Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think very generally I prefer books by male authors. I can't quite articulate what it is that I like in books, but male authors generally have it. On the other hand, there are a lot of male authors that do women poorly.
On still the other hand, there are a lot of female writers I really admire: Carol Shields, for one, Dorothy Allison for another. I thought her Cavedweller superb.
I once heard a female writer talking about why it is that there are more male writers, or maybe she said better male writers (very generally speaking) than female writers, and what it boiled down to was that male writers have wives to fetch and carry and clean just plain endure and make sure they eat while they are absorbed in writing and female writers don't have that luxury usually.
Needless to say I think she had a point.
Carol Shields was the one exception I know of since she always said she never found writing hard.
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
17,330 posts, read 32,892,053 times
Reputation: 28898
Quote:
Originally Posted by netwit
I once heard a female writer talking about why it is that there are more male writers, or maybe she said better male writers (very generally speaking) than female writers, and what it boiled down to was that male writers have wives to fetch and carry and clean just plain endure and make sure they eat while they are absorbed in writing and female writers don't have that luxury usually.
Needless to say I think she had a point.
Carol Shields was the one exception I know of since she always said she never found writing hard.
HA! That's a brilliant perspective! I'm going to trade my husband in for a wife when I start writing (real writing, not technical stuff) again!
Ah, Carol Shields... a name from the past. I always liked her work.
I didn't think I had any sort of preference - and maybe preference isn't the right word - but when we moved into our house we bought this big wall unit for the living room. I arranged my favorite books on the book shelves on either side of the TV and for some reason decided to put women authors on the right and male authors on the left. It turns out, I have a lot more books, or favorite books, by women than I do by men. However, some of my favorite authors happen to be men. But it looks like I do read more books by women than by men. Who knew?
but I'll bet that women read FAR more women authors than men do.
Even without official stat, I'd tend to agree with you. I think, like with movies, stories by and about men tend to be thought of as universal, (like, say, Catcher in the Rye) but stories by and about women are "chick books" (like Jane Eyre.)
The gender of the author makes absolutely no difference to me.
It doesn't make any difference to me, either. That's why I was so surprised to see how many more books I had read by women than by men. I certainly don't pick books to read because of the gender of the author - but it turns out that I have many more books by women.
The gender of the author makes absolutely no difference to me.
Same, but that said, as another poster already stated, being mainly into scifi and horror, post apoc type themes right now, I'd say the majority are male authors.
No. If anything I think most authors I really enjoy are male . A good book is a good book though, but maybe men tend to write books which appeal to more more generally speaking. There are obviously exceptions but my favourite authors are pretty much all men.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
