reading: #readwomen, poetry podcast, and A Room of One's Own

"Can a hashtag change reading habits?"

That was the question posed by Joanna Walsh in January, who declared 2014 as her year of reading women in the Guardian's Women's Blog. The hashtag went viral, probably as it was a direct way of reacting to a frustrating situation that has been addressed in repeating articles (and statistics, like the one by Vida Count), without much change.

Now, several weeks after the start, the readwomen-hashtag is still brimming with new entries: blog notes, reading suggestions, photos, quotes. Just looking at the tagboard gives the answer to the question "Can a hashtag change reading habits?" - Have a look: #readwomen2014

The great thing about the hashtag approach is that it's easy to join, and that it creates an impulse on a direct reader-level. Magazines and bookstores now start to pick up the trend, too. Parallel to that, the twitter-list itself is turning to a starting place to explore writing by women authors in all kind of formats.

Here are some of direct links:

• Out with the Old - a poetry podcast by Poetry Foundation: "Dorothea Lasky's charming, powerful poetry takes readers by surprise." (also, great to discover the Poetry podcast series altogether)
• Dignity by Suzen Rita Chang: a short story, with additional audio version included: "I didn’t come here on a boat...."
• VIDA Lit  Count 2013:  "First, the good news: A couple of giants in the original VIDA Count have begun to move..." + Charts overview
• A list of classic women writers, from 17th century to the 19th century
• For more, try the hashtag #readwomen2014 or visit the readwomen tagboard

A Room of One's Own 

The book I am reading right now is inspired by the hashtag, too: Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own". It' s from 1929, but the starting lines could be from today, addressing not a room in the first place, but the topic of women and fiction:

But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction — what, has that got to do with a room of one’s own? I will try to explain. When you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant. -- The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them, or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light..."

There's an online version available through the wiki-page A Room of One's Own + online edition. 

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Currently Reading + More Reads:

I am currently joining the “readwomen2014” initiative. Here’s more about that: 2014 - year of reading women

For more reading notes in this blog, click here: life as a journey with books

A reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

& Other book bloggers and their current reads: It's Monday! What are you reading?