Do you read books by people who are not like you?

[BurtWorm]

By women, if you're male, or men, if you're female? By people of different sexual orientations than you? Different ethnic identities? Different races, etc.? Even people of different political viewpoints?

(As for me, I have noticed a tendency of mine to lean toward books by white American or British men, when given a choice, and I've been uncomfortable when I become aware of this unconscious preference of mine. As a moonlighting book reviewer, though, I don't have the luxury, usually, of screening out books I don't necessarily want to read, and am mostly rewarded by reading books by people not like me.)

I ask because this post at The Atlantic by Chris Jackson raised the question:



http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/08/all-the-sad-young-literary-women/61821/

...

Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner, two writers whose work is often referred to as "chick lit," have been tweeting and commenting in the press about Michiko Kukatani's rave review of Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom; Piccoult mused that she'd love to see "the NYT rave about writers who aren't white male literary darlings" and busted on Kakutani for using the word "lapidiary" in her review. Weiner tweeted "Carl Hiaasan doesn't have to choose between getting a Times review and being a bestseller. Why should I? Oh right #girlparts."

Various people have chimed in agreeing with Piccoult or arguing that the Times coverage is more balanced than she claims. Ironically, Kakutani has previously been accused of taking special relish in pillorying white male authors. (Norman Mailer called her, in his typically subdued, politically correct style, a "one-woman kamikazee. She disdains white male authors...she's a token. And deep down, she probably knows it." I feel dirty retyping that.) And she recently sliced up the prototypical white male literary darling from Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem.

But this whole controversy, such as it is, reminded me of a recent lunch I had with a fellow editor. I was going on about some novel I was reading and loving and she cut me off and asked, when was the last time you read fiction by a woman? And I honestly couldn't come up with anything for a few minutes. It was a pretty shameful moment, in part, because I started wondering about early onset memory loss (I eventually remembered that I'd recently read the luminous and terribly titled Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing by Lydia Peele), but also because I've spent a lot of time advocating the reading of books outside of the reader's direct experience as a way of understanding the world (through the Ringshout organization, for instance) and apparently I've been ignoring the literary output of half the human population. I can't speak to the specifics of the Piccoult/Times dispute but I can say that the frustration Piccoult expressed is shared by a lot of women (and men) who write or work in the literary world. In my experience with by son's namesake bookstore, it's clear that women are willing to buy books by male writers, but men seem much more reluctant to buy books by women. And while I've never seen it quantified in any way, there's definitely a feeling out there that men--even when writing about frivolous subjects--are taken more seriously as literary writers and are more likely to be presented to serious readers by the various literary gatekeepers.

So I've been trying to balance my own reading--consciously trying to read at least one piece of fiction by a woman for every one I read by a man. This sounds stupid, I know. But what are the results of this small and recent experiment?

It's been sort of fascinating. After reading the well-reviewed-but-somewhat-disappointing (but still worth reading) Next by James Hynes, I read The Keep by Jennifer Egan, which was, like the Hynes, formally inventive, but also creepy and funny and knee-wobblingly suspenseful. After reading Gary Shteyngart, I just turned to a book that's been on my queue for a while: Chimamanda Adichie's achingly beautiful The Thing Around Your Neck, both books about immigrants and police states and love affairs, but from two vastly different, whiplash-inducing, perspectives (BTW, check out Adichie's fascinating TED talk, "The Danger of the Single Story" if you're interested in the art of storytelling). Between chapters of The Book in the Renaissance, I've been dipping in and out of Patti Smith's Just Kids, which is an incredible evocation of a young woman's unruly interior, even if she was once picked up by Allen Ginsburg because he thought she was a boy.

Anyway, there are ways that our reading is shaped and limited by the biases of the dominant literary gatekeepers--maybe without realizing it, we've only read books by people of a certain race, or who write in a certain language, or who follow the conventions of a certain genre (including the unnamed genre of Anglo-American Serious Fiction). To some people this is the great opportunity in the coming bookquake, the chance to disintermediate some of those gatekeepers and their peculiar, ossified biases. But the real bias may be inside of us, as readers, and we might have to force ourselves out of them to take advantage of these new opportunities. How exciting is it to consider that there are worlds of literature out there that you may not have tapped into, undiscovered countries of books to explore that might yet tell you something new in a new way?

