# Recommend a book with strong/equal women **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 25, 2008, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136 "2008-06-25T00:43:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![starryspice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9e8a1a/32.png) [@starryspice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/starryspice)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/1 "2008-06-25T00:43:41Z")
I have just finished reading The Peabody Sisters (a biography of three smart women in 19th Century New England, who try very hard to express their genius in a male-dominated intellectual circle), and then Little Women, where the author espouses freedom and feminine docility in the same breath. Now I am reading Girls of Riyadh, which is (at least at the beginning) a little depressing regarding the affairs of women. I’ve really enjoyed all of these books, but I’m getting a little tired of reading about women being second to men. So, can anyone recommend a book to me that portrays women as equals to men, where this is the natural state of affairs? This is probably not all that hard, but I can’t think of any right now, and I’d really like to read something with a little bit of equality to it. To give you an idea of what I’d really like right now: a book version of Battlestar Galactica, where the women are interesting, complex, daring and ambitious, just as much as the men are, but without beating the reader/watcher over the head. Thanks for any and all suggestions! ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/2 "2008-06-25T01:19:06Z")
Well, [The Baroque Cycle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_cycle) series of books by Neal Stephenson (_Quicksilver, The Confusion, System of the World_) is a really long series that isn’t just about strong women, but…one of the 3 or 4 main characters in the series is a woman named Eliza who is fantastically smart, sexy and gutsy. I’d say maybe 1/3 of the entire series revolves around her. Mixed in with the other fictional characters are non-fiction characters including some of the female royalty that was pretty kickass in the 17th century. ---
**Author:** ![phil417](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/6bbea6/32.png) [@phil417](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phil417)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/3 "2008-06-25T02:08:08Z")
Is fiction okay? Do you like murder mysteries? Karen Harpen has a series featuring Queen Elizabeth I (The Hooded Hawk, The Poysen Garden, among others). A favorite of mine is Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum mysteries (One for the Money, (not a favorite), Two for the Dough, etc, up to (her latestFearless Fourteen) My personal favorite is Hot Six, which introduces Bob the dog (love the dognap-after-eating-a-box-of-prunes scene) and features Stephanie’s Grandma Mazzur (I love that woman!) Also on the strong women list is Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone series (A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, etc) Kinsey’s stuck in the '80’s, but still the equal to any male opponent she comes up against. Hope this helps. Love, Phil ---
**Author:** ![phil417](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/6bbea6/32.png) [@phil417](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phil417)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/4 "2008-06-25T02:11:51Z")
Sorry, one o’ these days, I’ve really got to learn to edit before I post. Love, Phil ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/5 "2008-06-25T02:14:41Z")
The Nantucket trilogy(Island in the Sea of Time is the first) by S.M. Stirling features as one of it’s most important characters, a woman named Marian Alston. She’s a Coast Guard captain who is caught up in the fantastic Event that overtakes the island. Capt. Alston becomes the island’s warleader. She’s female, black, lesbian, and doesn’t take crap from anyone! She’s one of my favorite characters in the series. ---
**Author:** ![Helena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c68b51/32.png) [@Helena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helena)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/6 "2008-06-25T04:16:22Z")
[QUOTE=starryspice] To give you an idea of what I’d really like right now: a book version of Battlestar Galactica, where the women are interesting, complex, daring and ambitious, just as much as the men are, but without beating the reader/watcher over the head. [/QUOTE] Have you read Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series? ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/7 "2008-06-25T04:53:52Z")
[QUOTE=phil417] Sorry, one o’ these days, I’ve really got to learn to edit before I post. Love, Phil [/QUOTE] Yes, you do. I’d also take issue with you on Stephanie Plum being a strong woman. Headstrong, yes. Strong, no. She only gets by on dumb luck, or did when I quit reading the series. If you’re talking about Grandma Mazzur being the strong woman, yeah, I agree, she is. I told my daughter that I was gonna grow up to be just like Stephanie’s Grandma, and she turned pale. I do not now, nor do I ever plan to, eat peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/8 "2008-06-25T06:56:18Z")
The _Honor Harrington_ books by David Weber feature a number of strong female characters, particularly the titular character, although as far as the main character goes, it DOES tend to beat you about the head with her awesomeness (but not nearly as much as a few of Honor’s opponents get beaten about the heads by, well, Honor’s forearms. Later books and spinoffs introduce some better balanced characters, but the series is very entertaining). The _Vatta’s War_ series features a number of female characters who are strong in a wide variety of ways, particularly the Vatta women themselves, in a wide variety of ways (in the first book we mostly only see Ky Vatta’s tactical abilities, but a number of her female relatives and friends are shown to be highly skilled and self-sufficient in a variety of ways (and many of them are shown to start off young and stupid, later receiving degrees from the University of Hard Knocks) The Horatio Hornblower books feature a few strong female characters, notably Barbara Wellesley Hornblower (who Hornblower only realizes very late in his life is routinely able to outsmart him), Marie du Gracay (widow of a French revolutionary army officer and later a pro-Bourbon guerilla fighter). ---
