Reading and diversity - which author are you reading?

[Ray McCarthy]

I appreciate what you're trying to do, but you can't bring up a topic like this and then say "I don't want to discuss the issue, just have everyone list the books they're reading to see if it's true." For one, humans don't work that way. For two, no offense, but we already HAVE a big thread where every poster lists what they're reading. You can go through that thread and compile all the data you want and it would be better than the random moment-in-time snapshot you'd get here. Unless we're discussing whether we're actually reading women/minorities, how is listing what we're reading right now in this thread any different from putting it in the March thread?

This in essence is what I was trying to say badly, I'm not against people widening horizons or spring's aims.
I'm sceptical that reading books for entertainment is much related to gender or cultural or ethnic equalisation or whatever. Or that reading black feminist fiction is useful to help me treat women better or give them equality or whatever the agenda of these people is.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

5) Most tellingly, the OP and the article it references discuss minority authors or non-western authors, yet half the posts here are by people claiming they ARE multi-cultural because they're reading a book by a woman. It's still a white, Western woman, so get off your high horse. You're not reading Swahili and, especially if you're already a woman, you're probably NOT expanding your horizons. If this white male has to read black women lit to be a decent person, they you ladies need to start reading reading more Heinlen or David Weber so you can better understand western male masculinity.

6) As to the ostensible goal of this thread, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but you can't bring up a topic like this and then say "I don't want to discuss the issue, just have everyone list the books they're reading to see if it's true." For one, humans don't work that way. For two, no offense, but we already HAVE a big thread where every poster lists what they're reading. You can go through that thread and compile all the data you want and it would be better than the random moment-in-time snapshot you'd get here. Unless we're discussing whether we're actually reading women/minorities, how is listing what we're reading right now in this thread any different from putting it in the March thread?

But no one is saying, on this thread, that they're multi-cultural because they're reading a book by a woman. At least, I can't see ANY comment to that effect. In fact, no one's claiming to be anything saintly, that I can tell.

And, um, because I didn't think of the monthly book thread. If I had done, and had time, I might just have done that.

And, with reference to me having aims, I don't. I stated in my first post that I choose my books on merit and don't worry about who the author is. I have no agenda in this - if I had, I would have phrased the thread differently. All I wondered was, given this blog - which is everywhere at the moment, all through facebook and twitter - claimed that people were reading predominantly one demograph in genre fiction, if that was the case on the Chrons. I had in mind, if it threw up it was, that I might extend it to a writing thread, maybe looking at whether that trend had an impact on querying, or into a publishing thread, asking if publishing was guiding genre reading too much. Then, I might have had aims. But not in this one.

(I've been pretty consistent on that, I think. I can't help what others read into it, but my statement is bald - I wondered if, on a sff website, it was true that the genre wasn't diverse in its readership. Not if it was right or wrong, or if it should or shouldn't be an issue, just if it was replicated. If that was a dopey thing to ask, or in the wrong place, then my bad. But that's all the thread was about...)

 

[Mouse]

But no one is saying, on this thread, that they're multi-cultural because they're reading a book by a woman. At least, I can't see ANY comment to that effect.

Was just about to say this. Even went back to check in case I'd missed something.

 

[soulsinging]

And, with reference to me having aims, I don't. I stated in my first post that I choose my books on merit and don't worry about who the author is. I have no agenda in this - if I had, I would have phrased the thread differently. All I wondered was, given this blog - which is everywhere at the moment, all through facebook and twitter - claimed that people were reading predominantly one demograph in genre fiction, if that was the case on the Chrons. I had in mind, if it threw up it was, that I might extend it to a writing thread, maybe looking at whether that trend had an impact on querying, or into a publishing thread, asking if publishing was guiding genre reading too much. Then, I might have had aims. But not in this one.)

Sorry, just want to clarify I was using the royal you... you as in said blogger/acolytes, not you specifically the poster (especially since I do recognize you very clearly did not adopt or condemn the blogger's views).

That said, I don't think the thread is dopey at all. It's clearly something people find interesting and want to discuss... I just think unfortunately for your stated purpose, they want to discuss the original argument put forth by the blogger rather than listing books

I'll also state that, for the record, this debate will likely be moot in a few years. I think the reason for demographic slants in books is simple: money. Books are expensive to make and at retail, so they're a luxury both in terms of production and possession. That means that for most of modern publishing, only westerners had the means and access to them. On top of that, literacy was very rare until basically the last 100 years, particularly outside the first world, making for a very small market there. The places with populations large enough to support a market comparable to the west either deliberately prevented their people from reading (China) and were too poor to really develop a generation of leisure readers (latin and south America). So you're left with really only the west, and primarily English by sheer force of numbers. You wind up with mostly white men because until the last 40 years white men ran that society. So you have mostly white male authors for basically the entirety of the publishing era up until only very recently.

