How dumb is this list of 'Top Twenty Books By Women That Changed The World'?

It always seems to be the way that when attempts are made to promote the life of the mind, they end up being particularly dumb. An instance, today, comes with the publication of a clickbaity list of the ‘Top Twenty Books By Women That Changed The World’, a promotional stunt ahead of Academic Book Week next week. We’re all encouraged to pile on the hashtag #acbookswomen and cast our votes – though the website as far as I can see doesn’t contain a mechanism to vote and the visitor has to guess at the books on the shortlist by squinting at a series of thumbnails of the covers.

Anyway I got a press release so I have a head start. The list, drawn up by a vaguely referenced group of ‘academics, booksellers, publishers and librarians’, is as follows:

A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft
Ain’t I A Woman? (1981) by Bell Hooks
Diary of a Young Girl (1947) by Anne Frank
Female Eunuch (1970) by Germaine Greer
Frankenstein (1823) by Mary Shelley
Gender Trouble (1990) by Judith Butler
Hite Report (1973) by Shere Hite
I am Malala (2013) by Malala Yousafzai
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) by Maya Angelou
Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) by Rebecca Skloot
Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bronte
No Logo (1999) by Naomi Klein
On Photography (1977) by Susan Sontag
Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) by Hannah Arendt
Room of One’s Own (1929) by Virginia Woolf
Second Sex (1949) by Simone de Beauvoir
Silent Spring (1962) by Rachel Carson
Unwomanly Face of War (1985) by Svetlana Alexievich
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race (2017) by Reni Eddo-Lodge
Women & Power: A Manifesto (2017) by Mary Beard