- “Everything i know about love” by dolly alderton
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“Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learned in my long-term friendships with women. Particularly the ones I have lived with at one point or another. I know what it is to know tiny detail about a person and revel in knowledge as if it were an academic subject.”
This book feels like the tightest hug from an older sister I never had. Alderton discusses the value of female friendships and how the lessons you learn from your female friends will follow you through the years. She also includes so many quick and easy college-friendly recipes.
- “Don’t call me princess: Essays on girls, women, and Life” By Peggy orenstein
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“To all the woman who recoil from the word ‘feminist’ she asks, what part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it the freedom to vote? The right to not be owned by the man you marry? ‘Vouge’ By Madonna? Jeans? Did all that get on your nerves? Or were you just drunk at the time of the survey?”
Orenstein’s writing and interview style is not only so engaging and funny to read, but I’m convinced this book has an essay for everyone. She interviews authors, poets, celebrities and scientists. The stories are so inspiring and there’s probably one on the career field you are aiming for.
- “The bell jar” by sylvia plath
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“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor,… I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
Ms. Plath is my favorite author in the world. From reading her works, you can see just how far women have come since the early 1960s and how common the struggles that we have today were with women from that time.
- “Just kids” by Patti smith
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“‘Hot or not, it’s time you started wearing a shirt. You’re about to become a young lady’ I protested vehemently and announced that I was never going to become anything but myself, that I was of the clan of Peter Pan and we did not grow up.”
Patti Smith is an icon that more people in our generation should know. Since we hold the privilege of getting higher education, we should be aware of the poets, musicians, writers and artists that came before us that didn’t have the privilege that we have now.
- “Malibu Rising” by taylor jenkins reid
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“She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring foward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.”
I wish I could list every book by Taylor Jenikins Reid on here, but I cannot — this one is my favorite. This book follows the Riva children, first generation children left to be raised by their older sister when their mother dies and their father decides he wants nothing to do with them. Each Riva child is interesting in their own way and it is impossible to find one that you cannot relate to.
All of these books were so hard to put down and easy reads, they also all have such a strong female protagonist and can teach us some lessons while still being fun reads!