And people react strongly because guys like me say "why is that my fault and how does me wasting time and energy going out of my way to read books I don't want to make the world a better place somehow?" We also tend to think that when people are starving and cutting heads off all over the world, we have more important things to worry about than any particular interest group feeling like enough of their representatives aren't getting books published, especially when most of us understand it's primarily a business holdover from times that are already dying out and practically obsolete.

Since I view it as a business supply/demand thing, this is all going to change. Many cultures that were too poor or oppressed to develop a literate middle class have come a long way. E-readers make producing and distributing books cheaper than ever. I think this ancillary demographic bias in literature is on its last legs and it has nothing to do with "heroic" efforts to urge people to read more multiculturally and everything to do with increasing literacy and decreasing publishing costs allowing native speakers/writers of other languages and cultures to produce and consume their own work. At which point I am sure all these people complaining about this issue now will move to China to complain about how everyone there just reads Chinese authors and is too close-minded to read about the problems of western white people.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

all through facebook and twitter

Not the real world, except for BBC.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Not the real world, except for BBC.

Funny that, because a lot of us spend time there.... Anyway, it was in the Guardian yesterday, too. The beeb will be next.

@soulsinging, thanks for the clarification on the you. Actually, I've often wondered how much it's about what's read in specific cultures - I imagine there's a whole host of, for instance, Chinese, authors, who are massively popular and I've simply never heard of. Maybe being a worldwide name is reserved for the very, very, few, and it's all moot - we like to read our own cultures? But I don't know - I have no research to back that up. I'm just a-wondering.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Springs, Outlaws of the Marsh is one of my favourite books (well, it's in a series of volumes and is over 2,000 pages long, but still). It's one of four Chinese classical mega-novels (the others are Journey to the West, Three Kingdoms, and Dream of the Red Chamber [aka Story of the Stone], the last of which I haven't read as part 1 was bloody tedious).

http://thaddeusthesixth.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/exotic-books-outlaws-of-marsh.html

 

[Vince W]

Funny that, because a lot of us spend time there.... Anyway, it was in the Guardian yesterday, too. The beeb will be next.

@soulsinging, thanks for the clarification on the you. Actually, I've often wondered how much it's about what's read in specific cultures - I imagine there's a whole host of, for instance, Chinese, authors, who are massively popular and I've simply never heard of. Maybe being a worldwide name is reserved for the very, very, few, and it's all moot - we like to read our own cultures? But I don't know - I have no research to back that up. I'm just a-wondering.

I don't think it's that we like to read about our own cultures at all. SFF lends itself to exploring different and alien cultures. While alien cultures are completely fictitious, one of my favourite parts of reading in general is to explore some of the exceedingly interesting cultures on our own bit of the universe. If I find a SFF book written that takes place not in UK/US, I usually buy it.

Most recently The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, was not only an extremely good story, but also a fascinating look at Chinese culture during the Cultural Revolution and then today. I'm very excited for the next two books to come out.

 

[The Bluestocking]

One look at my bookshelf and I can see that I read mostly female authors with a few male authors in the mix.

Right now I'm on a Georgette Heyer binge, punctuated by Brandon Sanderson's FIREFIGHT and Deborah Harkness's A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES. Possibly (finally!) starting on Cinda Williams Chima's SEVEN REALMS series and trying out one of Lisa See's books.

Always good to have a mix, though I must admit that I can't stomach or get myself interested in certain genres that are (still) male-dominated such as Thrillers, Crime, Military, and certain schools of Horror (though I absolutely adore a good creepy ghost story).

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

1) No, they're not identical arguments. Maybe it's my legal training, but those aren't even close to the same argument and one is MUCH more close-minded than the other. Saying "I'm not going to waste time going out of my way hunting down books/authors I have no interest in just because someone else feels I don't read enough multicultural lit" is not even close to the same as saying "I will never read a book by a foreign author."

Considering the gender disparity between male and female authors, male readers have to go out of their way to find non-male authors and as we live in the West the vast majority of people are caucasian, so caucasian readers have to go out of their way to find non-caucasian authors. Passively shrugging and 'accidentally' just happening to read white male authors is quite possible. So whilst the argument may not be identical the result is practically indistinguishable.

