Authors and Reader Gender Bias

Hi all, thought I would post some of my thoughts in my lunchbreak before the IT Gestapo catch on and shut me down, lol!!

I remember the time when I discovered that one of my favourite authors was not a female, but a male! I was gobsmacked. I have followed the female characters so closely through out the series, grown to love and identify with them (in fact Mma Precious Ramotswe is quite an icon in the world of readers) that for some reason I assumed the author to be female. OK so the author's name might have given me a clue, Alexander McCall Smith, but no! The character of Mma Ramotswe is just so lovely and essentially female that I believe (and I'm sure Freud would agree) that I transferred these qualities to the author. Nevertheless, I still love Alexander McCall Smith, even if he is a bloke. He has given us the beautiful Precious in his series "The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'. Precious is a warm, wise, 'traditionally built' female detective in Botswana. McCall Smith delights me with simple gentle fables of everyday life in Botswana centred around virtue and compassion (within a lighthearted mystery). This experience leads me to wonder if knowing the gender of the author can make a difference to how we relate to a story. Similarly, do we identify with elements of a story through our own gender bias (as I did)?

Hey, its Friday, have a great weekend everyone.

Write Faster Damn You!!

Does anyone else have this problem? My favourite authors are just not spitting out their novels fast enough, do they think they are on a picnic, what happened to the 8 hour work day, surely a book or two a year isn't too much to ask for!! Case in point, Robert Rankin. Robert, I love you, I have read everything you have published, I follow your radio show on BBC, I belong to your fanclub. OK so I haven't attended any of your events recently but Brentford, England is just a little off the beaten track for me! The last novel you wrote was Necrophenia in 2008, that was a year ago Robert!! May I be so bold as to make a suggestion - instead of writing in longhand in an exercise book, try a wordprocessor man!! you will never look back. But wait, imagine my delight when the Order of the Golden Sprout alterted me to new Rankin novel in the wings. Retromancer is to be published this year! but hurry we are over half way through. I will let you off with a warning Robert, a book a year is not too bad but you could do better. I'm happy to whizz over and be your typist.

Bookmates, you can check out the Order of the Golden Sprout at http://www.thegoldensprout.com/

Hi Bookmates

Would like to add another to our reading list. "We Need To Talk About Kevin" Lionel Shriver. I have not read it but my daughter read it for NCEA and it is the only book I have seen her read from start to finish. I think it would be a good book to discuss as it looks at the controversial topic of nature vs nuture as the primary influence in one's behaviour. This book takes the form of a series of letters from Eva to her estranged husband Franklin after their son has committed a school massace. It documents how the mother struggles to come to terms with what her son has done. It is supposedly being adapted for film.

PS I have discovered what teenagers do for NCEA English when they don't want to read a book and analyse it, they choose a book that has been made into a movie, then they watch the movie at least 3 times, read the synopsis and bluff their way through it!!