Plenty of female authors

I wonder how many men had a partner or spouse look at the April 9 Outdoors section item, “Best books for when you can’t go far,” and comment: Fourteen books chosen and they can’t find one written by a woman?

I don’t want to claim that latent sexism went into the selection of those titles listed; many of them are worth the attention and acclaim. It is odd, however, that two current-day journalists (one from Duluth, the other an S-R staffer) were unable to conjure up one or two noteworthy titles written by a woman

It is not that hard. Here’s a short list that would have provided one or two works that more people should read: “The Sun is a Compass: A 4,000 Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds” by Caroline Van Hemert; “The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World” by Shivya Nath; “Desert Cabal: A New Season for the Wilderness” by Amy Irvine; “Seasons: Desert Sketches: by Ellen Meloy; “Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North” by Blair Braverman; and the classic bike tale “Full Tilt: Ireland to India With a Bicycle” by Dervla Murphy.

That list was fairly easy to develop. I’d be curious to know what other books S-R readers would add to it.

Tom Sowa

Spokane