Well, both the reading and the posting for my month of reading only female authored books are done. I also didn’t buy books by men or borrow books by men from the library during the month, and made sure all my ‘Flashback Friday’ posts were of books by female authors. Did I notice a change? Well, no, not really. Once or twice I had to remind myself, and put off reading something or other until the month was over. I don’t think I’d want to extend the month any longer; I read a lot of female authors anyway, and there’s so much worthwhile stuff out there that isn’t written by women.
Still, it was interesting. Browsing the shelves at Caerphilly Library, realising that I had to go for three shelves in the SF&F section until I found a female author; looking for books about science written by women and finding them thin on the ground; noticing my own dismissal of certain genres (paranormal romance, for example) because I just assume they’re all the same. Even though I’ve read some and really enjoyed them.
It wasn’t a struggle to read female authors only for a month, but the change in focus was interesting. I might do it with other groups in future.
What about you? Did you notice that I was only posting reviews of books by female authors in May?
I didn’t notice that your reviews were focused on female only books! 🙂
I’ve thought about doing a month of time travel novels. When I was reviewing my shelves for the #ShelfLove challenge I have a lot of time travel themed books.
Terri M., the Director
Second Run Reviews
Honestly, it’s not such a change for me, so I think I’d be surprised if someone tells me they did notice!
Oooh. Or a time travel readathon? I have a few time travel books I should dust off and get round to myself…
I didn’t notice, to be honest. But I’m pretty unobservant about such things 🙂
When I look at my goodreads shelf, I’m actually quite surprised that I maintain about a 50/50 balance in books by women vs. books by men (with women being 2-3 books ahead), and I certainly didn’t plan it that way – I just picked up whatever I felt like reading at the time. I think keeping a diverse bookshelf is awesome. An open mind is sometimes the most important quality to have, and certainly better than trying to push things upon oneself and others.
I don’t think I’d notice either…
Hmm, I’m not sure how I’d measure up. Interesting.