A poll for the ladies on reading

[netmouse]

Please only participate in this poll if you self-identify as having a female gender.
I know it's hard to remember what-all you've read recently, but please try.

UPDATE: for anthologies, please count them as the gender of the majority of the authors.

[Poll #1450250]

Comments

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

For the year so far:
-34 books read
-23 by male authors
-9 by female authors
-1 anthology, heavily male but with some female authors
-1 story co-written by husband/wife

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

And for 2008:

53 total books read
30 by male authors
22 by female authors
1 anthology, mixed-sex authors

For 2007:
52 total books read
29 by men
23 by women

For 2006:
51 total books read
23 by men
27 by women
1 book co-written by husband/wife

I know you didn't ask for this much data, but I was just interested in my own historical reading trends. :)

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

*grin*

Awesome, thanks!

[rileybear67.livejournal.com]

1st - please forgive my slight snark on the men post. I can be a bit pedantic when it comes to word usage.

2nd - I had a difficult time because I, too, have actually read about 12 or so books, but many of them are re-reads or non-scifi!

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure why people are reluctant to include re-reads. I didn't ask for new books, just percentage of reading.

I also didn't ask people to limit poll answers to scifi. I am wondering in general if people's reading is gendered.

[rileybear67.livejournal.com]

Based on that, I'd re-poll if I could. I guess when I read your pool, it just seemed to subconsciously indicate new reads.

[greyhat.livejournal.com]

It's easy to repoll. Just click on "view this poll" and then there will be something to view your answers, and then you can change them and resubmit the poll.

[knightlygoddess.livejournal.com]

I think, in general, I tend to read more male authors than female. Sometimes this is on purpose, because I specifically like quite a few male authors. Other times it tends to be because the genre I'm reading is heavily authored by males.

The only exception for me seems to be YA lit (which I read a lot of in order to find works for my students to read), which, at least in the subgenres I choose, tends to be about 50/50 male/female authoring. :)

[constant-reader.livejournal.com]

It's not so hard to remember if you use a site like LibraryThing.com to record every book you are reading. I started this in 2007, so I could have a list of potential Hugo nominees. But I read far more non-SF now than SF.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My percentage of male authors went up after my grandfather's death and is likely to stay a little higher than my norm for awhile now: Grandpa did not read exclusively male authors, but he trended heavily that way, and I am mixing in books from his library with my usual fare.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Also, I seem to recall the men having tickyboxes for the last option instead of the radio buttons we got. This may explain differences in the response: people who would otherwise choose a subset will default to "anything good" if they can't say "x and y and also z."

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely checkboxes on the other poll. Good point.

I can't see the results here, though, since I haven't clicked "submit" on the poll. I forget, will doing that without checking anything mess up the statistics?

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

If you click on the number of the poll, there's a link at the top that goes to View Poll Results (http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=1450250&mode=results).

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

ya know, I just independently noticed the same thing. I am very much regretting that. unfortunately polls cannot be changed after they are posted and entries made on. I wonder if it makes sense to post a new poll...

[aiela.livejournal.com]

I can provide data all the way back to 2005, if you like.

I tend to get stuck on authors tho, so I'm not sure if this 2 month data is helpful. I read four books by Christopher Moore out of those 17 because I kept grabbing more from the library.

In looking at the last 2 montsh I can say that I tend to read more non-fiction by women than fiction, which is interesting.

(Actually, I just looked at the numbers for the whole year, and I'm at 23% women, 72% men, so I guess it was only a little off - I got 76% men for the last two months.)

Also, I counted Metatropolis as "men" since the majority of the contributors were men, not sure what the best way to do that was.

[stfg.livejournal.com]

I have read 8 new books in the last 2 months, 4 of which were men. For 2009 though, my percentage is more female with 20 female authors, 13 male authors, 1 anthology, and 1 book co-written by a man and a woman. I have not been tracking re-reads, but my feeling is that I am even more heavily female with those.

[partly-bouncy.livejournal.com]

I'm having problems with recall of what I read as I read a number of books while on vacation. I shed them as fast as I read them. It was a pretty even split as I was picking up romance novels and other types of books. Romance novels tend to be by women. (Lesbian romances more so.)

Most of the travel humor I read was by men. I love reading sports history type books and that field also appears to be dominated by men. :/

[alicebentley]

I usually read a lot more books than just one in two months, but it's been a strange summer, and I only included the book that I both started and finished in that time.

[earthgoat.livejournal.com]

I wish I could specifically remember more books that I read, as I'm reasonably sure there are more.

To complete the last question since it wasn't ticky box:

Anything good (sf or f), adventure (sf or f), epic fantasy, non-epic fantasy, space opera, military sf, urban fantasy (there is a difference from paranormal romance, which I don't read much of anymore).

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

ooo, urban fantasy. I knew I was missing some good ones. Thanks for elaborating.

[greyhat.livejournal.com]

How do I categorize online fanfiction short stories and novellas into the "book" category? Should I count X number of stories as one book? That makes up 90% of my fiction reading these days.

[shekkara.livejournal.com]

Oops, I listed all of the authors. Robin Goldsby is a woman. Are poll results editable?

It's kinda embarrassing to have only read 3 books in two months. My reading has really dropped off a lot the last few years. It is inversely proportional to how busy I am doing non-reading hobbies, which have grown quite a bit over the years.

[crookedfeet.livejournal.com]

The past 2 months were sort of an anomaly-due to high stress I did a bunch of comfort rereading, so reread a bunch of stuff like the Rex Stouts and several David Eddings books which skewed the numbers. Normally, it's probably close to even.

[gilraen2.livejournal.com]

i have good data back to 2000 as i record my reading. let me know if you really need it.

[kreie.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I don't feel like what I've been reading lately is representative of my normal reading habits. I'm usually more evenly split gender-wise (although still around 60/40 or 70/30), but during the summer I always go on a big post-apoc kick, and I always get more recommendations and tips for male authors. That in mind, however, two of the absolute best post-apoc books were by chicks. (I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman and Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.)