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 don’t keep track or have a set quota per se, but yeah, I do make an effort to read different authors and subjects. It takes various forms for me. I’m part of a book club that reads graphic novels, and we make a point of reading something by an Indigenous Canadian writer for our Canada Day meeting, as an example. Same with Black History Month, etc. It’s really cool to keep our eyes open and find books we’d already find intriguing but might not have sought out if we weren’t paying attention. As for my regular reading, I take recommendations from my relatively diverse friend group, and I’ll browse through articles on Goodreads if they’ve posted lists pertaining to a given month (I’ve read specific books during Pride, during Asian Heritage, and right now I’m doing a very general Nonfiction November, haha). Sometimes I’ll seek out something that’s been translated to English from a language I don’t speak, like Polish. I find it fun to see how far I can broaden the scope!