2) You are completely trivializing the worst case scenario. Maybe you're one of those lucky folks that reads 100 books a year and one bad one is no big deal. I only have time to read about 10 books a year and if I read one that stinks, I'm out money I can't afford to lose (again, some of us are on VERY tight budgets) and I'm out leisure time that is priceless to me. The best case scenario is I read a book I like as much as the other book I would have read and it may or may not give me a "new lens." (I'm not even going to touch on how racist it is to assume a non-white male author has to be "different" or the assumption that white male authors have nothing new to say simply because they are white men)

Everyone's time is precious. Everyone's money is precious. Your time is no more valuable than mine; your money is no more valuable than mine. I have little of both myself. So yes, I'm out just as much time and just as much money as you are if I read a stinker.

It's not racist to acknowledge that people who have not lived a similar life to your own may have different perspectives on things than yourself. I grew up fairly poor, though not grindingly so (not that I could tell at least), near a descent-sized city. White and male. I have no experience with farming. No experience what it's like to be a woman. No experience with what it's like to have society judge whom I love. No experience what it's like to be a minority. No experience what it's like to be super-rich (or anything more than hand-to-mouth, really). Writers write what they know and inject their experiences into their fiction, focus on things that engage them or matter to them as people. I don't mean a political ideology or cause, simply that different people experience the world differently and so can't help but write from different perspectives. A writer with experiences very similar to mine might have experiences different than mine, but a writer with vastly different life experience will have a much wider range of different experiences than mine.

3) Why is it ok to assume that there is no way I can view the world in a new way by reading a white male author? Why are ONLY minority and women authors capable of challenging my pre-conceived notions?

Because their experiences are so markedly different from yours. This is answered above, really.

7) Why do I read mostly white men? Because I grew up speaking English and can't read any other languages. Even most foreign lit I can get my hands on is going to be translated by... a white guy. Are people going to attack me for only reading books in English?

So somehow speaking English equates to reading mostly white men. That's a bizarre argument to make. Do only white men speak English suddenly? I missed the memo on that. Seems they would have sent something round about it.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Clive Cussler books alternated with Georgette Heyer works
But I prefer SF & F
alternate Joan Aiken, Mary Stewart, Ray Bradbury and John Windham.

Or just read C J Cherryth, Anne McCaffery and Ursula Le Guin. With a dash of Harry Harrsion, Larry Niven and Ben Bova.

Maggie Furey and Robin Hobb with a filling of Bob Shaw or James White?

 

[ratsy]

I'm beginning to see a trend with my own reading. I looked back to see which authors I have read since December

Django Wexler
John Scalzi
Chris Guillory
Ralph Kern
Brandon Sanderson
Douglas Hulikc
Patrick Rothfuss
Joe Abercrombie
Jim Butcher

And the sole female author, Mercedes Lackey's Arrows of the Queen

I think it is indicative in the genre that I mainly read, that males do dominate it. I have a few series by women..Kristen Britain, Trudy Canavan, Gail Z Martin, Rowena Cory Daniells, Janny Wurtz. (and yes, I'm sure there are many more out there) All in the fantasy genre. Also Robin Hobb may be my all time author, or at least she has written some of my favorite books.

I don't go looking for any sort of writer in particular. An alien or a dog could be the author if they wrote something I'd be interested in.

 

[MWagner]

Men account for only 20 per cent of the fiction market in the UK, US, and Canada. Most of the biggest best-sellers of the last 20 years have been written by women (Harry Potter, Bridget Jones, Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, Hunger Games). The Romance genre is penned almost exclusively by women, the Mystery genre has at least gender parity, and healthiest market today - Young Adult - is dominated by women. Historical Fiction is also dominated by women (though it's sub-genre of swords and sandals fiction is dominated by men). So I don't see any particular need for hand-wringing over the imbalance in SFF authors. I don't believe there's any sort of oppressive agenda (even unconscious) behind the disparity. Collectively, men and women tend to have different interests. And frankly, if I'm going to get alarmed about the demographics of reading, it's going to be over the cratering of reading for pleasure among young men. Hard to get worked up over the male orientation of one small subset of publishing when fiction and reading in general are overwhelmingly a female interest.

For my part, I read at least as much historical fiction as SFF, and since historical fiction is dominated by women, around half the fiction I read is written by women (Mary Renault, Sharon Kay Penman, Rosemary Sutcliff, Pauline Gedge, etc.). On the SFF front I've recently read C.J. Cheryh, and I have a Robin Hobb on my to read pile.

 

[Bick]

Author I'm reading now: William Golding

Authors I've read recently (this year):
Clifford D. Simak
Samuel R. Delaney
A. E. van Vogt
P. G. Wodehouse
Honoré de Balzac
Alastair Reynolds
C. J. Cherryh
Alan Dean Foster
Poul Anderson

So, that's 10 authors, 9 white, only 1 female. I provide the statistics as that's what springs was after, but I have no inclination to change my reading habits, and couldn't care less what the gender or race is of the authors I read. It doesn't give me pause for thought or cause me to wring my hands. Such thinking is silly as other posters have pointed out. The kind of books I like are/have been written predominately by men.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

There is a difference, though, between being expected to read books we don't like and the suggestion that we might try something different from our usual as an experiment to find out if we might like it after all. Since there is no rule that we have to finish a book once we start it if we find we dislike it, it doesn't sound like such a time-consuming exercise to me. But then I have a lot of reading time myself, so perhaps I am not able to judge what might seem like a waste of valuable time to those who can only snatch a few hours a week to read any fiction at all.

I have heard of men who write romance fiction, either under their own names or pseudonyms (here is just one of many articles about some who do http://airshipdaily.com/blog/the-secret-lives-of-male-romance-novelists), so I know that the genre is not exclusively written by females, and I wonder if women are even the overwhelming majority. A lot of romance writers, male and female, use pseudonyms, sometimes names that "belong" to the publishing house, that they can't take with them if they switch publishers. Who knows how many of those house names are being used by men? There is good money in writing romance. For any writer, male or female, who wants to supplement their income by spending a few weeks now and then writing under a pseudonym, a romance novel might prove a tempting proposition. But yes, there is a prejudice against men writing romance (and not all of it coming from publishers and potential readers!), so the vast majority of them do use female or androgynous names.

So even when I am on a romance reading binge, it's hard to say what the ratio of female authors to male authors is. It is easier to tell with SFF, since most of the female writers have come out of the closet and are using their own names these days. Since I do read a fair amount of YA, and as Hex says a lot of female writers do migrate in that direction (maybe because the publishers are more welcoming to women writers there than they are in SFF in general), that does tilt the numbers toward female writers in my own reading.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Romance genre is penned almost exclusively by women

Certainly when I break in to that I'll use an obviously female name
I've wondered how many are really women?

[Edit: Crossed posts with TE, it seems my wondering has a foundation]

fair amount of YA, and as Hex says a lot of female writers do migrate in that direction

Well, lots of kids stuff always was women:
Angela Brazil
Evelyn Sharp
Edith Nesbit
LT Meade
Noel Stretfeld
Enid Blyton
Elinor Brent-Dyer
Richmal Crompton (sp?) the William Books
France Hodgson Burnett
Joan Aiken
Jean Webster
Jill Murphy
Antonia Forest
Jean Estoril
Lorna Hill
Anne Digby
Susan Hampshire
Kate Di Camillo
Christine Nöstlinger

(all authors I've read in last 6 months)

Not read these so recently:
J.K. Rowlings
P.L. Travers
Monica Dickens (does adult too)
Dodie Smith (Adultish "I capture the castle" far better than kiddie books)

Marketed to kids nearly 50 years ago ...

Earthsea is a series by Ursula K. Le Guin, starting with her short story "The Word of Unbinding," published in 1964. Earthsea became the setting for six books, beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea, first published in 1968.

A lot of the Edward Stratemeyer Syndicate books written by Women (Hardy Boys, Bobbsies, etc). Some of the other series with "Women's names" were male writers.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I don't pay any attention to who the author is, whether they are male or female or otherwise, or what color or nationality they are. I look for books that interest me, and I read them. Many authors use initials or ambiguous names, and I have no idea which they may be.

At the moment, I'm reading a book by a Chron (white male), a mystery by Laura Childs (who, from her picture, is a white female), and have recently finished reading (and editing) two female Chrons' books (white females, as far as I know).

 

[Glitch]

I did once look for a local (Welsh) sci-fi author and found Alastair Reynolds. I wasn't looking for gender or colour, only nationality. I was looking to read something by a Welsh published author and was interested in his/her background (being Welsh myself). As it happened his career path is completely different to mine, so that was irrelevant. I did however like the first book and purchased several others by Reynolds. I didn't like all of them, but most I did.

Kraxon Magazine (run by me) has stories published by 13 authors. Of which 8 are men and 5 are women.

