Jordan, Corenski and I are doing a little spring cleaning around the site. One of the upcoming changes is that we’re putting up a page with lists of our favourite books, and what we’re currently reading. The page is still in a draft state, but my list of favourite books is ready. There’s a pretty obvious pattern: all of the authors are guys, and all but one of them are white.
This wouldn’t bother me so much, except that it made me curious about my reading habits. Do I favour the work of white guys because I read more of their work than any other group? I took a quick look through the books that I’ve marked as “read” on my Goodreads account. That’s not every book that I’ve ever read, but it’s a sample of 225 books, so I think it’s fair to take it as a representation of what I’ve read.
Like I said, I just took a quick look, so I haven’t yet created a breakdown of authors by gender and ethnicity. But it’s an overwhelmingly white male list.
If I narrow it down to just what I’ve read so far this year, the breakdown goes like this:
I’ve read 18 books so far this year. Only 3 of them have been written by women. 14 were written by men. 1 was a compilation of essays, mostly written by men.
I don’t know the ethnicity of all of the authors (especially in that essay compilation), but of those where I do know the ethnicity, they’re all white.
This is a problem. I’m a white guy, and I read mostly white guys. It’s really hard to understand other perspectives if I’m not reading them. I do read blogs written by women and people of colour. But I don’t think that’s really the same thing.
The solution, at least, is pretty obvious.