**Author:** ![Av8trix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/90db22/32.png) [@Av8trix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Av8trix)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/9 "2008-06-25T09:19:04Z")
Dropped in to second the Honor Harrington series. Space Navy, strong female character, treecats, what more can you ask for? 😉 David Weber also authored ‘Path of the Fury’, a story set in a similar futuristic universe, with sort of an up-to-date bionic woman/soldier theme (with a little Greek mythology tossed in for good measure) Weber seems to enjoy his strong female leads! -A- edited to add: what more can you ask for? how about “free”? [http://www.baen.com/library/](http://www.baen.com/library/) “On Basilisk Station” is the first book in the Honor Harrington series. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/10 "2008-06-25T10:03:29Z")
If you want something with threats of literature? > **[Paladin of Souls: A Hugo Award Winner (Chalion series, 2): Bujold, Lois...](https://www.amazon.com/Paladin-Souls-Chalion-McMaster-Bujold/dp/0380818612)** > > Paladin of Souls: A Hugo Award Winner (Chalion series, 2) \[Bujold, Lois McMaster\] on Amazon.com. \*FREE\* shipping on qualifying offers. Paladin of Souls: A Hugo Award Winner (Chalion series, 2) Try this. Paladin of Souls. ---
**Author:** ![adhemar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@adhemar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhemar)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/11 "2008-06-25T10:05:53Z")
Read Queen of Denial and Recycled by Selina Rosen. Adhemar [QUOTE=starryspice] I have just finished reading The Peabody Sisters (a biography of three smart women in 19th Century New England, who try very hard to express their genius in a male-dominated intellectual circle), and then Little Women, where the author espouses freedom and feminine docility in the same breath. Now I am reading Girls of Riyadh, which is (at least at the beginning) a little depressing regarding the affairs of women. I’ve really enjoyed all of these books, but I’m getting a little tired of reading about women being second to men. So, can anyone recommend a book to me that portrays women as equals to men, where this is the natural state of affairs? This is probably not all that hard, but I can’t think of any right now, and I’d really like to read something with a little bit of equality to it. To give you an idea of what I’d really like right now: a book version of Battlestar Galactica, where the women are interesting, complex, daring and ambitious, just as much as the men are, but without beating the reader/watcher over the head. Thanks for any and all suggestions! [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![JustThinkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@JustThinkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustThinkin)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/12 "2008-06-25T12:00:56Z")
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath] If you want something with threats of literature? > **[Amazon.com: Paladin of Souls: A Hugo Award Winner (Chalion series, 2):...](https://www.amazon.com/Paladin-Souls-Chalion-McMaster-Bujold/dp/0380818612)** > > Amazon.com: Paladin of Souls: A Hugo Award Winner (Chalion series, 2): 9780380818617: Bujold, Lois McMaster: Books Try this. Paladin of Souls. [/QUOTE] Any of the three in this series would do it. Curse of Chalion Paladin of souls Hallowed Hunter (?) They all take place in the same world. 1 and 2 are vaguely related and 3 is completely unrelated. They can easily be read separately. The place to look for strong and equal female characters is definitely sci-fi and fantasy. The genre often creates cultures that assume equality rather than just having strong female leads in an unequal culture. ---
**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/13 "2008-06-25T14:41:57Z")
Tanya Huff’s \*Valor \*books are a military sci-fi series featuring a tough-as-nails female marine sergeant. There’s a refreshing lack of attention given to gender: nobody is in the least surprised at the competent female marines. There are a lot of aliens in the book and differences of gender pale in comparison. These are very well written. And Lois McMaster Bujold’s books are great. I like Miles Vorkosigan, but two of my favorites in this series are the first two books about Miles’ mother. ---
**Author:** ![fessie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@fessie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fessie)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/14 "2008-06-25T14:55:56Z")
_Gone With the Wind_ ---
**Author:** ![davidw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@davidw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidw)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/15 "2008-06-25T14:56:56Z")
Anything by Octavia Butler. All of her protagonists are strong women. I particularly love the Lilith’s Brood books. ---
**Author:** ![davidw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@davidw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidw)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/16 "2008-06-25T15:05:24Z")
Anything by Octavia Butler. All of her protagonists are strong women. I particularly love the _Lilith’s Brood_ books, and I’d also recommend _Parable of the Sower_ and _Parable of the Talents_. And the _Patternmaster_ series. Hell, everything by Octavia Butler. Another writer who often features strong/independent women is Salman Rushdie. I’d recommend _The Moor’s Last Sigh_. One book that I just finished that I’d also add is _The Hummingbird’s Daughter_, by Luis Alberto Urrea. ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/17 "2008-06-25T15:20:45Z")
Elizabeth Moon’s “Deed of Paksenarrion” trilogy is good. Paks starts out as a recruit in a mercenary company where it’s assumed women can fight, die and lead on the battlefield. StG ---
**Author:** ![Richey84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Richey84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richey84)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/18 "2008-06-25T17:40:35Z")
If you want to stick with New England, _The Scarlet Letter_ is fantastic. ---
**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/19 "2008-06-25T18:27:59Z")
Joe Haldeman’s sci-fi is usually pretty good about casually portraying women as equals. _The Forever War_ is a classic, a Hugo winner, and his \*Worlds \*series has a strong female protagonist. ---
**Author:** ![Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazle_Weatherfield)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2008, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136/20 "2008-06-25T18:48:59Z")
How about the “Anne of Green Gables” series? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-a-book-with-strong-equal-women/454136.md?page=2)