FeministReadingList_Hero-Desktop_Penguin

Reading lists

The ultimate feminist books reading list

IWD_1800x1200-Main-Image_Penguin.jpg

Must-read books by women, as chosen by our readers

caitlin_ac1.jpg

Features

Caitlin Moran: ‘I thought I’d marry Douglas Adams’

Article-Card-funny-women-books.jpg

7 extremely funny books written by women

caitlin-moran-moranifesto-extract-788×306.jpg

Caitlin Moran: how books made me a feminist

What About Men?

'A must-read eye-opener that makes you laugh, cry, get angry and get happy on every page. It's magnificent' Bob Mortimer 
 
'I fall passionately in love with absolutely every single thing Caitlin Moran writes - and I've fallen very hard for this book... Eye-opener, page-turner, women-translator, guy-empowerer - put like that, I hope you'll agree it's incredibly reasonably priced' Marina Hyde 
 
'Our greatest modern writer on women turns her eyes on men - and it's all good' David Baddiel 
 
As any feminist who talks about the problems of girls and women will know, the first question you will ever be asked is 'But what about MEN?' After eleven years of writing bestsellers about women and dismissing this question, having been very sure that the concerns of feminism and men are very different things, Caitlin Moran realised that this wasn't quite right, and that the problems of feminism are also the problems of, yes, men. 
 
So, what about men? Why do they only go to the doctor if their wife or girlfriend makes them? Why do they never discuss their penises with each other - but make endless jokes about their balls? What is porn doing for young men? Is their fondness for super-skinny jeans leading to an epidemic of bad mental health? Are men allowed to be sad? Are men allowed to lose? Have Men's Rights Activists confused 'power' with 'empowerment'? And is Jordan B Peterson just your mum - but with some mad theory about a lobster? 
 
In this book, Caitlin intends to answer all this and more - because if men haven't yet answered the question 'What About Men?', it's going to be down to a busy woman to do it.

Caitlin Moran is the eldest of eight children, home-educated on a council estate in Wolverhampton, believing that if she were very good and worked very hard, she might one day evolve into Bill Murray. 
 
She published a children’s novel, The Chronicles of Narmo, at the age of 16, and became a columnist at The Times at 18. She has gone on to be named Columnist of the Year six times. At one point, she was also Interviewer and Critic of the Year - which is good going for someone who still regularly mistypes ‘the’ as ‘hte’. Her multi-award-winning bestseller How to Be a Woman has been published in 28 countries, and won the British Book Awards’ Book of the Year 2011. Her two volumes of collected journalism, Moranthology and Moranifesto, were Sunday Times bestsellers, and her novel, How to Build a Girl, debuted at Number One, and is currently being adapted as a movie. She co-wrote two series of the Rose d’Or-winning Channel 4 sitcom Raised by Wolves with her sister, Caroline. 
 
Caitlin lives on Twitter with her husband and two children, where she spends her time tweeting either about civil rights issues, or that picture of Bruce Springsteen when he was 23, and has his top off. She would like to be remembered as ‘a very sexual humanitarian’.

How To Be a Woman Quick Reads 2021

It's a good time to be a woman: we have the vote and the Pill, and we haven't been burnt as witches since 1727. But a few nagging questions remain... 
 
Why are we supposed to get Brazilians? Should we use Botox? Do men secretly hate us? And why does everyone ask you when you're going to have a baby? 
 
Part memoir, part protest, Caitlin answers the questions that every modern woman is asking.

How To Be a Woman

Listen to the brand new dramatisation of How To Be a Woman, narrated by Caitlin herself, as part of BBC Radio 4's Riot Girls season 
 
Selected by Emma Watson for her feminist book club ‘Our Shared Shelf’ 
 
 
It's a good time to be a woman: we have the vote and the Pill, and we haven't been burnt as witches since 1727. However, a few nagging questions do remain... 
 