[JDPriestly]

1. Yes. I am a straight woman, but my favorite author is Marcel Proust.

I could care less about an author's gender, gender preference, age, color, nationality, ethnicity, etc. I just like a good book, well written and preferably about something I don't know much about. I like to learn from reading. I like to live a life that is different from my own through the characters of the book.

I am definitely not a latent homosexual male just in case that's what you are thinking.

[tabatha]

4. ditto

The most important factor is what the book is about. It is only at the end of a good book, that I usually look a little closer at who the author is.

[T Wolf]

2. I read whatever my wife tells me to read... Actually, can you tell without looking at the

sleeve photo what the author is like?

The name may be a clue, but I really do not pay attention to the author (unless it is someone whose other work I have enjoyed).

It's hard enough to remember the title of a book I go looking for.

[ceile]

3. As a woman, I read more male than female authors.

I think that as to do with the genre- I strictly read mysteries which seems to be male dominated. But I have read every Agatha Christie, and Val McDiarmid is one of my favorites...
I find it interesting that Jodi Piccoult is mentioned - I can't stand her work.

[BurtWorm]

7. I love Patricia Highsmith thrillers.

She is, when I think about it for a tiny second, one of the very best writers in English, ever. Just brilliant.

[ceile]

19. I'll check her out....n/t

[BurtWorm]

21. She wrote Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley

and my favorite, Deep Water.

[ceile]

24. Strangers on a Train is one of my fave

Hitchcock movies. Guess I'll be hitting the library this weekend.

[EFerrari]

5. As a woman of color who was trained to be one of those gatekeepers

I'd like to point out that the academy has had a great shake up in the last 30 years or so, and in particular, our peculiar ossified biases when confronted with the best work in English letters being done by women of color and other marginalized writers.

This is a great time to be a reader. :)

[walldude]

6. Sure.. I'll read pretty much anything that interests me, whoever the writer is

I'm a huge Star Wars fan and read all the books. For a long time they couldn't get a woman writer to do a decent SW book, now they have a few that are kicking ass. I mostly read thrillers, horror and sci-fi. Doesn't matter who the writer is. If I like their style I end up reading more of their books.

Funny, a couple times in my life I have discovered new writers I liked only to find out later they were just pen names for writers I already loved. Stephen King/Richard Bachmann come to mind as does Dean Koontz/Leigh Nichols..

Now I'm on a Lee Child kick for men writers and Kathy Reichs(she is the inspiration for the TV show Bones) for women. Great stuff.

[old mark]

57. Lee Child is even a foreigner - he is British. nt

[walldude]

73. I just read they optioned all his Reacher books for movies..

They will probably screw them up though.

Funny thing, I actually got my first Child book in Norway, I was there working and went into a little store and it was the only book left in there that was in English. Read it and got hooked on Jack Reacher.

[LWolf]

8. Yes. I read books by any gender, race, or culture.

And my women friends and colleagues do, as well.

The men? Not so much. I was just thinking about this the other day; gearing up for the new school year, I was thinking about my students' reading habits. My girls will read books with male protagonists. My boys rarely read books with female protagonists.

[BurtWorm]

11. Do you notice a bias in any area (besides language) in terms of the type of book you tend to read?

I mean if someone were to want a clue as to what kind of book to buy you on your birthday, what would you say? What kinds of books would you hope to discourage people from getting you?

I think you're right about the gender difference in book/protagonist choices among children, which probably carries into adulthood, unfortunately. There is unbelievably intense cultural pressure on males to steer clear of preferences seen to be female. It's sick.

[LWolf]

34. That's the way my thoughts were running.

The boys want male protagonists. They want their leads in movies to be male, or to be "hot." Not all the boys, of course, but a majority. And they grow into men who do the same.

