(The Lack of) Women Authors 

Prompted by a recent post over at Stephen’s place (Reading Freely) I began wondering just how many female authors I’ve been reading over the last 10 years. I had a pretty good idea that it’d be fairly low – I'd estimate about 20-25% of the total – but surprised myself that even the few authors I did read tended to only have a single book reviewed here. But, so as not to have a (actually not that) long list of such ‘one-offs’ I thought I’d only list authors that have managed to snag my interest more than once. Some of the usual/expected suspects are there but one – Alison Weir – is notable by her absence. I only have a single recorded read of hers in the last 10 years! Amazing! Anyway, this is the list from 4th March 2013: 

Philippa Gregory      5
Suzanne Collins     3
Juliet Nicolson     2
Agatha Christie     6
Veronica Roth      3
Amanda Hemingway      3
Mary Beard      2
Alice Roberts      2
Helen Rappaport      2

So, not exactly an impressive list after TEN years! Inevitably, going through my reviews it become very clear that not only have I read many more male authors, but I’ve also tended to read many more books by those authors too. I’ll post something on that in the next few weeks. I don’t think I’ll ever achieve a 50/50 split between male/female authors for a host of reasons, but I’ll see if I can reduce the distance between them a little going forward. It’ll be interesting (for me anyway!) to see where I stand in a year's time.