Why? Well, I picked up a romance (woot) by one of my favorite authors and ended up rolling my eyes every other paragraph. I blame my inner-editor, but when it starts interfering with just enjoying a book, then you know it's time to re-evaluate the situation. Which led me to two conclusions.
1) That I was being overly critical, having aftershocks from editing "Fury", and needed to give Ms. Favorite Author a break.
2) The book really did suck, and I had just realized that one of my favorite authors wasn't such a great author after all. ::cry::
So, I head to the bookshelf. Well, THE bookshelf (I have two, you see. One for generic books that were "ok" and one for my FAVORITES). Well, her books are on THE bookshelf, which is one of those sleek, cherry, leaning bookshelves that I honestly squealed over when my boyfriend bought it for me for Christmas <3.>
They're women.
::Gasp!:: I'm a sexist reader!
Well, I had to prove that I wasn't a sexist, so I delved and found that I happen to have a few books on there by men. They are as follows: Christopher Paolini's books; J.R.R. Tolkien's LOTR trilogy and The Hobbit; Piers Anthony's Dragon on a Pedestal; Nicholas Sparks' The Lucky One (which I haven't read, whoops); and The Bible (argue all you want, it was written by MEN).
The rest, which usually include more than one book, are by Anne Bishop <3, Julie Garwood, Teresa Medeiros, Stephenie Meyer (hey, they're hardbacks), Kristen Britain, J. K. Rowling and...
I think that's it. They're some art books, and then my books stuffed in binders, but that's it.
Still, if you look at it with squinty eyes, you're going to see that the female authors overwhelm the men. Looking at it--still squinty eyed--I came to the conclusion on why that was:
Women tend to write about other women. They have strong female characters who are, more often than not, the protagonists. As a woman, I like reading about female heroes. And, if they're not the hero, they have to be more than one-dimensional. Male writers (not all!) seem to have the problem of putting women in categories. This is especially true with "classic" literature. And since they got away with it centuries ago, some modern male writers think they can still get away with it. The Rejectionist had a hilarious rant about receiving such manuscripts recently.
However, I have no desire to avoid male writers simply because they're male. So I'm trying to broaden my horizons. If you have recommendations, I'm all ears.
I have been trying different authors lately (mostly male authors that a friend lends/recommends) and I get what you are saying about women and writing.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I have discovered some treats in terms of new writers and in terms of different genres, or at least differnt than my usual style of book.
two male author faves are John Updike (The Rabbit novels) and Mordecai Richler (funny!!!)
Cheers, Jill
"Blood and Groom" coming in December 2009!
Terry Goodkind is a really wonderful author. I suggest you take a look at his "Sword of Truth" series. His female characters are far from one-dimensional and though none of them are technically the protagonist, they often take center stage in his books.
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