Happy Friday! This post is pre-written, so apologies if you leave a comment and it takes me a couple of days to respond.

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly bookish discussion meme created by Rukky @Eternity Books and co-hosted by Aria @Book Nook Bits and Dini @DiniPandaReads. Each Friday, bloggers will write posts about a particular topic and share on their blog.

March is Women’s History Month and March 8 is also International Women’s Day. 
In honour of this month celebrating women, let’s talk about the women who’ve shaped our reading lives. Was there (or is there)  a woman in your life who sparked your love for reading? 

I have been very lucky to have a handful of women in my life who have encouraged my love of books. The main one is, of course, my mum. Books have always been in my life, my dad used to read to me every single night when I was very small, but it was my mum who would take me out to the library and the bookshop when I could read by myself.
Even now I’m in my 30’s she’s still my number one reading champion, always interested to see what I’m reading, asking what’s being sent to me and of course liking all my bookstagram posts haha. She’s started reading a bit more herself over the last year or so too, and while we have different tastes, she’ll occasionally read one of my books and it’s always so nice to chat with her about them. We even did a couple of buddy reads of some mystery books and it was just the best.

Who was the first woman author you remember loving?

So I was a Jaqueline Wilson kid growing up, like I am sure most girls living in the UK in the 90’s was. I read all of her books as they were published, and I suspect many of us enjoyed them because her characters were so real and relatable to a teen girl.

The first female author I would say that I genuinely loved, though, would be Kristen Britain. Yes, yes, broken record over here. I had never reread a book before I read Green Rider. I actually finished it the first time, and immediately went back to page one without putting it down. This is still a series I reread regularly, 20 years after that first time.

Do you tend to read more books by women authors and do you think that’s for a reason?

I do! In 2025, over 70% of my reads were by women authors. I don’t intentionally choose to prioritise women authors a lot of the time (sometimes I do), but I find that they write the books I am the most interested in reading. This has definitely shifted in recent years. When I first started reading fantasy books, my choices were heavily male-author-dominated. I think that is quite a normal thing, as male authors do tend to get put on the pedestal of ‘great fantasy writer’, so a lot of new readers to the genre will pick them up first. Now that it’s been a while, I seek out books on my own, and I generally gravitate to titles written by women.

My reading has veered more into the literary and contemporary side of things of late, though still often within the fantasy sphere, and I’ve found that these sorts of books seem to be written more by women. I enjoy the layered character work and introspection that they seem to capture so well in words. Now, I’m not saying that men can’t write that sort of thing (I have certainly enjoyed such works by men), only that I have personally found more women-authored books that have these traits.

I am also influenced by the readers I surround myself with. Most of them are women, and a lot of them also tend towards books written by women, so I am just generally exposed to more of those books.

You Tell Me: Who is your favourite woman author?