• Do you tend to read more books written by one gender over the other? If so, which one? Men? Or women? Is this a deliberate choice? Or just something that kind of happened? And (without wanting to get too personal), is this your gender?

I am female, partly.

Science fiction is dominated by male authors. Creativity books are dominated by female authors.

That said, when I am browsing book store shelves for new sci fi, I _will_ pay more attention when I find a female author. My sci fi collection is mostly male, but I have a decent selection of female authors as well...

Andre Norton, Ursula K. LeGuin, Anne McCaffrey, C.J. Cherryh are the classics. Some other brilliant books are by Tara K. Harper ( Wolf Walker series), Toni Anzetti ( Typhon's Children & Riders of Leviathan), Mary Caraker (Watersong, out of print but a book I come back to again and again!), Mary Stanton (Heavenly Horse set -- out of print and good for re-reading -- and some unicorn childrens books).

The same does not apply to my creativity and journalling books: I don't go out of my way to get a male authored book. I buy whatever looks good and I do have a few male authors: Eric Maisel, Steven Pressfield ( War of Art), Frederick Franck ( Zen of Seeing).

On other topics... With the exception of Black Beauty by Anna Sewell and The Heavenly Horse books, all of my animal fiction is written by men. Oh, wait, Barks and Purrs is by Colette. But mostly men, which seems strange to me.

All of my science books are by men, most of my tech books are by men. Sole exception there is Lori Davis who used to write excellent Paint Shop Pro books. All my rel/philosophy books are by men. My classical literature looks like it's cut almost in half... Little Women and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall written by women, Dracula and the Wizard of Oz written by men.

Static8 > Journal > Archive > 14 Sept 2006 Entry