Literature has a math problem

The Bible, the bestselling book ever, names about ten times more men than women. Woman's World asked Ann Patchett for older books that put women at the center instead.

Why backlist

Patchett picked five books that already exist on shelves rather than fall's new releases. Each one hands the narrative to a woman and keeps it there.

“These backlist books place women in the center of the action.”

The Odyssey led her here

Patchett saw the new Odyssey film and immediately thought about books. Her recommendation: read Madeline Miller's Circe, written by a friend of hers.

“Like everybody else in the country, I went to see the Odyssey, and what did it make me think of? It made me think of books.”

Circe gets a backstory

Samantha Morton plays Circe well on screen, Patchett says, but Miller gives the witch a whole life. Banished by Zeus, Circe turns mortals into monsters and picks a side between island and gods.

“She puts the witch at the center of the narrative. It is such a great book!”

Readers lose hours to it

One reviewer described looking up from Circe with no idea how much time had passed. The book has been called a celebration of female strength in a man's world.

“This is one of those rare novels that pulls you in so completely you look up hours later.”

Persepolis, told in panels

Marjane Satrapi's two-volume memoir is drawn like a comic book. Volume one follows her in Tehran from age 6 to 14 as the Islamic Revolution builds.

The return volume

Book two, The Story of a Return, follows Satrapi as a young adult leaving Vienna for the war-torn country she fled. Satrapi died in June 2026, making this a good moment to read her.

Patchett is behind too

A Parnassus Books coworker raved about both volumes, and Patchett admitted she has only read the first. She saw the film years ago and loved it.

“I am your target audience because I read volume one and I haven't read volume two.”

A 1997 obsession

Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things sold over 6 million copies and won the Booker. Patchett remembers a year when everyone she knew had read it.

“I didn't know a single person who hadn't read this book in 1997.”

Ammu and the caste line

Set in India from 1969, the novel follows a divorced mother whose affair with a lower-caste worker breaks the rules. Her young daughter narrates much of it, trying to make sense of the code.

“Roy's book is about true love thwarted by family and society.”

Roy on her mother

Mother Mary Comes to Me is Roy's 2025 memoir, written through the grief of losing the fierce matriarch who founded an educational empire. Patchett listened to Roy narrate it herself.

Read the two together

The memoir tracks how Roy became a novelist, filmmaker, actress and political activist. Patchett calls it a master class and tells book clubs to pair it with her first novel.

“Do yourself a favor. Read these two together.”

House of Mirth, minus the sobbing

Patchett cried over Edith Wharton's novel in her twenties, then a friend called it funny. She reread it, found pure pleasure, and now rates Lily Bart's story above The Age of Innocence.

“Sometimes when you go back to the old classics that you read when you were young, it feels a little bit like work. House of Mirth felt like nothing but pleasure.”