I am 25 and work at a papermill. I have been writing for a year or so now, but I do not read enough and it is holding me back.

Where is a good place to start? The authors I like the most (from a pretty small sample size) are Richard Fariña, Kerouac, Raymond Carver and Hemingway. I feel like while these guys have good books, I should be reading older guys like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, or some other names I have seen floating around here like Melville and Joyce.

I wish to live in a world where women are the dominant gender. Both physically and societally.