Ow, my eye

[hatgirl]

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

• 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.

Bad news

• 30%. That's not even a handy conversational "a third". Oh dear...

Excuses

• 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*

The Future
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...

Comments

[peadarog.livejournal.com]

Don't beat yourself up. Everybody does it -- that was the point of Juliet's article. 30% is (unfortunately) pretty good.

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 :(

[hatgirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not exactly dressing myself in sackcloth and ashes, it's just that I was feeling so smug as I read that article... Hubris, hubris!

Thanks for the suggestions! I shall add those to my "potential" list...