not set up for the well being of women. And for the ending: She won her case against the police.

Vera, if Word doesn't catch my grammar mistakes, I go with 'em. I totally admit to being an anti-grammar whore.

Right now I'm reading a book called "Reclaiming Klytemnestra" that's a really great summary of the myth and the feminist rewrites it has undergone in the last 50 years. One of my all time favorite feminist fiction works is "The Awakening" though a lot of people are down on it. I think it's amazing though and I'd be happy to defend it :) Maybe I'll explicate later.

Oh! Now that I think about it...

When I was a kid/young adolescent, from ages 10-14 or so, I was very into fantasy. I adored Tolkien and read many other similar books in the same genre. Sadly, I did not discover Ursula LeGuin until an adolescent lit course in college, but I did read a few other fantasy books with feminist undercurrents.

There was this one book I nearly forgot, called The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley. The hero, as it turns out, is a rebellious teenaged princess who discovers that her awkwardness and inability to conform to gender-expectations belies a strength no one else possesses as she teaches herself through old books ancient magic, takes up a sword and goes off to kill dragons, and has relationships with two different men who, unlike the other male characters in the book, view and treat her very much as an equal.

Yeah. I'd say that was good for a budding feminist to read.

I'm planning on reading My Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein. Someone in my feminist theory class last semester did a report on it, and it seems like a fun summer read on gender theory.

Hm, I know this has been brought up a million times before on WHB, but my favorite is still Cunt. I really like the blend of personal connection, political ranting, and sound advice.
Perhaps all the books brought up on this topic should be collected at the end of the work and added in one post to the Recommended Reading section?

As far as non-fiction is concerned, it's really hard to pick out books because most feminist writing I've come into contact with has been through the medium of shorter essays and extracts in anthologies. As an English graduate, fiction's always influenced me more than non-fiction, and the fiction I read as a child and teenager affected me most of all; full response is here.

Rather than pinpoint specific books, I can identify my favourite feminist (womanist) authors: bell hooks, Nikki Giovanni, and Pearl Cleage. A longer (and much more rambling) answer to the questions (or at least the first question) is posted on my blog.

My response is up here!

Thanks for the great topic!

I'm back! I'm glad to see that the site is back too, and better than ever.

I just finished reading The Mists of Avalon and I'm really impressed with it. I find it strange that Marion Zimmer Bradley claims not to be a feminist. Is she one of those, "I'm not a feminist but..." gals? I also just finished rereading Manifesta. It's one of my favorite feminist books because it lists ways to make change today, which is very inspiring. I'm a bit put off by the sheer whiteness of it, however. The best part is that IT listed several feminists books I've never read before, so I'll be looking them up as soon as possible to read before summer ends.

I really just listed my favorite feminist books here.