Und noch eine Liste - "Chick Lit"

Die Bestenlisten scheinen derzeit ueberall in Mode zu sein. Am Samstag lief in der kanadischen "National Post" ein Artikel zu einer Umfrage, die die BBC und Orange Prize for Fiction veranstaltet hatten. Es geht um die Romane, die Frauen am meisten lieben.

Hier ist der Artikel "Womanly Heights"

"In a preliminary attempt, 400 women from the chattering classes -- academics, publishers, teachers and journalists -- have compiled a long list of 40 books. It is headed by two fairly predictable heart-throbbing classics with female heroines -- the Bronte sisters' Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

It is highly improbable that men would have voted for Beloved by Toni Morrison, the radical black American writer, or for three titles by Jeanette Winterson, but they easily might have picked The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Heart of Darkness, The Great Gatsby, Catch 22, Remembrance of Times Past and The Lord of the Rings.

Distinct feminist reads such as Germaine Greer's The Female Eunoch and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar do not appear on the new list. The preliminary poll was by Annie Watkins, a researcher at Queen Mary's College, University of London, and Lisa Jardine, professor of renaissance studies there. They gave the 400 women the task of naming a "watershed" book, one that was "a seminal female read" and a novel that had changed the way that women saw themselves, that was an inspiration to women but also one that "offered a confirmation of your own dilemmas" or that "gave you strength." It could be written by a man or a woman.

"I do think that women prefer women writers," says Watkins. "I think that it's about having an ally. I think it would be more natural for a woman to write strong female characters.

"But it is complicated. Men have their own take on women that women wouldn't have and I am certain that women like that, too."

An enduring fascination for great passions explained why Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights came out on top, she says.

Two entirely different types of female reader identified with the heroines -- the ones who admired the passionate, risk-taking and dangerous Cathy in Wuthering Heights, and those who fell for the plain, unexciting Jane Eyre, who managed to triumph in love despite her ordinariness."

THE REST OF THE LONG LIST

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams

Little Women Louisa M. Alcott

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou

Persuasion Jane Austen

Villette Charlotte Bronte

The Stranger Albert Camus

Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad

The Mill on the Floss George Eliot

The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald

Madame Bovary Gustav Flaubert

The Corrections Jonathan Franzen

Catch 22 Joseph Heller

The Little Princess Frances Hodgson-Burnett

Ulysses James Joyce Trumpet Jackie Kay

The Rainbow D.H. Lawrence

To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee

The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing

The Grass is Singing Doris Lessing

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe C.S. Lewis

One Hundered Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Rebecca Daphne du Maurier

Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell

Remembrance of Things Past Marcel Proust

Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger

Frankenstein Mary Shelley

The Secret History Donna Tartt

The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien

Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy

The House of Mirth Edith Wharton

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Jeanette Winterson

The Passion Jeanette Winterson

The Powerbook Jeanette Winterson

Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf