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Ow, my eye
So I was reading Juliet E McKenna's SFX article Everyone Can Promote Equality In Genre Writing, cheerfully nodding along with everything she said while comfortable in the knowledge that there wasn't much I could do to impact the situation one way or another, when I remembered that I choose the books for a weekly drop-in SF&F book club.
Eep.
I pulled up the schedule and worked out the stats.
Good News
Excuses aside, it looks like I'm just going to have to add another item to the list of criteria we look at when we're nailing down what books we're going to read. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? *
*Yes, I have considered The Mote in God's Eye for the Book Chat. But no sequels/prequels, remember? Told you it was hard to find suitable books...
Eep.
I pulled up the schedule and worked out the stats.
Good News
- I am at least hitting the 30% "need to do better but not deliberately sexist" mark.
- Every month has had at least 1 woman writer on the list, the first month we had 2.
- 30%. That's not even a handy conversational "a third". Oh dear...
- 13 books is a very small sample size. If I tried to pitch a research paper with a sample size that small, I would get a hell of a lot of raised eyebrows, and probably outright mockery.
- It's been surprisingly hard to find suitable novels. First off, each week of the month has its own Stream (SF, Current Awards Lists, Fantasy, Cross-Genre and every 3 months So Bad It's Good) to a) try and mix up the reading list so we don't end up reading about vampires three weeks in a row and b) so that if people want to they can turn the weekly SF&F book club into, say, a monthly Fantasy book club. Secondly, to encourage new people drop in, I don't choose books that have published sequels/prequels. Thirdly, the book has to be in print, and available as an ebook. And finally, I am trying to avoid Epic Tomes. It is a weekly book club, after all. With hindsight, this week's choice of a Peter F. Hamilton novel was an error in judgement *shudder*
Excuses aside, it looks like I'm just going to have to add another item to the list of criteria we look at when we're nailing down what books we're going to read. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? *
*Yes, I have considered The Mote in God's Eye for the Book Chat. But no sequels/prequels, remember? Told you it was hard to find suitable books...
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There are lots of good books by women in all genres, but they're not always prominent.
Here are some obvious SF suggestions for future months. I can find Kindle versions of all of them and am hoping that means they're on ePub also:
Grass by Sherri S. Tepper (SF Masterworks)
The Birthday of the World and Other Stories by Ursula le Guin
Xenogenesis by Octavia Butler
Fantasy:
Is KJ Parker a man or a woman? Nobody knows for sure... So, leaving her/him aside, avoiding a repeat of Ursula and only picking mindblowing stuff available on ebooks that's not written by anybody I know personally...
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
Cities of Coin and Spice by Catherine M. Valente
I'd love to say something by Tanith Lee, but ebooks don't seem to love her :(
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Thanks for the suggestions! I shall add those to my "potential" list...
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This thread may be helpful in giving you more ideas. (Incidentally, the thread previous to this one is what you get when you leave out the female author part. About 10% women, apparently - 30% is high).
Though to be honest, female written, non-series/sequel/prequel non-fat and half-decent may be rather difficult to identify. I keep coming up with brilliant suggestions that fail mostly on the series part. Unfortunately, there are only so many times that you can prevent yourself from saying "well, that huge ginormous plot hole gets completely filled in in Book X" :-)
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Omnitopia Dawn by Diane Duane
Among Others by Jo Walton
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
Carousel Tides by Sharon Lee
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
Bellwether by Connie Willis
Haven't checked for ebookness, though I think I own all of them on ebook bar the Mirrlees. But different publishing territories means different availabilities. Plus my computer sometimes thinks it is somewhere else, like the US, say.
(Think the hard bit here was the SFF(H) bit: kept coming up with brilliant mysteries and historical fiction [in other languages too]).
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On the book thing. I find it incredibly hard to even find female authors in book stores, i think i just have a very strong bias towards "Male" books.
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the list of cracking good authors could go on and on
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Since the. I have wandered several bookstores, looking for science fiction books by female authors, they don't seem to get stocked very often!
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Elizabeth Moon, Robyn Hobb/Megan lindholm, Sarah Pinnborough, Jaine Fenn, Justina Robson, Karen Travis, Jo Walton, Naomi Novik...
Ok so even Star Wars and Alternitive history in there.
J
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I forget what exactly you mean by cross-genre, but maybe Nalo Hopkinson? Margaret Atwood?
Temeraire can be read without the sequels.
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