Reading and diversity - which author are you reading?

Jo Zebedee

Jo Zebedee

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There's a whole furore on since a blogger asked if anyone would be prepared not to read genre fiction by white male authors and try something different. The backlash has been pretty huge, right into the Guardian today. I don't intend to go into whether or not we should be (although I'll state for the record, I'm fond of reading books I like and don't choose by the colour and sex of the author - whether the industry gets enough books by diverse authors into my hand might be another argument altogether.) What I wondered, actually, is what author are we currently reading? Is there a real bias or is it perceived?

I'll set the ball rolling -I'm reading Lois McMaster Bujold.
 
I read lots of LGBT fiction, so in your face! :p Been reading Good Omens for the past few months though. Been far, far too busy to read. If you don't know the authors of Good Omens, shame on you!
 
Oh boy. Scalzi, Abercrombie, and now Butcher...I'm on a roll!
 
Interesting thread. I occasionally chide myself for not reading more widely, but can't say I act on it.

Anyway, of the last 10 books I've completed, I've read 6 by males, 4 by females; 9 by westerners (4 Brits, 6 Americans), 1 by an African (Nigerian). Currently finishing a fantasy by an American woman.

I'm pretty sure that if I go to the next to last ten or the ten before that, it won't really get more diverse, and if I look to the anthologies/collections I've been dipping into, I can't say there's much more diversity.

Hmmmm ... I suppose, if to some degree one reads to for a perspective on the world, this is not a good sign.

Randy M.
 
After I've finished Arcanum by Simon Morden I'll be reading Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon.

Liz Bourke, writer of Tor.com's feminist blog Sleeps With Monsters issued a similar challenge round about October 2013. To read only female authors for six months. I took the challenge. I read 18 books by women back to back. Prior to that I'd read 3 in about 5 or 6 years. I didn't think I chose books by gender but the proof was in the numbers. I wasn't even aware I was doing it. I try to be better.
 
Nechtan said:
To read only female authors for six months
Click to expand...
What a really stupid challenge.

Even names don't indicate sex. I had no idea Robin Hobbs is a woman till after 3 or 4 books. Makes no difference to me.

I have to now check I have a suitable quota of different sorts of Authors? Madness.

The ultimate desitination of that is like the story where the Ballet Dancers had to wear glasses to make their vision bad and wear weights. Choice of story should be purely on merit and sort of stuff you want to read.

For a start I only read English language texts.
Other that that I only take an interest in who the author might be AFTER reading the book.
The sex, culture, skin colouration etc of the Author are not relevant.
I refuse to deliberately seek out a mix of actual genders, sexual orientations, skin colours, religions, cultures to chose a book. That is discriminatory and dishonest.

Nor do I wish to read propaganda (even for causes or ideologies I support) disguised as entertainment.
 
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To be very clear - this thread isn't about whether or not the challenge was a good one (there is enough of a flame war going on all over the internet elsewhere, I didn't start the thread to begin one here.) hence my emphasis was on - is it valid? Do we read mostly one demograph of authors, based on posts. If posts indicate that is the case, I might start a second thread regarding why that might be and whether that's a good thing, but I was clear in my OP that that wasn't the intent of this thread.
 
I don't think I do. I think the whole idea smacks of self righteous people that think they ought to decide what you read. Obviously the cultural and national mix of what I read is limited to what is available in English.
I don't think you can base it on posts in this forum either, as the genres represented here may have a cultural bias. I've not heard anyone in 50 years suggest male or female SF&F are better or worse. There are just authors people like and ones people don't.

I think the whole subject is stupid.
 
Again, as mentioned in my OP, this was a blog about genre fiction. Because, sadly, genre fiction is one of the categories most dominated by one demograph of writer.

You may think the whole subject is stupid, but at least one other poster has felt differently and, I think, there are valid lines which may come out of it - not least how genre publishing operates and does it ensure diversity. That is a huge subject with agents and publishers at the moment and must be relevant to any writer of genre - because their subs are being judged against that agenda at the moment. And this is a forum with a lot of aspiring writers on it.

But, again, can we stay off the topic of whether or not the blog was right or wrong, and on the subject of what we, as genre readers and the focus of the blog, are reading. Cheers.
 
My last fantasy author was Anne Lyle. And Alanna Knight with her borderline fantasy/cosy mystery/police stories.

