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My wife said something to me the other day that I had never really noticed. I don't read books written by women. I tend to read horror, sci-fi, and thrillers. I know women write in those genres, I just wonder why none of their books has caught my eye before. Is it because sci-fis, horrors, and thrillers are all in a way fantasies, and male authors know what fantasies male readers like? Could it be sexism on my part without realizing it, or even the publishing companies in some way? One big giant conincidence?
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For good science fiction written by women, check out Octavia Butler and Lois McMaster Bujold (who has also done some fantasy).
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I noticed a year or so ago that I didn't have any cd's performed by women. Still haven't figured out why (and now I have a few mix cd's that have female vocals on them).
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quote:Originally posted by breyerchic04: I noticed a year or so ago that I didn't have any cd's performed by women. Still haven't figured out why (and now I have a few mix cd's that have female vocals on them).
I'm the complete opposite when it comes to music. Though I buy cds with both male and female performers, I much prefer to listen to female vocalists if given a choice.
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I tend to prefer music with male vocalists. I think it's because I have an easier time singing along with a male voice.
EDIT - I enjoyed the Dragonlance books written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Granted, I was in the target age group at the time, but I still find it pleasant to go back and reread them every now and again. The Legends trilogy was my favorite.
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For Science Fiction by a woman author, try Kay Kenyon - I heartily recommend Tropic of Creation.
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I doubt that (at least at first) as many young boys would have read Harry Potter if the author's name had been Joanne. I think for most people there tends to be a bias towards assuming that female writers will include things like romance and male writers will have lots of gadgets and fast cars.
It's a stereotype, but with books people tend to assume you can tell content and characterisation from the sex of the author. This is why a male author writing historical romance might pick a female pen name, and why female authors writing spy thrillers might pick their initials, or a nickname like Chris, Ali or Pat.
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I rarely, if ever, listen to female voclists. I don't know why. I just don't find them as enjoyable. I think it may be because I like songs that have a lot of emotion I can identify with, and I can't usually identify with the feelings of women.
I tend to lean more towards male authors, but there are women authors I enjoy, most notably Madeline L'Engle.
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How 'bout Anne McCaffrey and Marian Zimmer Bradley? There's also Ursula LeGuin and Andre Norton. I met Pamela F. Service, female science fiction author, in fifth grade, but I think her books are written towards younger readers (than you are, not younger than fifth grade, I mean). If I only had bookshelves to unpack my books onto I wouldn't have to rely on memory to find me good female science fiction authors. There are others that I can think of, but I don't think K.A. Applegate is what you're looking to be pointed toward.
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I went up to look at my shelves and most of my adult sci fi/fantasy is by male authors, excluding one book by Octavia R. Butler. I have plenty of books I first read as a younger person which are by female authors: Anne McCaffrey, Isabelle Carmody, some Mercedes Lackey, Tamora Pierce, Robin McKinley, and others. Probably when I was 10-16ish I was mostly reading female authors and since then I've been reading mostly male authors. I suppose they were the authors I hadn't read yet. Now, I suppose I am reading more male simply because there are more male authors.
I wouldn't not read a book because of the author (unless- see below). I don't tend to look very closely at thee author anyway, at least until the end .
Outside of this genre, I don't really seem to have a bias. I don't read Very Female books often because they tend to annoy me a bit.
quote:and I can't usually identify with the feelings of women.
quote:Originally posted by Stephan: My wife said something to me the other day that I had never really noticed. I don't read books written by women.
How do you know?
I see your point, pen names and so forth. I usually do like to read up on the authors I read though, find their web sites and so forth. Unless they are using fake pictures, I'm pretty certain. Clive Cussler, Robert J Sawyer, SM Stirling, Stephen King, Stephen Baxter, Carl Hiaasen, Leon Uris, Robert Charles Wilson, Orson Scott Card, Dean Koontz, and Neil Gaiman are my regulars.
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Robin Hobb is fantastic! Give her Assassin's Apprentice series a whirl. I am rereading it for like the 3rd time. I can't put it down!
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An author's gender isn't particularly important to me, but a decent percentage of the authors I really like are female. Octavia Butler and Maureen McHugh are phenomenal, as is Nancy Kress. Ursual K. LeGuin's earlier work is fantastic, and Pat Murphy and Robin Hobb are quite solid. There are many more that I consider good, but for me these are the standouts.
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quote:and I can't usually identify with the feelings of women.
Oh, dear.