 

[soulsinging]

Considering the gender disparity between male and female authors, male readers have to go out of their way to find non-male authors and as we live in the West the vast majority of people are caucasian, so caucasian readers have to go out of their way to find non-caucasian authors. Passively shrugging and 'accidentally' just happening to read white male authors is quite possible. So whilst the argument may not be identical the result is practically indistinguishable.

Why is accidentally in quotes here? Are you implying that those of us that claim we don't care or pay attention are feigning that so we can select all caucasian writers? That's absurd. The result is NOT indistinguishable. I don't pay attention, and half the books I've read recently were by women (maybe more... is Tracy Hickman a guy or girl? I've never cared enough to find out). So my passive shrug is NOT resulting in all-white male books. My point is it would be utterly ludicrous for me to be at a bookstore, see something interesting, read the plot and reviews and find it really promising, then look at the picture on the inside back cover and go "oh, wait, it's a white guy. I shouldn't read this one because the PC-police will say I'm not open-minded enough."

Because their experiences are so markedly different from yours. This is answered above, really.

Ironically, it was... by you:

It's not racist to acknowledge that people who have not lived a similar life to your own may have different perspectives on things than yourself. I grew up fairly poor, though not grindingly so (not that I could tell at least), near a descent-sized city. White and male. I have no experience with farming. No experience what it's like to be a woman. No experience with what it's like to have society judge whom I love. No experience what it's like to be a minority. No experience what it's like to be super-rich (or anything more than hand-to-mouth, really). Writers write what they know and inject their experiences into their fiction, focus on things that engage them or matter to them as people. I don't mean a political ideology or cause, simply that different people experience the world differently and so can't help but write from different perspectives. A writer with experiences very similar to mine might have experiences different than mine, but a writer with vastly different life experience will have a much wider range of different experiences than mine.

Exactly. There are a LOT of things that can account for different perspectives... and they are more than race and gender. Do I get credit for reading Augusten Burroughs? He's gay, but he's also a white guy? How many expanding my horizon points does that get? Poverty can provide this. Farming versus urban upbringing... my point is that it's ridiculous to say that we need to just pay more attention to the race of the author we're buying to keep our minds open. There are hundreds of ways a writer's background can diverge from ours in ways worth reading about, and implying that the only ones that matter are race or sex is as narrow-minded as you accuse those of us that don't care what gender/ethnicity we're reading of being.

So somehow speaking English equates to reading mostly white men. That's a bizarre argument to make. Do only white men speak English suddenly? I missed the memo on that. Seems they would have sent something round about it.

I think you misread me. I said English-speaking cultures were, up until comparatively recently, dominated by white men and thus reflect that bias. That's why almost all of the so-called literary 'canon' is western, white, and male and why publishing demographics were so skewed for so long. But that bias is already crumbling, as pointed out by MWagner... female, minority, and international authors are rapidly leveling the playing field (even if we still have to read some of their works in translation and thus filtered through our English perspective) in terms of sales and success. And as someone else pointed out, there are likely massively popular Chinese authors that we've never or rarely heard of that render this entire debate moot.

I've taken entire courses in women's literature, and entire courses in Russian, non-western, and African-American literature. I assure you my mind is not closed to anything and there is no refusal on my part to read authors from divergent backgrounds, I've done plenty of it. However, now I've gravitated to primarily reading genres and stories I like, and I think it's utterly asinine to imply there's something wrong with the fact that I don't track the author's race and sex for every book I read to make sure the ratios are politically palatable to people with questionable notions of equality.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Nobody is saying that anyone should track all the books they read. But to concentrate on diversity for a while as an exercise, that is something that has some merit. At least for those who are interested. (And for those who aren't interested, why worry about it? Carry on with what you are doing. Nobody is going to judge you, because nobody is going to know what you are or are not reading unless you choose to trumpet it about.) For those who choose to do it, it could be eye-opening and perhaps introduce them to writers they would never have otherwise discovered, writers it turns out that they like. It's not a lot different from someone saying to themselves, "I think I will spend the next six months books reading Classical Greek and Roman authors, since that's something I'd like to learn more about."

If you have already studied women's literature and non-European literature, why would you think the suggestion was leveled at you? Why feel defensive? You've done the very thing that is being suggested here, and more. And since you presumably found your studies interesting and valuable -- otherwise, why would you have wasted your time -- why argue against even a limited commitment by others to do the same? Why not encourage them by offering some of the insights you gained? I think it would be fascinating if you were to share.

However, the point of this thread is to ask people what they are reading now and who wrote it. Just to see if it might be revealing. That's a long way from asking anyone to track all their reading.