My bias? I am really eclectic; I'm also really picky, and I have more books than anyone else I've ever met. Anyone who knows me won't get me a book. They'll get me a gift certificate to B&N or to Powell's.

They would stay away from books that are all action, too violent, or based on parts of human culture that don't interest me. A lot of pop culture in the U.S., for example, leaves me cold. Genres? I'll read most, but don't care for horror.

What I'm really looking for in a book are well-developed, multi-dimensional characters and universal themes that lead me to reflect on what it means to be human. Stories in which characters stretch and grow and discover themselves along the way.

I like protagonists that are smart, educated, and well-read, even in light fiction.

I don't like books that read like movies. I don't like predictable or shallow plots. I don't like protagonists, or authors, that are excessively concerned with fashion, status, or social competition.

I REALLY don't like female protagonists who can't manage life's challenges, who disintegrate without males to save them. One of the many reasons I despise the "Twilight" series, of which I've read all, since my students did.

I don't like books that preach; I like my messages and themes to be well-developed and embedded enough not to need pointing out.

I don't like books that try to cloak christian proselytizing into fiction form. I was bored by, and then offended by, "The Shack." I read it because a parent donated 10 copies to my classroom. And then came back every week to find out if I'd read it, and to look for them on the shelves. I passed the buck to my school librarian, and told her I thought the school library was more appropriate. I wasn't all that charmed by The Chronicles of Narnia.

Yet I've enjoyed books with christian protagonists, when those protagonists are real people, living in the real world, and, instead of preaching and converting, are exhibiting humility and compassion.

Do you have any recommendations for me? ;)

[BurtWorm]

38. I'm really curious about David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

http://therumpus.net/2010/08/the-thousand-autumns-of-jacob

Of course, he's an English guy. :evilfrown:

[LWolf]

39. The review itself is pretty intriguing.

Enough that I popped over to put a hold on it at the library.

I love that I can request books online and then pick them up when the library emails to say they're ready.

[BurtWorm]

42. Isn't that great!

I love libraries!

[LWolf]

54. One of the great things about it is that I can request any book

in the entire regional system, which incorporates 2 counties; unlike the unwieldy "inter-library loans" of the past, they have a regular system for shuttling books back and forth; I request a book, when it shows up, an email is generated and I stop by to pick it up on my next trip to town.

Even better: I teach at a rural school. Most of my students live 15-20 miles from the nearest library. Our school library's collection is inadequate. The county system serves us with a program that allows us to request books online, just like I would for my local library. The library then incorporates us into their daily shuttle system; they drop off our books at our school library, our library tech checks them out to us, and we return them to her when we're done, to be picked up by the next day's shuttle. We never even have to go anywhere, they are delivered to our door.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. I rarely know if the author is of a different race or sexual orientation. Sometimes I'm even

wrong about the sex of the author. I've never given it a thought.

[BurtWorm]

15. Think about your favorite books.

Think about the books you're drawn to at the library or bookstore. Think about the last few books you've read. You don't see any biases (unconscious, I mean)?

[sinkingfeeling]

33. Nope, they're all over the place.

[jannyk]

10. A good read is a good read - doesn't matter who wrote it.

I am a straight female that adores Sarah Waters books (Affinity/Fingersmith/Tipping the Velvet). However, I do read more books by male authors than female as a rule, and never, ever 'romance' novels. My preference is for historical fiction and mysteries.

[Ozymanithrax]

12. I've never asked, "Is this writer gay, or a woman, or black?" before picking up a book.

I have become a fan of some authors after reading one book, but it never made a difference to me what they were.

As a teenager who read Science Fiction and Fantasy, if the cover had a good looking woman in a chainmail bikini, I was there. I bought Robert E. Howard's Conan stories because Frank Frazetta painted beautiful women draped on heavily muscled men, usually laying on a pile of bodies. It did not matter that Howard was white or that he committed suicide in the 30's after his mother died.

Since my 20's, I read the first page, and if it doesn't appeal to me, I don't buy it.

So, no, I've never consciously read only white, male, heterosexual authors.

[BurtWorm]

17. The question isn't if you 'consciously' do. Quite the opposite.

I don't consciously lean toward books by white American or British men, either.

