The NYT asked authors Gillian Flynn and Cheryl Strayed to discuss women authors and women characters and the experience of having your runaway best-seller optioned for a movie adaptation by Reese Witherspoon.

Usual K. LeGuin was the recipient of an award for her distinguished contribution to American letters at the National Book Awards (hence her inclusion in this week's #ReadWomen2014) and she used the acceptance speech to throw shade at the literary community for largely ignoring writers of genre fiction, like herself. She also is not a fan of Amazon, apparently.

Meanwhile, there were some surprises in this year's National Book Awards recipients; I was very pleased to see Louise Gluck and Jacqueline Wilson win for poetry and young people's fiction, respectively, and was very surprised that Marilynne Robinson didn't take home the prize for Lila, which is certainly still a contender for every other major literary award for 2014.

I wish I could tell you all about the many Usual K. LeGuin books I've read and loved, but I am woefully behind on her work. She was an author I specifically intended to get know through the #ReadWomen2014 experience, and I have failed miserably, but I won't let that stop me from recommending her.

Her work is often described as science fiction or fantasy, but she is a genre fiction writer who defies and transcends her own genres on a regular basis. Most of her major novels fall into two series, but it isn't necessary to read them in any kind of special order; the series define the fictional universe in which the short stories/novels take place, but there is no need to feel bogged down or intimidated by some kind of massive and demanding commitment to a book series. If you have read more of her work than me (i.e. any of her work), leave your impressions in the Comments.