Sad thing is I have four sisters. You'd think growing up with them might teach me something, but yeah, it hasn't. I've been getting into ... debates with my best friend (who is a girl) lately about our different perspectives on songs ("Rest Stop" by Matchbox 20 is our primary argument). She see's the songs from a girls perspective and sympathizes with the girl, assuming the guy to be in the wrong. I sympathize with the guy, assuming the girl to be the irrational, crazy one. It provides some interesting discussion.
Back on the books topics, Lois Lowry is worth a look too. I guess her books are usually considered somewhat juvenile, but that doesn't change the fact that "The Giver" was a freaking awesome.
Thinking about it, the only autographed copies of books I have are by women: Lois Lowry and Madeline L'Engle. Odd.
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I guess when I was younger some of my favorite books were written by women. I can't even count how many times I read Indian in the Cupboard and People in Pineapple Place.
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A psych professor I had back in college had a male student who did an interesting experiment: for a year (or 6 months or somesuch) he only read books by women. Interesting idea, I've sometimes thought about whether I'd ever be able to do something like that. (I don't think I'd have the patience to have to wait until later if a new OSC or GRRM book came out...)
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Noemon -- have you ever read any Bujold?
A bit. I wasn't terribly impressed by what I read, but I don't know that I gave her work enough of a chance. Would you say that she's of the same calibur as the other authors I just listed?
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I would say she's not quite as good as the very best Ursula LeGuin, but much better than the not-her-best LeGuin.
Definitely on my "buy everything she writes" list. I even bought a crappy romance/sci-fi crossover short story collection because she had a story in it. (The only story in it worth the purchase price, IMO.)
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Really! I definitely had her more in the C. J. Cherryh league. What title of hers would you recommend that I start with?
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The only ones I've read that you mentioned are Butler and LeGuin. LeGuin is somwhat hit-or-miss for me, but her good stuff is good. Buter, well, she's Octavia Butler. I'm not sure anybody's in her league.
There's a reason why Bujold has won so many Hugo awards but no Nebula awards. Her books are a little on the light side, but they are some of the funnest books I've ever read.
Curse of Chalion and Paladin of souls are two fantasy books that are fabulous, and don't suffer from the space-opera ligntness that some of her other books do.
She's most well-known for her Vorkosigan series, which is great space opera spanning over a dozen stories. It's a great series of books. My favories were Barrayar (which might not stand alone without reading Shards of Honor first, her first book, and one of her weakest), Mirror Dance, and Mountains of Mourning.
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I think that Shards of Honor was the one I started, way back when. I'll keep my eye out for Curse of Chalion and Paladin next time I'm at the library.
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Curse of Chalion is the first book in the series, and Paladin the second. There's a third I don't recall the title of.
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Thanks fugu. I suspected that that was the case, and would have confirmed it before checking just one of them out, but I appreciate your letting me know.
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I read Paladin of Souls first before I read any of her books, and I loved it. It stands very well on its own.
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quote:Originally posted by dkw: Definitely on my "buy everything she writes" list. I even bought a crappy romance/sci-fi crossover short story collection because she had a story in it. (The only story in it worth the purchase price, IMO.)
Would you mind lending it to me? I've been looking everywhere, and I can't find it.
(I have a Thing about shopping online)
I'd be happy to pay for postage, or cross lend something to you.
I'm still updating, but about half of the books I own can be found at LibraryThing..
quote: I met Pamela F. Service, female science fiction author, in fifth grade,
I adore Pamela Service. It seems like there's a lot of fantasy written for YA, but not nearly enough science fiction, and she does YA science fiction very well. It's too bad she's not very well known.
She's also from my hometown.
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quote:Originally posted by dkw: Definitely on my "buy everything she writes" list. I even bought a crappy romance/sci-fi crossover short story collection because she had a story in it. (The only story in it worth the purchase price, IMO.) [/QB]
Which short story is that, dkw?
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The third (edit: in the Chalion series) is The Hallowed Hunt.
Shards of Honor and Barrayar are now published together as Cordelia's Honor. You can also skip them and start the series with The Warrior's Apprentice but I think it's worth reading the first one. It hangs together as one book better than Shards would seperately -- it was one story that got stopped too soon because it was getting too long.
I agree that the Chalion books are "deeper," but the Vorkosigan books are just plain fun.
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And for the triple -- the thing to watch out for in the Vorkosigan series is that they're all being re-released as omnibus editions with two novels and the short stories (if any) between them. So it can get confusing, and you could end up with duplicates easily.
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Yup, I've read "Winterfair Gifts." It would be extremely frustrating to read A Civil Affair and Diplomatic Immunity without being able to read what comes between them.