[Ozymanithrax]

28. But I don't buy books unconsciously...I never did.

As a teenager, almost all Science Fiction books were written by white men. I know that now because as an adult I'm aware of the history of the genre. It woud not have been an unconscious choice, that was the reality of the market. Some of them were gay, but I did not know it at the time and it would not have mattered. Even one of the top writers with a man's name was a woman, Andre Norton.

At this point in life, I choose a book from the first page, except for a very few authors. Even if I do look at the authors name, I have no idea of what the sexuality might be.

Even as a teen, when my book buying was often driven by a nerds libido, Andre Norton, a great female writer who took a man's name because women didn't write Science Ficiton, was a favorite. I read the Marquis de Sade's "Justine" at thirteen because it was forbidden and I found a copy.

I read, "In Cold Blood" before I knew that Truman Capote was gay. It simply didn't matter.

Most of my reading for pleasure now (60%) is Science Ficiton and Fantasy. The bulk of the reast is mystery and suspence. Race, gender, and sexual orientation do not play a roll because it doesn't matter who the writer is, it is the story. I read those genre's because that is what I enjoy. So, for me, I don't think subconscious choices play a big role.

[BurtWorm]

36. I'm sorry, but I'm skeptical.

;-)


You can't be the one person in the world immune to unconscious biases.

What you're saying is that you don't think of gender, race, etc. while choosing your books, but unless your books' authors are totally random in their all-of-the-aboveness, I'm guessing there is a preponderance of, let's say, authors of European descent?

My hypothesis is that we tend to choose authors like ourselves not because we're bigoted against authors unlike ourselves, but maybe because we're unconsciously biased against them. There's a subtle difference. It's not flattering to think of ourselves as so biased. I'm not at all pleased to think I am. But if I'm honest with myself, I have to admit, sadly, that most of my books are by American/English/European males, followed by ones by A/E/E females. I tend to buy books by non-Europeans rather consciously, because I become interested in a specific author or culture. When Kenzaburo Oe won the Nobel prize, for instance, I went on an Oe kick.

All that said, (pardon that obnoxious turn of phrase), this is just for the sake of discussion. I'll take your word for it if you insist no problem.

[Ozymanithrax]

41. I'm not saying I'm immune, only that book reading and buying probably isn't...

driven by the unconscious.

I think you would make a better argument that the unconscious has more affect on the type of stories we like rather than a choice of author. Why do I prefer Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative fiction? I have no idea.

The Lord of Rings is one of my favorite books. Tolkien writes about men. Women have only supporting roles in the books for reasons that make sense in the context of he book, but his books reflect his life as a man in almost exclusively male academia, if you read is biography.

The witchworld series of books is another favorite. Andre Norton was known for writing about strong independent women who demanded equality from men. The same can be said of Ursula K. Le Guin and Marrion Zimmer Bradley; two other women who are noted writers of speculative fiction. I enjoyed the stories they wrote, even when they involved powerful women, so I do not subconsciously prefer white male hetero-protatonists. Michael Morcock, one of the New Wave Writers, did not shy away from alternate forms of sexuality. Heinlein wrote constantly about sex. James Tiptree Jr. was a closeted bisexual woman whose pervasive theme was sexuality. I read them all because the stories appealed to me and who or what the writer was didn't matter.

So if you are looking for subconscious prejudices, look at the types of stories not the author. I think prejudice in favor of a author is all to conscious. My brother, who has become a very right wing Christian, reads only the left behind series or books equally "Christian." That is a conscious choice of his from which he will not stray, even to read the short stories I've published or the poetry I published.

[BurtWorm]

43. My condolences on your brother's fall from grace (and taste in books).

:toast:

[Ozymanithrax]

47. Yes, the left behind series are actually worse than Battlefield Earth.

It takes a lot of work to write that badly.

[enough]

13. Yes, as a 66 year old white woman, I read books by men, books by young women and young men,

books by men and women of different "races" and ethnic backgrounds, books by people long dead, books by people from different geographic areas. (Of course I also read books by white women my own age, but that wasn't the question.)