Why are we supposed to get Brazilians? Should we use Botox? Do men secretly hate us? And why does everyone ask you when you're going to have a baby? 
 
Part memoir, part rant, Caitlin answers the questions that every modern woman is asking.

How to Build a Girl

The Sunday Times Number One coming-of-age bestseller from the author of How To Be a Woman - soon to be a major motion picture.

Brilliantly observed, thrillingly rude and laugh-out-loud funny

An entertaining read, with Moran in fine voice – hilarious, wild, imaginative and highly valuable…Moran is in danger of becoming to female masturbation what Keats was to Nightingales…

A Portnoy's Complaint for girls… when I see this book described as "laugh-out-loud funny" I feel affronted; it could make you laugh out loud with one hand tied behind its back, while wanking itself off to fantasies of Satan. Laughing out loud is just the start

spirited coming of age novel romps from strength to strength…I’m a Moran fan

Moran also writes brilliantly about music, and especially about what music can do. She carries Johanna through this novel with incredible verve, extravagant candour, and a lot of heart. Johanna is … a wonderful heroine. A heroine who cares, who bravely sallies forth and makes things happen, who gives of herself, who is refreshingly unashamed. She’s so confident, it’s glorious

there’s so much real feeling too. Johanna’s vulnerability and bravado, as she moves out of her world and falls in love is beautifully done’ or ‘ and running through it all, with a visceral power that most writers should envy, is the shame and grinding anxiety of being poor

This isn’t a sleek, slick novel, but it is a rambunctious, raw-edged, silly-profound and deeply relatable guide to what your worst mistakes can teach you, and it has much to offer teenagers both actual and inner

Binge-read all of #HowToBuildAGirl in one sitting. Even missed supper. A first

She writes with breathtaking brio…Moran shows her shining soul — which is even more remarkable than her wit — when she writes about being young, looking for love and the utter vileness of the class system . . .almost every page has something on it which makes you smile, makes you sad or makes you think — often all three at once, in one sentence

A riotous read with jokes galore cut through with lightly handled serious observations about the nature of poverty and the challenges of emerging female sexuality. It is also stunningly rude…

Exuberant, funny coming-of-age tale with a highly-literate, resourceful Wolverhampton teen at its centre. As building girls goes this is one alternative instruction manual every woman should read

The self-conscious agonies of precocious yet sensitive Dolly ring painfully true, while the witty sex scenes, boozy anecdotes and one-liners make this great fun…

An exuberant coming of age novel in DMs and ripped tights

So funny it hurts. How to Build a Girl is Adrian Mole meets Fear of Flying. I predict they’ll be tears a plenty – both of laughter and excruciating recognition – on sun-loungers this summer

Moran is a brilliantly funny writer, and How To Build A Girl is brimful of jokes

This very British (and very naughty) coming-of-age novel will have you in literal hysterics!

terrific - funny, honest and deliciously rude

This is going to be a bestseller…A sharp, hilarious and controversial read

I laughed aloud at this funny, outrageous story of a girl from Wolverhampton council estate who reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde

as irreverent, amusing and vibrant as Moran herself

rowdy and fearless ... sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways

Ms. Moran['s] ... funny and cheerfully dirty coming-of-age novel has a hard kernel of class awareness ... sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways.

This is going to be a bestseller…A sharp, hilarious and controversial read

Soon to be a major film directed by Coky Giedroyc and starring Ladybird's Beanie Feldstein as Johanna Morrigan and Game of Thrones's Alfie Allen as John Kite 
 
My name’s Johanna Morrigan. I’m fourteen, and I’ve just decided to kill myself. 
 
I don’t really want to die, of course! I just need to kill Johanna, and build a new girl. Dolly Wilde will be everything I want to be, and more! But as with all the best coming-of-age stories, it doesn’t exactly go to plan… 
 
A Number One Sunday Times bestseller in hardback and paperback, from the award-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of How to Be a Woman.

