One of my shorter reading lists (though it is connected to many other lists) was "daughters".
It didn't start out as its own list. When planning reading, I kept confusing The Heretic's Daughter and Galileo's Daughter. Yes, Galileo was tried for heresy and forced to recant, but that wasn't in the title; The Heretic's Daughter refers to a witchcraft trial.
I noticed a title pattern, and there were six with no other connection. Mostly, I had read reviews or something about them that made me think they were interesting so I added them on Goodreads.
Well, I do love a theme.
The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss
Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution by Randal Keynes
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel
The Memory-Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Fire-Keeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley
In that configuration they connect to reading lists relating to complicated relationships between Asian parents and children, trauma, and adoption. Poised between the losses of both parents, I have been trying to catch up on them, but this was the first of those sections that I actually completed reading.
I recently completed the sub-section on Asian parents, which I mentioned, but I know there will be at least one other post later. For now, this seemed like a good topic leading up to Father's Day.
Some of them have come up before.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter and The Heretic's Daughter were read fairly close together for Spooky Season and got written then. The Strange Case and its series got a second post because of how incredibly annoying I found it, but The Heretic's Daughter was pretty gripping. I actually just adjusted my Goodreads' ratings for each in retrospect.
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/03/spooky-season-witches.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/03/spooky-season-series.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-sheer-unmitigated-gall.html
One of the books will come up later. Fire-Keeper's Daughter was about family issues, but it may relate more to The Seed Keeper, which then relates to Braiding Sweetgrass which has some other parallels. At some point, when I am ready to write about my Native American Heritage reading, there's going to be a lot.
To be fair, Fire-Keeper's Daughter was added later than the other five. It was published in 2021, and I know from other posts I had this list at least in 2022. Still, the title format seemed to fit.
(It did get a mention in the music post: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/01/songs-for-native-american-heritage-month.html)
I have not written about Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution and Galileo's Daughter exactly, but I wrote about some science reading last year. Reading those two books cast everything in a new light, especially the chapters on Galileo.
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/06/science-reading-list.html
Learning more about Darwin, at least from the Keynes book, was mainly an interesting look at how all of these famous names were connected. This happens in other times and places too, but is always kind of fascinating. Also, chronic digestive problems.
The review that interested me did not sound like the book I read, so that may be part of my ambivalence.
I also found a children's book when I was looking for it, though Etty is a different daughter than Annie, the focus of the adult book.
Etty Darwin and the Four Pebble Problem by Lauren Soloy. It's okay.
Galileo's Daughter resonated with me much more. I think it was better-written, but maybe it was more the sense of connection. There were places I had been and places I wanted to go and I felt a kinship. Shortly after finishing it we went to the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. There was a statue out front... well, there were three, but there was one that I knew right away was him and it was like finding an old friend.
https://sporktogo.blogspot.com/2026/01/los-angeles-griffith-observatory.html
Finally, I did not love the people in The Memory-Keeper's Daughter or their choices, but as I am working on a module about mental health treatment for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, I keep thinking back to a scene where a nurse looks around an institution and cannot leave the newborn baby girl there. It's easy to forget now how common it was then, but there are still effects, and it isn't completely done.
There is other media that comes back too; I know I will write more about that.
Have these books shed any light on my own relationships with my parents? It's probably too early to say. There are still other books to read.
I can see how all of it enriches each other, and that insights don't always come the way you expect them, or when you might expect them. I don't see my reading methods changing any time soon.
That's a lot of links already, but here's one more:
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