For me as a life-long reader the greatest recent change in my reading has been audible books, which has given me the opportunity to re-read all kinds of old classics and explore new writings while getting things done (housework, yardwork, gardening, driving, etc.). Somehow life doesn't seem to provide much time for simply sitting down and reading any more. I find that listening to books is a really interesting way to absorb them, especially if you have the hard copy available simultaneously.

[eppur_se_muova]

14. If the author is dead, is that different enough? nt

[BurtWorm]

16. Are you dead?

If so no. If not... :shrug:


;-)

[supernova]

Dupe

DU *burp*

[supernova]

18. I read books by a fairly wide swath

AFIK.

I'm a white middle aged (ugh! really? when did that happen?!?) female and read books by males a lot.

If I have a bias it's toward certain subject matter: fantasy, religious/philosophical, some political, historical. Now, I would agree that writers from certain groups are probably under-represented in these genres. I wouldn't doubt it for a minute. But it's the crux of the problem, it's all about the subject matter for me. If a book looks interesting, I'll get it. If it's really interesting, I will go back and look at other works by that same author.

[azmouse]

20. I only notice if the author is a boy or girl.

I'd say the books I read are somewhat evenly divided between the genders.
I've never looked into an author's sexual orientation or race or political leaning, and I've never cared.
One exception I would make would be for the far RW - Beck, Palin, Coulter, etc.
My blood pressure would soar. It's just not worth it.

[stanwyck]

22. My Bookclub (of 27 years - way before Oprah) gets me out of

my comfort zone or I would keep reading the same kinds of books without taking more risks.

[zipplewrath]

23. I rarely know the author

I don't read fiction (much). But I often don't know the author before I start. Subject is everthing in my selections. On more than one occasion I've read authors with "gender neutral" names and I haven't known for some time what their gender was. I did read "The Woman's Room" a long time ago. I was horrified. Later, when I first met my wife I mentioned the book. She loved it, until she read it again. Then she was horrified too.

[fasttense]

25. It's nice to have a choice.

When I was a young girl and in love with science fiction, I could rarely find a female writer. So, I had no choice, I had to read male authors.

Woman in science fiction are much more numerous today. I've recently expanded my reading to include murder mysteries and was pleasantly surprise to see so many female authors (though not as many as their male counterparts).

Yes, I sometimes look for female writers in particular. But mostly it is all about the story line and if it intrigues me. I do try to avoid RepubliCON writers because their writing is usually very stupid.

How can you tell if a book is written by a gay or lesbian person? You could be reading one of their books right now. :D

[madmom]

26. I read a lot of books by a lot of different people, none of that matters, IMO.

[proteus_lives]

27. Yep. I try and keep my reading list as varied as possible.

[Arkansas Granny]

29. I have never given much thought to the gender, sexual orientation or race

of the authors I read. Honestly, I can't say that I've ever given it any consideration at all. All that really matters to me is the content of the book and whether or not I find it an interesting read.

[closeupready]

30. I've never really thought about it.

On my bookshelf, I have J.R.R. Tolkien, Ursula K. LeGuin, Terri Macmillan, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, John Dickson Carr, Juan Goytisolo, Erasmus, Homer, Agatha Christie, Roger Zelazny, Mary Renault, Emily Bronte, Andre Gide, Jean Genet and Georges Sand. If there is a common thread to these people, I suppose it's that they all come from the West. White guys are probably over-represented though, I'll grant you.

[Javaman]

31. If the topic interests me, I read it...

talent transends sex, race, creed or color.

[walldude]

32. You know.. no matter what the responses in this thread

it's nice to see people are reading. Whatever they are reading.

[H2O Man]

35. I do.

I read a lot, including things by people "different" than me, and people who hold views that I strongly disagree with.

