Margaret attwood

[marissab]

I adore handmaids tale. I love the futuristic 1984-ish bleak future themes. Are her other books along the same themes? I don't know whether they'll live up to HMT.

I really enjoyed A Handmaid's Tale & just read Surfacing on holiday which was also good. It wasn't long so I even got to read a second book. We were only away for a week, so I was delerious with happiness - reading is the biggest activity I have missed since having my son in 2010.

I liked it - and (other than the lovely Jane) I tend not to like books by women much either (increasingly so as I get older and fussier/crabbier).

• delirious

It's quite spare and doesn't waffle on in the way that I think some of her others do.

Don't worry, AF. I bet you wouldn't pronounce Y as "epsilon" in a French sentence, so you are already much better than DH

What a strange pronouncement, to "not like books by women"

Why ever not ?

She's my mum

steben Oh! I didn't know Oryx & Crake/After The Flood was going to be a trilogy. V Excited now! I bloody love Margaret Atwood.

She's one of the few authors whose books I re-read frequently. HMT, Alias Grace, O&C and The Penelopiad are amongst her best IMHO. Cats Eyes really affected me. I wept.

I like all of MA's books but as I get older find them a bit naive. Much prefer Rose Tremain

Because I am fed up of women either overwriting and trying to be all 'poetic' on the whole. Maybe I've chosen the wrong women in recent years.

If you are basing your assessment of recent female "authors" on that person that "wrote" 50SOG then I might agree with you, Remus

:) I read one paragraph. It was more than enough.

Love Margaret Attwood although I struggled with Oryx & Crake. Favourites are Robber Bride, Blind Assassin & Edible Woman as I really related to the main character & always hoped for a 'Duncan' to save me (never happened & I had up do it myself).

Might give Oryx & Crake another go, I didn't know it was part of a trilogy.

I dislike a lot of male authors in particular Ian McEwan who although is a good writer seems to have a very 'male' pov and is also obsessed with sex!

AF - Because books by women authors tend to focus on feminine issues, bickering between women, and feeeeelings all of which I find profoundly uninteresting on every level.

I just checked my Kindle account now - Out of 37 books I have read last year, only 6 were written by women and I loved 2: Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke Of Insight, which is a brain scientist's auto-biographical account of her stroke and subsequent years of recovery.

If you want obsessed with sex, try Pat Barker. 'Still Life' was beyond ridiculous.

Actually, looking back many years, I think I had to have more than one jump at Oryx and Crake to get into it

Since then, I have had several

I love Margaret Atwood. IMHO, The Hanmaid's Tale is surpassed by Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride.

I just have to say that I hate the use of 'critique' as a verb. A critic criticises {something} and the resulting criticisms, taken together, form a critique.

There, now I've got that off my chest.

If Ian McEwan is "obsessed with sex", what does that make Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski?

kitten, it was a light-hearted, tongue in cheek comment

honest

Kitten - A critique can be positive, in which case it is not a criticism.

So, you can't really say "A critique criticises something".

What was? I just hate "critique" used as a verb, it's such an X Factor sort of word.

And AF wasn't even using it as a verb. She was using the word "critiquer" as "someone who criticises", although that word in French would be.....

A critique