Are Men Obsolete?

A witty and enlightening debate on gender from four of our most talented feminist writers and critics

Caitlin Moran (Author) 
Caitlin Moran is the eldest of eight children, home-educated on a council estate in Wolverhampton, believing that if she were very good and worked very hard, she might one day evolve into Bill Murray. 
 
She published a children’s novel, The Chronicles of Narmo, at the age of 16, and became a columnist at The Times at 18. She has gone on to be named Columnist of the Year six times. At one point, she was also Interviewer and Critic of the Year - which is good going for someone who still regularly mistypes ‘the’ as ‘hte’. Her multi-award-winning bestseller How to Be a Woman has been published in 28 countries, and won the British Book Awards’ Book of the Year 2011. Her two volumes of collected journalism, Moranthology and Moranifesto, were Sunday Times bestsellers, and her novel, How to Build a Girl, debuted at Number One, and is currently being adapted as a movie. She co-wrote two series of the Rose d’Or-winning Channel 4 sitcom Raised by Wolves with her sister, Caroline. 
 
Caitlin lives on Twitter with her husband and two children, where she spends her time tweeting either about civil rights issues, or that picture of Bruce Springsteen when he was 23, and has his top off. She would like to be remembered as ‘a very sexual humanitarian’. 
 
Camille Paglia (Author) 
Self described 'dissident feminist', Camille Paglia is a professor of humanities and media studies and at the University of the Arts in Phildelphia. Her books include Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson and Sex, Art and American Culture. She was a founding contributor and columnist for Salon and writes about art, literature, popular culture, politics and religion for publications around the world. 
 
Hanna Rosin (Author) 
Hanna Rosin is the author of The End of Men and a national correspondent at The Atlantic, writing about American culture. She is a writer and editor for Slade, and writes for The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ and The Washington Post, among others. 
 
Maureen Dowd (Author) 
Pulitzer-prize winning writer and author of Are Men Necessary?, Maureen Dowd has been a New York Times columnist since 1995. She has served as the White House correspondent and has covered four presidential campaigns.

‘Men are so last century. They seem to have stopped evolving. The Mad Men world is disappearing and the guys are struggling to figure out the altered parameters of manliness.’ 
Maureen Dowd 
 
‘Do women get anything from men being obsolete? Do we win by triumphing in work, education, the economy, politics and business, while retaining homemaking and child rearing? If that happened then we will be doing everything! Are men obsolete? No! I won’t let you be you f*****s!’ 
Caitlin Moran 
 
Are Men Obsolete is an essential and entertaining read for anyone interested in what happens next in the great gender discussion. Maureen Dowd, Caitlin Moran, Camille Paglia and Hanna Roisin debate whether modern man is past his sell-by-date, and, if so, what does that mean for women?

How to be Famous

The laugh-out-loud Richard & Judy Book Club bestseller to read this summer

The Sunday Times Number One bestseller from the author of How to Build a Girl about a young woman making it in a world where men hold all the power.

Who better than Caitlin Moran to bring fame down to earth with a bump

HELEN FIELDING, bestselling author of Bridget Jones's Diary

It's quite a ride, this book. It's laugh-out-loud funny, sweetly romantic and fiercely angry. Often all at once ... beautifully written

A deeply satisfying tale of sex, drugs, britpop, unrequited love, London, and a narrator I completely adore. This is funny, philosophical, and poignant in equal measure. Glorious and life-enhancing

Brilliantly funny, caustic social commentary with the best-wish fulfilment revenge scene I've read, like, ever

A rollicking fantasy which leaves a rosy afterglow

A glorious life-affirming love letter to teenage girls, pop music, best friends and that one guy you'll never get enough of

Moran's words are, as always, kind, tender and achingly funny. This is a real love letter to teenage girls and North London - if this book was a popstar I'd be putting its posters up on my wall and doodling its name all over my Maths book