[hfojvt]

37. truthfully, not very many

BUT, I have never checked on either race, gender or sexual orientation before reading a book. My first genre of choice was sci-fi and the authors were mostly male - Asimov, Heinlein, Brunner, Niven, Anderson, Vonnegut (yes, some libraries put him in sci-fi which is how I ended up reading "Sirens of Titan" which I hated because as sci-fi it is really, really bad.) I read some Ursula LeGuin and loved it, particularly "The Dispossessed". I always meant to read the "Dragonriders of Pern" series, but there were so many of them that I never got started on it. I also enjoyed some other authors who were female, such as S.E. Hinton and George Elliot, although the first always has male lead characters and the second has a male pen-name. There are also classic authors like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Vida Scudder who I picked up in graduate school.

Then, when I opened a bookstore in 1990, I started to read authors in other genres and authors, so I have read Danielle Steel, Johanna Lindsey, Jude Deveraux, and Lavyrle Spencer in the romance genre. Most of the mystery writers I read were male, like Lawrence Block and Michael Collins and Andrew Greeley. I read a couple of books featuring a lesbian detective but cannot remember the author's name - V. I. Lushansky or something. I think I have one around here somewhere. I read a number of teen books, sorta got into Christopher Pike and Bruce Coville, but like Katherine Patterson and think Jackie French Koller's "If I had one wish" is awesome. I also have long been a fan of the comic strips "Cathy" and "Sally Forth". There was another teen author, a female, that I read her series and wrote to her, but her name escapes me now. It was a teen angel series that never caught on. I tried to read an Agatha Christie book and got completely bored in the first three pages or so.

Most of the best-sellers in horror, and often elsewhere are males - Sidney Sheldon, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Lawrence Sanders, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, etc. So I read them to be a little conversant about them. Of course, I closed my store before Harry Potter came into print, but I have read four of them and hated the fourth one enough to stop reading them. Again, a female author, like Hinton, with male lead characters.

Unfortunately, other than W.E.B. Dubois or Richard Wright, I cannot even think of any black authors that I should have read. Okay, maybe Toni Morrison, or Aaron McGruder if you count the Boondocks comic strip that I loved. Really, who else should I have read? I read the white guy's book "Black like me".

I also read Sulu's autobiography, and he is both Asian and gay, but he never said anything about gayness, although it did jump out at me "why no romance in your life story?"

I read a couple of the Tony Hillerman books, and he may be part Native American. I liked them well enough, but never got excited enough to read more of them. I read Dee Brown's magnum opus, but think it is mostly crap.

[tanyev]

40. Does Scooter Libby's book count?

Because that was one of the strangest books I have ever read.

[REP]

44. Guess my gender: Favorite authors include GB Shaw, Twain, Hiaasen, Willeford, Reginald Hill, Atwood

I had to look up what "Eat Pray Love" is about. I have no idea who Picoult of Weiner are.

[BurtWorm]

48. You're a female trying to prove me wrong.

:P

[REP]

50. Close - trying to prove the whining dipshits in the article wrong!

[mitchum]

61. Nice to see some Willeford love around this place!

[REP]

63. Even have a first of The Shark Infested Custard

Ever heard the anecdote about him wanting to end the Mosely series by having Hoke go on a shooting spree? Can't remember where I heard it, but it still makes me laugh.

[mitchum]

71. That's great! I knew that he wanted to have Hoke arrested for murder...

but I didn't know about the shooting spree. I wonder which of the two leisure suits Hoke would have worn for the deed?

[REP]

72. Other beloved (and more widely known) anecdote:

Donald Westlake wanted to call "Adios, Scheherazade" "Adios, Motherfuckers." Says a lot about my juvenile and crude sense of humor that I not only love this, but quote it.

Speaking of Adios, I also love Vonnegut.

[libodem]

45. I tried to

Read a book my exboyfriend gave me, and could not get past the nausea from the hate filled diatribes of, Ann Coulter. I try to cultivate other opinions so that I dont't just take in subjects that I agree with. I like to try and see both sides. But Republicans are just wrong. Sick and wrong.

[Vinca]

46. Of course. Next book up: Senate Diary by the late Rep. Sen. George Aiken.

[Greyskye]

49. The genres that I tend to read most, have numerous authors of both sexes.

As well as a decent amount of ethnic and age diversity.

