Onto the final post in this short series! Where we find out: who are the writers of these books? Well, for starters, they are mostly women. Overall, 60% of the books I read were written by women (and that doesn't count those that were written by both men and women). But I had a hypothesis that this had changed over time- that I started off reading more books by men but now a large majority of the books I read are written by women. Time to test it out with a graph!
And the graph shows that is broadly true (for reference, the 'other' category includes books written by a combination of genders, books were the authors gender is unknown, and non-binary authors). In 2003 61% of the books I read were written by men- and for the next 5 years it hovered around 50/50. In 2010 the proportion written by women started to climb, and many years after that it's hovered around 60% women (though there were a few 50/50 years in 2012, 2016 and 2017). The most gender-unbalanced year was 2019, with 89% women authors, and in 3 of the last 5 years the proportion written by women has been at or over 75%.
Why is this? I don't consciously attempt to read more books by women- I know they're overrepresented in my reading anyway. Partly I think I am more drawn to them, partly they're the books I'm hearing about, and partly I think it's the type of books I'm reading. I don't read a tonne of non-fiction, I've stopped reading as much epic fantasy, I often like cozy or domestic themes, I'm drawn to genre stories that are doing something a bit different to the norm.. and maybe those areas attract more women than men. Anyway that's my theory so far. But also I think it's probably affected by the number of long murder mystery series I read that are written by women. Which I realised by looking at...
my most read authors
This is the top 10 authors with the highest number of books on my list.
- Kerry Greenwood - 25
- Agatha Christie - 21
- Diana Wynne Jones - 15
- Elizabeth Peters - 14
- (equal 4th) Terry Pratchett - 14
- (equal 4th) Ben Aaronovitch - 14
- (equal 4th) Dorothy Sayers - 14
- Frances Brody - 11
- P.G. Wodehouse - 10
- (equal 10th) A.S. Byatt - 10
And 5 of those 10 are women who write crime series- topped by Kerry Greenwood and her Phryne Fisher series, then Agatha Christie who needs no introduction from me. There's also a man who writes a fantasy/crime series (Ben Aaronovitch with his Rivers of London series). That's a lot of crime! But not that surprising since mystery series can run for a huge number of books. Agatha Christie wrote over 70 novels, so I'm really lagging behind with her.
Incidentally, one of the things that I hoped to get out of this exercise was identifying which Agatha Christie books I had and hadn't read, so that I could pick up new ones instead of keeping on rereading them. Unfortunately I have lost all of 2009, when I could well have been reading Agatha Christie, and also started reading her as a teenager, before the lists existed. But 21 is a good start.
One author on this list that is surprising is Terry Pratchett. Not because I didn't think I'd read many of his books- at one point I'd read all of them twice- but because that point in my life was before 2003. I didn't know he had that many books- I do know that I haven't read all of the later ones. So I'm not sure how, in between all that, I read 14 new books of his! A super prolific author. I'm also not sure how I managed to read 10 A.S. Byatt books, even though I actively sought out all her books after falling in love with Possession in late 2002/early 2003 (I'm not sure exactly- but it is on the list). I didn't love The Children's Book quite as much, but somehow in between those two I managed 10 of her books.
Overall there are 635 (give or take) authors represented in my 20 years of reading. That means for every author I read, on average, 2.8 of their books (but a median of 1), or around 32 different authors a year.
And that's it for my 20 year wrap up! Unless you have any burning questions for me to answer. It's been fun!
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