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Launched today is a search for the top 10 life-changing novels for women. There's an article in today's Independent, and Women's Hour on Radio 4 is also involved.

Nominations are open until Oct 22, with a longlist of 30 published after that, and then a shortlist of 10, with the results on Dec 8. The books can be written by men or women from anywhere in the world, and of course men can vote too (presumably for the book giving the best insight into the female psyche).

To get it started, 400 women (academics, judging from the results) were asked to nominate the novel that had made a difference to their lives.

The top 40 results are:

Douglas Adams – The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Louisa May Alcott – Little Women
Maya Angelou – I Know why the Caged Bird Sings
Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
Jane Austen – Persuasion
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte – Villette
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
Albert Camus – The Stranger
Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness
George Elliot - Middlemarch
George Eliot – The Mill on the Floss
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
Gustav Flaubert – Madame Bovary
Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections
Joseph Heller – Catch 22
Frances Hodgson-Burnett – The Little Princess
James Joyce – Ulysses
Jackie Kay – Trumpet
D.H Lawrence – The Rainbow
Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
Doris Lessing – The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing – The Grass is Singing
C.S. Lewis – The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
Gabriel Garcia Marquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude
Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca
Margaret Mitchell – Gone With the Wind
Toni Morrison - Beloved
Marcel Proust – Remembrance of Things Past
J.D Salinger – Catcher in the Rye
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
Donna Tartt – The Secret History
J.R.R Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings
Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
Edith Wharton – The House of Mirth
Jeanette Winterson – Oranges are not the only Fruit
Jeanette Winterson – The Passion
Jeanette Winterson – The Powerbook
Virginia Woolf – Mrs Dalloway

Apparently, the current No 1 is Jane Eyre.

Well, I'd agree with some of these (Mill on the Floss) but not with others (Little Women????). Actually I've only read 11 of them . There's loads of books I've enjoyed reading, but I'm struggling to think of one that has really changed my life.

There are some fab books on there!

Now, I understand stuff by the Brontes being there... Jane Eyre too... but as a bloke I cannot possibly fathom what the Hitchiker's guide to the Galaxy has done for women?!?

Maybe its does stuff for women but also does that same stuff for men?!?

ANYWAY...

i havent read it yet. or any of those other books...

actually, i have. the Catcher in the Rye is my favourite book ever ever ever. i like the Great Gatsby too.

I agree with Egor

Same with
catch 22
To kill a mockingbird
Lord of the rings

and Catcher in the rye is a very male-orientated book surely

Is that the point though?

maybe it's just books that women should read because they're good books rather than actually having anything to do with women in particular?

i remember i went through a phase a few years ago when i thought it would be cool to call my son Holden. good job i never got knocked up!

Well, in The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy it demonstrates than any hitchiker worth his salt will carry a towel with him or her anywhere he goes... maybe they meant a sanitary towel and it was thus good advice to any women thinking of travelling? But life changing...

Wow, I'm being weird.

Personally I'm bored of all this feminism and discussion of the sexes lately, there were two discussions on it on Richard and Judy just now, its always the same old same old, blah!

For the record I don't normally watch Richard and Judy, its way too painfull

i think women and men are already pretty equal. almost.... too equal, in fact.

Good point, women get to have much sexier and nicer looking bodies than us men... which is unfair... ...ergo, you should all be our (my) slaves

I don't see the point of this poll to be honest, I mean, did any of these novels seriously make women go "Oh my gosh, I shall no longer be repressed... to the observatory at once!"... I think so many of them could be cross-gender... be much better if the poll was... ACK DANG NABBIT! Plus, its always guys not understanding women, I know this is changing, but there is still far too little about women not understanding guys, and there are all these presumptions about guys and stuff, the majority of things that are seen as being a 'women thing' I can see in myself, that is, mental things, not physical, altho if I gain anymore weight...

What am I talking about?

*shrugs*

i understand men perfectly, as long as they speak english.... but thats only cos i read the Great Gatsby and the Catcher in the Rye

and maybe it's only Essential Books For Women because men are too silly to be able to read books

I love the Catcher in the Rye too, Jemzie! It´s one of the best books I have ever read. I would love to read the original English version some day.

If any of you guys could suggest which one is best to read then I might go out and get it! I'm really bad at getting round to read a book so I need something that is going to grab me straight away!

'the catcher in the rye' and 'the great gatsby' are both awesome books, and really short too!