I personally don't care if the protagonist is male, female, or other. I just checked 3 shelves of my library at random. The 1st shelf was almost evenly split between men and women authors. The 2nd was almost all men, and the 3rd was almost all women. I have to admit that a few of these were all the same authors; as that was 'their' section of the library. But just glancing over the wall 'o books tends to bear out a fairly even split, especially among the newer titles. My vintage books are more predominantly male, except for the female authors that wrote under male names.

[drmeow]

51. I read mostly fantasy and sci fi

probably equally men and women. I will be honest, I don't care for some genre's which seem to be dominated by ethnic minorities. For example, magical realism - I have not been able to get through One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Satanic Verses, or Beloved and I could barely get through Like Water for Chocolate. I've finally stopped trying. Beyond that I rarely know the ethnicity of the authors I read unless they are famous for their ethnicity (Octavia Butler, for example). Same with sexual orientation. Homosexuality and sexual/gender ambiguity certainly is a recurring theme in Sci Fi/Fantasy but you don't have to be homosexual or heterosexual to include those themes in a book. I don't like books were those themes are addressed clumsily or I feel like I'm being bludgeoned with a message but to me that is just bad writing and is not in any way limited to those themes (I just finished a good novel which I would have considered a great novel except that the author seemed to cram his worldview down my throat in a very unsubtle black and white sort of way ... i.e., all of the "bad" group were either fascist control freaks or unhappy docile sheep except for a few great rebels and all the good things in the world were in the areas which completely rejected the messages of the "bad" group).

I'll tell you one group of books I WILL not read and freely and openly admit that I'm prejudiced against - all the current vampire and zombie books.

[Igel]

52. Yes.

Lots of European stuff. Don't care about their genitals or the use they make of them.

Some LatAm stuff. Still don't care about their genitals.

I don't like stuff that preaches or is out to either target a narrow ethnicity or try to be a window into that narrow ethnicity for oppressors. I cannot bring myself to coo, "Oh, what an authentically Latino voice." There are millions of authentic Latino voices, but only some are usually deemed "authentic" by critics. What's odd is that the "Latino voice" in the US tends to be so different from the "Latino voice" of people writing for Latinos in their home countries. I like Mexican, Chilean, Argentine, Peruvian lit. Bring the writers here and let them stew for 15 years and it's hard to recognize them. The same goofiness happened with some writers in the former USSR. Rather than tell a story, they act like they have to defend or justify or extol.

I also don't like experimental literature. I can tolerate alternative narrative styles, as long as they reflect actual styles in use by regular people that aren't mentally ill. Stream of consciousness? Nah.

Do like sci-fi/fantasy. Even for younger readers. Currently plowing through Grimpow. Then Terekhova's Kamennyi Most, followed probably by Luk'yanenko or Sorokin. Dunno. Maybe something older, Vancura.

I can handle other cultures, as long as I have a hook into them. And as long as the other cultures aren't in the books for the sake of saying, "Look! Another culture!" Otherwise it's just exotica. If I don't have a hook into them then they have to explain too much for a decent book; they also usually start to preach.

Don't like political books or non-fiction that is political. Don't mind fiction books that have a political stance as long as it's background. Like science and some scholarly stuff.

Don't care about skin color.

[tammywammy]

53. Yes, I'm currently reading 'Why Capitalism Will Save Us' by Forbes.

I most definitely read books written by people not like me. :)

[bemildred]

55. Actually, I find reading about people like me boring. nt

[old mark]

56. One of my absolute favorite American writers is Walter Mosley. He is

black.

I recommend his work to anyone.

I had no idea of his race when I first read his work.

mark

[XemaSab]

58. I read almost exclusively white people

I like Allende, but I was totally bored with Marquez.

I can't recall a single book written by a Middle Easterner that I've read other than the autobiography of Queen Noor, but she's American by birth.

I've been meaning to read Chingiz Aitmatov for a while.

I have no interest in reading Amy Tan, but I have enjoyed Kazuo Ishiguro. I've read and greatly enjoyed several books about the Japanese internment. I've never read Naipaul or Rushdie.

