pbirch01 attempts to flip that ratio in 2018

If the Future is Female then why am I living in the past? LT stats page says almost 80% of my books are by male authors, I need to do something about that. My goal is to read 3 books by female authors for every one book I read by a male author in 2018. Its an ambitious goal but there are lots of great folks on here who I am sure I can count on with some good recommendations on female authors.

Welcome back! I’ve been working to increase my female/male author ratio too. Maybe we can work together on it. 😀

I thought up this idea in the shower this morning and thought I was close to 1:3 but after logging in it turns out I am closer to 1:5 which really surprised me. Thanks for the offer, I am curious to see how this develops.

Happy 2018 reading!

Ah, I never really paid attention to author genders, but just checked, it's about 3:1.

Going to keep an eye on your thread and see how it goes.

>1 pbirch01: I have a list of women fantasy authors .....

>6 quondame: Sure, would love that list thanks!

>7 pbirch01: Where should I put it? It's got over 200 names, not all of whom I'd recommend (some I'd caution against). It was compiled from a Charles de Lint FB fan page thread a week ago. This is the shorter top 25 list which each had 8 or more people 'voting' for the author.

Patricia McKillip (36), Ursula K. Le Guin (32), Anne McCaffrey (21),
Mercedes Lackey (17), Robin McKinley (16) Tanith Lee (16),
Terri Windling (14), Robin Hobb / Megan Lindholm (13), Andre Norton (13),
Sheri Tepper (12), Susan Cooper (12), Seanan McGuire (12),
JK Rowling (12), Diana Wynne-Jones (11), Tanya Huff (11),
Katharine Kerr (10), Marion Zimmer Bradley (9), NK Jemisin (9),
Nina Kiriki Hoffman (9), Octavia Butler (9), Lois McMaster Bujold (8),
Kathrine Kurtz (8), Emma Bull (8), Tamora Pierce (8), CJ Cherryh (8)

>8 quondame: I haven't even heard of half of them :-/ Thanks for the list!

>8 quondame: yes, this is a great list - thank you!

Happy reading in 2018!

Happy reading in 2018 - I'm going to be doing something similar, so will follow along.

>11 FAMeulstee: Thanks, you too!

>12 charl08: Great to hear and please feel free to share any tips you might have!

Happy New Year! I wish you to read many good books in 2018.

Happy New Year
Happy New Group here
This place is full of friends
I hope it never ends
It brew of erudition and good cheer.

Happy 2018!

First a bit of baseline, I have 423 male authors and 107 female authors as of right now or about 80% male authors. The goal here is to read 3 female authors for every one male author. I always try to start the year off with a biography and this year is The Man Who Fed the World: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug and His Battle to End World Hunger also I finally watched Arrival last night and want to read Stories of Your Life and Others which already puts me 6 female authors behind pace. Interesting to see how this plays out, I think its gonna be a good challenge for sure :)

I have about 60% women authors now, but when I actually catalog all the books in the house it will go way down since many of them were purchased by my husband between 20-45 years ago. I purchased a great deal of F&SF by women while I was librarian at the local science fiction club in the 1980s, but that, alas, not for my own collection.

ok, time for a January update!

Books by male authors:
The Man Who Fed the World: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug and His Battle to End World Hunger
Stories of Your Life and Others
Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches

Books by female authors:
The Unseen World: A Novel
Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters
The Hour of the Star (New Directions Paperbook)
Faces in the Crowd - by Valeria Luiselli, not the David Riesman one
Homegoing

Totals: Male =3 , Female = 5
With my goal 3:1 this puts me at -4 going into February.

This has been an interesting challenge because I have already realized how biased towards males all my sources of books are. Not that I am exclusively looking at male specific sites or magazines such as Esquire but everywhere even places like NY Review of Books. I have been able to find articles such as this which helps:
https://www.levo.com/posts/21-fiction-books-by-female-authors-for-your-2018-read...

Still, much tougher than I thought it would be!

A bit late on my update for February but here are my books by male authors:

The Three-Body Problem

And by female authors:
Yes Please
So You want to Talk About Race
The Woman in Cabin 10

Hit my ratio goal for the month of February! Still I am at -4 for 2018 but after this month I think I can slowly push that number closer to zero. Still amazed at how easy it was/still is to just read books written predominantly male authors without even thinking about it.