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Eh, it wasn't so bad. It's not like it was a spoiler or anything. You kind of knew by the end of A Civil Campaign about the major change.
I bought Diplomatic Immunity as an e-book so I could get the first chapters early, so I read it before "Winterfair Gifts" was even out, I think.
One nice thing is that most of the books are stand alone -- it's a series, but not a serial. It's nice to read them in order, and there would be some major plot spoilers for later books if you don't, but the story arc is pretty much complete in each one. I wait anxiously for the next one because I love the characters, not because she leaves things hanging.
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That is one thing I've really liked about her books as well -- she writes novels which are in a series, instead of writing one big novel with thousands of pages and multiple volumes.
When I read the end of Diplomatic Immunity I said to myself "Well, that's it -- she's not writing any more in this series." Do you know if my impression was accurate?
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She's said she has no current plans to write another book in it, but she hasn't ruled it out if she gets an idea that would fit well.
She's started another series too -- the first book is due out Oct. 1, so I'd guess she's focusing on other worlds for awhile.
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Not finding any shortage of female SF authors on my shelves. From memory (so forgive me if I miss any):
Diane Duane - Love her Trek books, and the Wizard series. Nancy Kress - several excellent works, and some wonderful short stories. Mercedes Lackey - Not as much of a fan of her staright fantasy -- they're OK, but I don't reread them -- but I really like her urban fantasies and fairy tale retellings. Holly Lisle - great urban fantasies. A good series ("A Diplomancy of Wolves", etc). lately she's been writing mysteries, which I haven't enjoyed as much. Margaret Ball, Esther Freisner - both members of an even shorter list, funny fantasy/science fiction writers. Sheri S. Tepper - hit or miss with me, but I like the "True Game" books. Judith Tarr - haven't read much of her own stuff, but her book "Household Gods" with Harry Turtledove remains one of my favorites. Marion Zimmer Bradley Bujold Brenda Clough - only read "How Like a God" but I liked it. Julian May - Her Pliocene Saga is one of the series I reread every year or so, just for the wonder of it. Vonda McIntyre - started reading her Trek books, kept reading when she wrote her own. Elizabeth Moon - I'm not a military book fan and I can't speak for a lot of her work, but Remnant Population is excellent and The Speed of Dark is waiting patiently for me on my shelf. Kate Wilhelm - She's written mostly mysteries these years back, but Wilhelm wrote some of the best character-based SF books and "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" is one of those books you have to have read to consider yourself an SF fan. Connie Willis - Another funny writer! Woo hoo!
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quote:Kate Wilhelm - She's written mostly mysteries these years back, but Wilhelm wrote some of the best character-based SF books and "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" is one of those books you have to have read to consider yourself an SF fan.
quote:I adore Pamela Service. It seems like there's a lot of fantasy written for YA, but not nearly enough science fiction, and she does YA science fiction very well. It's too bad she's not very well known.
She's also from my hometown.
You live in the Eureka/McKinleyville/Arcata area? (I think the museum she worked at was in Arcata but I don't remember...)
I happen to live a half an hour away from Alan Dean Foster, too. And I've met him and talked with him and it wasn't about how I love his books! Now all I need to do is get our family out to Greensboro and my collection will be complete...
I've met her several times, though not recently (so she might have moved). The museum she works (worked?) at is the Monroe County Historical Museum (not the Mathers Museum as Everything2 says).
She was active in local politics (City Council member) until the late 90s, though she may have moved since then. I've found references to a Pam Service working in a museum in the area you mention, Gwen, so that very well might be her, though I can't find any specifics.
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Ah, O.K. Though it would have been cool to have a fellow Hatracker live in an area I visit every so often.
I met her in 1999/2000 (probably 2000 as the class read one of her books before meeting her). She was nice. I have one of her books, autographed (but to someone else, I think someone in my class), that I got from a book trade at the school.
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We drove past the exit for Greensboro once a few years ago and my son tried, half-seriously, to get me to stop so we could hunt out the Card family. I finally convinced him it would be a bit impolite, and just a tad creepy Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Ooh, forgot Audrey Neffenegger. Dunno if she considers herself an SF writer, but The Time Traveller's Wife remains one of my favorite SF books.
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Cordelia's Honor is my favorite Bujold book. I've only read the Vorkosigan series by her, though. I love the Miles books (the later ones in the series -- Cordelia's Honor is the first), but they are funny and entertaining, and just lighter reading. Good but not great. Cordelia's Honor is great!
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Sad thing is I have four sisters. You'd think growing up with them might teach me something, but yeah, it hasn't. 
