This women-only feminist book group is run by members of the London Feminist Network and pro-feminist women are welcome to join us. We meet from 7pm to about 9pm usually on the third Tuesday of the month in central London. For information about how to get involved, see our Join Us page or email lfnbookgroup @ yahoo.co.uk (remove spaces).
Check out the Calendar page for details of the venue, etc.
We aim to work out the list of books well in advance in order to give time to obtain and then read them. (Scroll down for ideas about how to get the books if you are having difficulty.) From time to time we discuss what books to add to the list and everyone is free to make suggestions.
| 15 January 2013 |
Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine
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| 19 February |
Intimate Wars by Merle Hoffman
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| 19 March |
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
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| 16 April |
Anti Porn: the resurgence of anti-pornography feminism by Julia Long
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| 21 May |
The Straight Mind and other essays by Monique Wittig
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| 18 June |
He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut (and 49 other double standards every woman should know) by Jessica Valenti
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| 16 July |
Man’s Dominion: The rise of religion and the eclipse of women’s rights by Sheila Jeffreys
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| 20 Aug |
The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue
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| 17 Sept |
Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin
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| 15 Oct |
50 Shades of Feminism
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| 19 Nov |
The Hidden Face of Eve – Women in the Arab World by Nawal El Saadawi
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Getting hold of the books
If you are having difficulty obtaining the books, you may want to try ordering them online. The ethical solution is to use an independent bookseller like Housman’s Online Bookshop or AbeBooks.
Another solution is to buy secondhand through Amazon. What I generally do is to go to http://www.amazon.co.uk/ and search for the book there. Once I’ve found it, I click the “Used” link. This lists independent book sellers who are selling the book second hand, often very cheaply, although there’s postage and packing on top. Generally I choose sellers who are based in the UK and who say they can despatch within a couple of days.
Alternatively, you could try your local library, if necessary ordering it. Sometimes they will buy the book for you and after you have finished with it, it will go back on the shelves to be enjoyed by other women. Ordering a book from the library sometimes takes some time, which is one of the reasons we work out the list of books well in advance.
Also highly recommended is The Owl Bookshop, 209 Kentish Town Road, London, NW5 2JU (020 7485 7793). They are open 9.30-6pm Monday-Saturday and noon-4.30pm on Sundays. If they don’t have the book in stock, they will try and get it secondhand for an admin charge of about £3, plus postage.
Books we’ve read
- Gyn/Ecology by Mary Daly
- Man Made Language by Dale Spender
- Women of the Revolution by Kira Cochrane
- Vagina: A new biography by Naomi Wolf
- Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
- Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism by Laurie Penny and How to be a Women by Caitlin Moran
- Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right by Robin Morgan
- Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis
- Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century by Sheila Rowbotham
- A History of Women in the West: Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War by Geneviève Fraisse
- Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks
- Who Cooked the Last Supper? by Rosalind Miles
- Reclaiming the F Word: The New Feminist Movement by Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune
- Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem
- Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- What Do Women Want? by Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach
- One Dimensional Woman by Nina Power
- Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present by Lillian Faderman
- The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf
- The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Women and Men Today by Kat Banyard
- Suffragettes: A Story of Three Women by Gertrude Colmore
- Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter
- From Homebreakers to Jailbreakers: Southall Black Sisters by Helena Kennedy (Foreword) and Rahila Gupta (Editor)
- Beyond God the Father by Mary Daly
- Self-made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man by Norah Vincent
- The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880-1930 by Sheila Jeffreys
- Black British Feminism: A Reader by Heidi Safia Mirza
- Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour by Maria Mies
- Small Expectations: Society’s Betrayal of Older Women by Leah Cohen
- Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
- Virgin: The Untouched History by Hanne Blank
- Provoked by Kiranjit Ahluwalia and Rahila Gupta
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- The Myth of Women’s Masochism by Paula Caplan
- Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West by Sheila Jeffrey
- The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It by Victor Malarek
- Ireland’s Hidden Diaspora: The ‘Abortion Trail’ and the Making of a London-Irish Underground, 1980-2000 by Ann Rossiter
- Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy edited by Barbara Ehrenreich
- The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage edited by Cathi Hanauer
- Bodies by Susie Orbach
- The Industrial Vagina by Sheila Jeffreys
- Back off! How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment and Harassers by Martha J. Langelan
- The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner
- Women as Revolutionary Agents of Change by Shere Hite
- Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing by Jill Radford and Diana E.H. Russell
- Herland and the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- Women of Ideas And What Men Have Done to Them by Dale Spender
- That Takes Ovaries! Bold Females and Their Brazen Acts by Rivka Solomon
- Encounters with Strangers: Feminism and Disability by Jenny Morris
- Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde
- The Politics of Reality by Marilyn Frye
- Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier
- Right Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females by Andrea Dworkin
- Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines (The Holdfast Chronicles, Books 1 & 2 – also known as The Slave and The Free) by Suzy McKee Charnas
- From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis by Cynthia Cockburn
- Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography edited by C. Stark and Rebecca Whisnant
- The Idea of Prostitution by Sheila Jeffreys
- Femininity by Susan Brownmiller
- The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas
- The Female Man by Joanna Russ
- Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- The Creation of Feminist Consciousness from the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy by Gerda Lerner
- Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
- My Mother My Self by Nancy Friday
- Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women by Susan Faludi
- Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy
- The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
- Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues by Catharine A MacKinnon
Ain’t I a woman: black women and feminism