Before Anita Desai (who to be honest I don't know if she's genre). I'd read Julian Clary.

I do think a lot depends on how widely you read. I don't restrict what I read beyond good story, good character. I'd find it very difficult to read mostly white, straight males.
 
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springs said:
what author are we currently reading? Is there a real bias or is it perceived?
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I'm currently reading Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, because it's a famous book, and I want to get a technical idea of why it was so popular. So far I'm enjoying it. :)

I suspect that most dedicated SFF fans aren't particularly concerned with anything other than "is this a good story?". However, in the wider world prejudice clearly exists in all sorts of different ways. SFF in itself is geeky, and I know some people (family!) who will even avoid watching films that are SFF, for fear of being seen to be a geek.

Whether SFF is dominated by white males is perhaps a thread in it's own right. Especially as, so far as I understand it, JK Rowling, Suzanne Collins, and Stephanie Meyer, have together outsold every other SFF author ever published.
 
Ray McCarthy said:
Really?
Frankly I find that a crazy suggestion.
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Well of the 20 top selling genre writers as posted by @Brian Turner recently 15 were male. IIRC all are white (but there are two in there I'm not sure of.) looking at the rest of the list a quarter or thereabouts are women. And that's a combined list - if it was sf alone I think it would be lower again.

http://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/551775/

But if you want to discuss that, perhaps do so in a new thread, or continue that one. I'm just wondering what people are currently reading and if it correlates to a dominant demograph. Not what they should be reading.
 
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springs said:
There's a whole furore on since a blogger asked if anyone would be prepared not to read genre fiction by white male authors and try something different. The backlash has been pretty huge, right into the Guardian today. I don't intend to go into whether or not we should be (although I'll state for the record, I'm fond of reading books I like and don't choose by the colour and sex of the author - whether the industry gets enough books by diverse authors into my hand might be another argument altogether.) What I wondered, actually, is what author are we currently reading? Is there a real bias or is it perceived?

I'll set the ball rolling -I'm reading Lois McMaster Bujold.
Click to expand...

Currently I am on a star trek binge reading Greg Cox books.

I think this is a stupid issue one I am just getting to know more about. I'm not huge on social media/forums and I like civility so I never heard the racial stuff bubbling up. This seems very similar to gamergate (a really silly controversy, in hindsight) and I can't help wondering if the same people have instigated this stuff. In my (mostly political) experience online trolls are extremely powerful! They can take over whole communities and shut down common sense discussions.

I have never chosen any type of media for the skin color, race, sex or nationality let alone books. I turn things off or shut them if they are uninteresting and boring to me. Or if they have an in your face type political agenda I wasn't expecting. But sometimes I continue reading or watching anyway. In fact, I am pleasantly surprised if I am watching a new TV Show or reading a new book to find out that some author, director, writer, or producer that I have heard of worked on it. That usually only makes me want to watch it or read it more.
 
Yes. But who is actually buying these top sellers? Is the top 20 actually really representative of regular readers (Top 10 Music charts or Cinema grossing for example doesn't reflect real tastes).

Many I've never heard of.
Iv'e read about 14 authors in the the top 20. About 5 you couldn't pay me to read another of their books.

I have bought some top sellers. JK Rowling (but not as yet any post HB book) and Terry Pratchett (almost all). I have some Clive Cussler. I've never bought Dan Brown or Stephen King and have no intention of reading either. My wife has a bunch of books I might read eventually.

Also do you mean SF or F or SF & F by genre? genre on its own without a qualifier might mean something today, but certainly it used to need a prefix word.

I read Romantic, Adventure, Spy, Tech thriller, Detective, Historic Fiction, Fantasy, SF (all kinds, even TV /Film spin offs), Kids books. Certain genres I prefer.

Obviously if more books in particular genres have particular gender or cultural weightings and are published, then percentage readers have may not reflect any reader bias at all.
If in fact the majority of published books in areas I like to read are in reality biased, then you'd expect my reading to to be similarly biased if I chose purely on merit.

Why should ANY other basis than merit be chosen?

I've no idea of the ethnic mix of my library. But if males are over represented in SF& F publishing or detective, then I must think the female authors I have are better.

Without PROPER statistics (and top 20 grossing of anything isn't a proper statistic) I can't see were this discussion can go other that opinionated hearsay.
 
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