So, the statistics: In 2020 I read 61 books by 50 authors, counting of course only books I hadn\u2019t read before. 26 of those writers were already familiar to me from earlier books (well, variously familiar, as one of them I only just realized had written a book I read some years ago) and 24 were new to me. Before I do a demographic breakdown, I\u2019ll say that those numbers seem just about right to me for my own pleasure: something in the general area of a book a week, about half of which are written by people whose stuff I have read before and presumably liked enough not to avoid. Anyway, if I can find twenty or so new writers a year who have written a book or play I am willing to read through to the end, that\u2019s pretty great. And if writers that I like keep producing enough new books that I can read two of those a month, that\u2019s fabulous.\r\n
So, the breakdown. First, the new writers. 24 of them: 21 women (or female-presenting, anyway) and 3 men. Evidently I\u2019ve been even more stringent about avoiding books by white men than in the past few years, but I\u2019ve done it largely by avoiding all the names that look male to me. It\u2019s fine, although I should probably hunt up recommendations for non-white men, too. Breaking the demographics down, two of the new male writers were white (one was only new to me as a prose writer; I read Elton John\u2019s memoir) and one African-American.\r\n
Of the 21 new (to me) women writers, 13 are white, one black English, and the other 7 are either from Asia or Asian-American. Well, there may be Asian-English writers in there; I didn\u2019t do all that much research. It\u2019s interesting (to me anyway) that I didn\u2019t set out to read works by Asian and Asian-American women this year, but that\u2019s the theme. I suspect that someone at my library was promoting these works, or else more than one person at more than one publisher has been. Or it\u2019s just coincidence, I suppose.\r\n
Worth breaking down the 26 familiar-to-me writers, too: 9 white men, 1 African-American man, 1 Asian-American man, 1 non-binary white American, 12 white women, 1 African-American woman and 1 Asian-American woman. Again, the demographics of this group reflect not only the systemic racism and misogyny of English-Language publishing over centuries, but my own unthinking and complacent accommodation to it\u2014nothing against the individual white-dude writers in question, of course, who are terrific enough that I want to keep reading their stuff, but cumulatively it\u2019s 85% white, and that sort of thing has consequences in the long run. My four or five years now of affirmatively seeking out women writers seems to have had an effect, though, or perhaps it\u2019s a decade or so of publishing getting less unequal. Or, perhaps, it\u2019s also related to 2020 and having different sources of library books; I suspect that my author\u2019s list isn\u2019t usually so devoid of dead people (only Shakespeare, Shaw and Broadhurst<\/a>, I think) nor so tilted toward things published in the last few years.\r\n I\u2019ll put in here for anyone (including YHB) who is reading this from far enough in the future not to immediately look at the numerals that make up 2020 and immediately think \u2018the pandemic year!\u2019 (Lord, I hope that\u2019s how it goes, and not \u2018the first pandemic year!\u2019) (Lord, I hope that there are people far enough in the future to think back to 2020) that this was a pandemic year. I spent roughly a third of it without a day job and without the access to a variety of books that the academic library that employs me usually provides. I did have access to a lot of books, thank goodness, but the selection was different than it has been in recent years. And while I had more time to read, I had less mental energy to spare, or perhaps more distraction, or different distraction. At any rate, I suspect this year\u2019s list will turn out to be somewhat anomalous, but I don\u2019t have any idea how.\r\n Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
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