I’m wondering if other people have any input on this.
I’ve been tracking a few basic facts about every book I read since 2018 - gender of the author, author’s nationality, original language the book was published in, and year of publication. Initially this was just a random thing I did, but I soon noticed that I was reading significantly less female authors than male authors. In 2018 and 2019, it was like 25-30 percent female authors. That bugged me a little bit, so I made an effort to look for more female authors, and then I figured I maybe should aim to read less European and North American authors (comparatively) and give a bit more space to South American, African, Asian authors. It became a bit of a hobby project, tracking these stats. Now I’m at a point where for the first time in 2024, I don’t want to set a reading goal in terms of number of books read, but I want to set myself conditions like 50% female writers, 50% non-European non-North American writers, and works from every decade between 1850 and now. Something of the sort, I haven’t worked it out exactly. The thing is I know it’d be super easy to game this system, which defeats the point. I want to read more voices that are different from my own, not just rack up points in some game against myself. I’m not sure I’m going about this in the best way.
Does anybody else track these sort of things? Do you think it’s worthwhile? Where do you draw the line between gamification of a valid goal (reading more voices that aren’t like you) and gaming your own system? What sort of statistics do you track, if any? Have you made any conscious changes to your reading habits?
I do feel the need to read female authors when I get particularly annoyed by the depictions of their anatomy. You can only read about the swaying of breasts so many times. How many otherwise beautifully written novels reduce women to their chest? If things feel a bit too macho, I do think it’s nice to read other perspectives but I didnt become moonstruck by Toni Morrison because of her gender or race. Her brilliance, like all brilliance, is not exclusive to her purely physical properties or to say it simply, her outward appearance. Books are about ideas.
Race is also not something I make any check list for. I think its ridiculous to say that I dont see color but that it because I do think it is tied to their individual identity but it’s rare that that alone is why I read them. Even books that are completely tied to the author’s race have other reasons they are worth reading. That all being said, I would like a more worldly view. I think we should read everything that’s good and everywhere around the world has distinct contributions to the art form.