The only Indian authors I've read are Kipling and MM Kaye, and the only African authors I've read are Alan Paton and Isak Dineson. :P

Maya Angelou was okay, James Baldwin was okay, Eldridge Cleaver was terrific, WEB Du Bois was okay, Autobiography of Malcolm X was terrific, Virginia Hamilton was good, I did not care for Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison was okay, Alice Walker was okay, I'm not a fan of Cornel West, August Wilson was good, Richard Wright was terrific, Having Our Say was terrific, and I read an autobiography by a woman whose name I do not remember about all the supposed racism she endured growing up and I came away thinking "That's called being poor, honey."

I am interested in reading more books by non-white authors, but I'm not sure where to start. :shrug:

[Fuzz]

59. No one is like me.

;)

[lonestarnot]

65. Great minds think alike

:fistbump: I'd never read anything again! :evilgrin:

[mitchum]

60. It is not my doing that the bulk of the canon was written by white western men

[XemaSab]

68. Especially in English

I'm sure that if I spoke Spanish or Japanese, there would be a lot of other literature available to me. :P

[Zavulon]

62. I used to alternate political reads.

As an example, I'd read Michael Moore, then Ann Coulter. I'd read Combs, then Hannity.

I lost my patience for it, but I'd say that by doing that I read about a dozen books written by right-wingers. I always new Coulter was a nut job, but if you read any of her books...holy fuck.

[BurtWorm]

64. You've apparently got a much stronger stomach than most lefties.

More than me, certainly. I can't read a winger unless I can unload directly back on them.

:toast:

[TheKentuckian]

66. I was thinking like me in a different sense when I clicked on the thread, like thinks like me

That would be a very interesting question but in a lot of cases very difficult to tell.

Race, gender, and orientation? Not much. I haven't a clue about orientation other than my favorite Frank Herbert had a wife and at least on kid because I read some of his stuff too.

I like science fiction so that tends to lean male but I like fantasy and a lot more women write in that genre, I love Anne McCafferty and Anne Rice.

Racially it probably leans white but in most cases I can't be bothered to care.

I'm not a prime person being multi-racial but I have read Obama's books.

Depending on what you read the odds are high of a book being written by a white guy, we live in a white European dominate culture.

[Kaleva]

67. As I am not an author of books myself, every book I read is written by someone unlike myself.

[HopeHoops]

69. Absolutely. Some of the authors are dead. I'm not. We aren't alike.

[Jankyn]

70. All the time!

In fact, I rarely read a novel by someone who IS like me (far left lesbian feminist), unless Sarah Schulman has a new book out.

But I read voraciously, and most of those books--no kidding--are by straight white men. It's not that straight white men are either better or worse writers; it is (I think) a particular bias that exists as far as access to publication is concerned.

Yes, the straight white male point of view is still considered "universal," even though it is, in reality, a minority point of view. Most people are female (a bare majority) and have a bit of color to their skins; the idea that "universal" is still white and male is a hangover of privilege.

That said, some of the finest writers working today are not white men: the afore-mentioned Schulman (one of the most under-rated and neglected novelists and playwrights ever); John Edgar Wideman (an ignored American treasure); Edwidge Danticat; Yiyun Li; Cristina Garcia; Daniel Alarcon; and I could go on for a very long time (but I do read a lot).

As for the purveyors of "chick-lit," you're welcome to 'em. There's a market for it, as there is for genre fiction; I even read it sometimes (if I need a bit of brain candy to relax). It is not, however, good writing.

BTW, people who are looking for really good writing might want to check out GRANTA Magazine (now with an American editor).

[NeedleCast]

74. Yes, especially political and religious books

I like to read others ideas, even if I think they're wrong. I even try to approach them from an objective viewpoint. Its hard to do and I have to space reading books like this out pretty widely.

Humourous side-note. I was actually walking through Barnes and Nobles today at lunch and there was a book by Glenn Beck in the New Fiction section. Apparently Head Wreck has written a ficiton novel. I found myself thinking, "shouldn't all Beck books be in the fiction section anyway?"