Friday, May 1, 2009

Covered in Ink

My take-May-by-the-horns-and-smile policy has already paid off. Thaumatrope has accepted a tweet I subbed to them a few weeks ago and forgot about. It'll run on Halloween!

I managed somehow to arrive home from work with ink all over me. I think my slacks are ruined, and it took considerable scrubbing in the shower to get all the ink off my right arm and both my hands. And get this: it wasn't all the same pen, nor were any pens leaking. I'm just messy.

Over at OF Blog of the Fallen, Larry posted about noticing he's reading more and more books by male authors. As it happens, just the other day I noticed most of my "recommended" books are by female authors--in fact, of the 16 books I've read this year (not counting re-reads), only two are written by men. So I went over to my LibraryThing list and looked at books by gender. I didn't count nonfiction, anthologies by more than one author, YA horse books, or books by Terry Pratchett or Diana Wynne Jones (because I own and love so many of those authors' books). Since I only put books on LibraryThing that I both own and really like, I figured it was a good cross-section of my reading preferences. The results: 31 books my men, 43 by women, which is not too bad a split. I guess it's just a coincidence that I've read so many lady authors this year so far.

5 comments:

Cate Gardner said...

Of the books on my to read list - all of the novellas are by men (which has left me with an interesting thought about where I purchased them), my horror novels are by men, my YAs are 99% female with one male and my MGs are half female / half male.

Aaron Polson said...

A messy pen is a dangerous thing.

YA seems dominated by women (at least from my perspective--watching what the students read at school). I could be totally off base...it's not a very scientific study.

Jamie Eyberg said...

I hadn't thought of it, but yeah, most of the adult books I read are by men (with exceptions like Lisa Gardner) and most of the YA I read are by women. Even My Side Of The Mountain was by a woman.

Jameson T. Caine said...

Good thing you aren't required to carry a gun on your job. ;)

I'd say male authors make up the majority of my bookshelves, slightly outnumbering women in horror and science fiction, though when it comes to fantasy it's about a 50/50 split.

K.C. Shaw said...

Cate--I've got 19 books on my to be read shelf, and 7 of them are by men. There's a lot of urban fantasy in the stack, though, and more women seem to write that.

Aaron--I don't know, a lot of men write YA too. I think it depends on the type of YA book.

Jamie--I have one shelf that's all YA of various genres (but predominately horse stories), 46 books in all, and only 12 of them are by men. So maybe you and Aaron are right after all, hmm. Or maybe it's just because I'm a girl and read girly horse books. :)

Jameson--oh, gawd, I hope no one would let me have a gun! I'd be like Barney Fife!