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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...
no subject
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" :-)
no subject
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]).