DAISY BUCHANAN, bestselling author of How To Be A Grown-Up

On every page you'll find yourself tits-deep in word treasure. A filthy, gutsy, exhilarating call to arms

EMMA-JANE UNSWORTH, bestselling author of Animals

A machete-sharp follow up [to How to Build a Girl] ... boasts a rogue's gallery of brilliant characters familiar to anyone who has ever read the NME

The dazzlingly gifted Moran makes mythic the maligned, misunderstood, momentous 1990s. Prose crackling and fizzing with charm, mischief and passion, she is the sharpest, funniest, most influential writer of her generation, which is also my generation, annoyingly

This gloriously rude, rambunctious read, finds Moran applauding the much-maligned music choices of teenage girls, figuring out the rules of how to be famous and celebrating the importance of getting good and angry about the rubbish stuff that happens to young women

Funny feminist Johanna Morrigan is back...a rude, raucous and necessary book

A fist-pumping celebration of being female. In the same way that many of us will have recognised our twenty-year-old selves in Cat Person, most women will see something of their teenage sexual encounters in this book

An electric roundhouse kick to the heart. Warm, piercing, sexy and fucking hilarious

LAUREN BEUKES, bestselling author of The Shining Girls

As you'd expect from award-winning Moran, this book is brash, razor-sharp and full of heart

The Sunday Times bestselling Richard &amp; Judy Book Club favourite 
 
'Being Moran, the jokes and one-liners fizz and crackle off the page' Richard's Review 
 
'As usual, Moran writes fearlessly, openly, honestly and incredibly funnily about sex - especially bad sex' Judy's Review 
 
___________________________ 
 
I'm Johanna Morrigan. It's 1995. I'm nineteen and I live in the epicentre of Britpop. Parklife! 
 
My unrequited love, John Kite, is busy with a Number One album, world-tour, drugs, and a nervous breakdown. 
 
So, I've started hanging out with hot young comedian Jerry Sharp. Big mistake. 
 
"He's a vampire," my friend Suzanne warns. "One of those men who destroys bright young girls. Also, he's a total dick." 
 
Unfortunately, I've already had sex with him. Bad sex. And now, I'm one of the girls he is trying to destroy. 
 
I know I have to stop him. But how does one girl fight a famous, powerful man? 
 
A novel about friendship, feminism and finding your place in the world.

Caitlin Moran

The instant Sunday Times number one bestseller

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER 
 
'Exceptionally brilliant and powerful' Marina Hyde 
 
'This book is a hilarious memoir, a passionate polemic, and a moving manifesto on how to be a decent person and try, in the face of countless stresses, to live a full open-hearted, joyous life' Sunday Times 
 
A decade ago, Caitlin Moran thought she had it all figured out. Her instant bestseller How to Be a Woman was a game-changing take on feminism, the patriarchy, and the general 'hoo-ha' of becoming a woman. Back then, she firmly believed 'the difficult bit' was over, and her forties were going to be a doddle. 
 
If only she had known: when middle age arrives, a whole new bunch of tough questions need answering. Why isn't there such a thing as a 'Mum Bod'? How did sex get boring? What are men really thinking? Where did all that stuff in the kitchen drawers come from? Can feminists have Botox? Why has wine turned against you? How can you tell the difference between a Teenage Micro-Breakdown, and The Real Thing? Has feminism gone too far? And, as always, WHO'S LOOKING AFTER THE CHILDREN? 
 
Now with ageing parents, teenage daughters, a bigger bum and a To-Do list without end, Caitlin Moran is back with More Than A Woman: a guide to growing older, a manifesto for change, and a celebration of all those middle-aged women who keep the world turning.

Caitlin Moran

Books by Caitlin Moran

Can men be feminists?

Read more

Must-read books by women, as chosen by our readers

Caitlin Moran: how books made me a feminist

7 extremely funny books written by women

Sign up to the Caitlin Moran newsletter