In March I only read one book, by a male author: Before The Fall

April was much better for me both in reading and female authors:

Slouching Towards Bethlehem
How to Cook a Wolf
Broad Band
Tangerine: A Novel
A Field of Foundlings: Poems

And one book by a male author:
Treasures and Travails: An Anthology

Based on my goal of a 3:1 M:F ratio this brings me to -5 for 2018 through the end of April. Still some work to do but it has definitely opened my eyes up to look for books in places I would not normally look. I likely never would have found nor read Tangerine but its one of my favorite novels of the year. Others, such as Broad Band, seem to be riding the wave that was introduced by Hidden Figures which I think is great and I am always interested in reading more about women who made important technical contributions to products.

This is a list of books by women that I think is good:
https://www.listchallenges.com/500-great-books-by-women

Also this list of award winning SFF books by women:
https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_women_winners.asp

And two publishers specializing in books by women:
http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/
https://www.virago.co.uk/

And a database of recent translated books published in USA that lets you search by gender:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/translation/search/index.html

Edit: Oops, wrong link.

>21 Settings: WHOA! Thats great, thank you - I will be sure to check these out!

A brief May summary:

Female authors:
The Wild Inside: A novel - I knew this author from my time in Peace Corps, was really fun to read a novel by some one you know!
Go, Went, Gone

Male authors:

Chasing New Horizons
Season of Migration to the North

The total for this month was -4 which brings me down to -9 for the year at my current rate of reading three female authors for one every male author I read. Gonna have to pick it up the second half of 2018!

Update for June:

I bailed on Season of Migration to the North so my total at the end of May should be -6

Male authors for June:

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America and the Politics of Patriotism

Female authors:
Force of Nature
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
Heart Berries

Finally a book I will say is by both a male and female author:
Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America

Three female authors, two by male authors and one by both drops me to -9 total for my male/female author ratio challenge for the year. In terms of total book count this puts me at 29 books, yikes!

July update:

I buckled down and read 4 books by women:

Will Work For Drugs
Plum Rains
Fates and Furies
The Diary of Frida Kahlo

I did not read any books by male authors so that brings me up to -5 total for my male/female author ratio challenge for 2018.

Even my local library seems to be supporting me with this list of 10 books to read in August, all of which are female:
https://seattle.bibliocommons.com/list/share/86922331/1231540697

August roundup:

I continued my streak and read 5 books, all by women:

Educated: A Memoir
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
The Power
Birds, Art, Life
Eve's Hollywood

This brings me to 0 for my male/female author ratio challenge for 2018 which is great because there are some books by male authors I definitely want to read this year!

Just one book for me this month, Calypso by David Sedaris which puts me at -3 going into October. Sounds good to me!

October was a good month for reading, here are the books I read with a female author:

How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
Full Rip 9.0
Lethal White
The Lonely City

With 0 books by male authors this brings my count to +1 based on my goal of reading three female authors for one every male author I read.

This brings me to 42 books total this year which means I likely will not make 75 books for the year, oh well!

Just two books in November:

male author - You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History
female author - Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories (The Lottery / The Haunting of Hill House / We Have Always Lived in the Castle)

So that puts me at -1 going into December which means my 3:1 ratio challenge should be easy to achieve but at 44 books the 75 book challenge appears to be very difficult to complete.

December books:

male author - none
female author:
Becoming
The Incendiaries
Rabbit: A Memoir
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

Books read in 2018: 47
Books by male authors: 12 books (with one co-authored with female author)
By female authors: 35

My library started with 423 male authors and 107 female authors (80% male) and now have 434 male and 140 female authors (75.6% male) in my library.

Based on my original criteria of reading three books by female authors for every one book I read by male authors, I barely missed my goal. I think the biggest thing I noticed was how biased towards male authors many of my sources for new books were. Most of the places I find book reccommendations (besides here) are more mainstream media such as NY Times, New Yorker, Esquire. Now that I am more aware of this I will seek out other book recommendation souces in the future.