Follow up to the Bradford Challenge

[owlmoose]

Just about a year ago, I posted about K. Tempest Bradford's reading challenge (no cis straight white men for a year) and my plans to attempt a modified version of it. The most significant thing I learned is that I'm really, really bad at keeping track of my reading, whatever the reason (this also includes remembering what I read and liked for Hugo nomination purposes). So I didn't track very well, which means that I don't really have anything to report. :P But I still wanted to check in.

I can say that I successfully limited my reading of cis straight white men, even through Hugo nomination season. I only bought four prose books by authors falling into this category (I decided not to count comics and graphic novels this time around), and the only one I've read so far is "The End of All Things" by John Scalzi. The others were all entries in series that I'm already reading (Jim Hines, Max Gladstone, and Robert Jackson Bennett), and I will sprinkle them through my reading next year.

As to whether I did better with authors of color, since I didn't track closely, I can't really say. I did make a point of reading several novels by authors of color -- as it happens, none of the books recommended in the comments to the above-linked post, although I did catch some of the authors. In particular, I'm annoyed with myself for not getting around to Octavia Butler, as she was the ghost of honor at this most recent FogCon, and one of the biggest gaps in my reading by SF/F masters. Still, there is always this year, and my new goal is to pick up and read at least one book by her before WisCon. The main new author of color I discovered was Zen Cho. I adored her new novel, Sorcerer to the Crown, and I want to start looking for her short fiction. But I think it's probably still fair to say that I read more white female authors than any other single category, and it's the category that continues to be hardest for me to branch from -- possibly because so many of my favorite authors are (as far as I know) straight white women.

One good side effect of this reading challenge is the diversity of my Hugo ballot. There are no male authors on my novel ballot, and two of the books I nominated were written by women of color (Zen Cho and N.K. Jemisin); the effect continues down-ballot as well, because I haven't yet listed a single white male author in any of the prose ficton categories. (This doesn't hold in the multimedia categories, though, including graphic story -- I really wanted to give The Wicked + The Divine a nod there.)

One of the biggest knocks on reading challenges like this is that they don't change anyone's behavior long-term, and I want to fight the impulse to just go back to what I was doing. The main takeaway for me is that I need to figure out a tracking system that works for me -- not just for keeping track of my own reading patterns, but to improve my contributions to Lady Business. Maybe reporting my reading there will succeed where other plans have failed. And then maybe I'll have more to say next year.

Comments

[the_rck]

I looked at this challenge and considered it, but I have huge problems reading these days, so I kind of end up clinging to the things that I can finish without getting too anxious to deal. Mostly, that's middle grade fantasy, SF, and graphic novels. YA is actually more stressful than stuff aimed at adults. Or, rather, I can find books aimed at adults that aren't so stressful that I can't read them. I can't generally find YA that falls in that category.

I mean, I'm have anxiety over reading Sorcerer to the Crown. I got about thirty pages in and stopped dead. I've renewed the book, but I keep looking at it and being afraid to pick it up again.

There are so many books I hear about that sound really, really good, but I know that I won't be able to read them.

[firecat]

I keep track of my reading using a list in Scrivener and also using Goodreads.

I don't have a specific goal but what I do tends to track with the goal you set yourself (prioritizing books by people who aren't cis white men).

WRT Octavia Butler, you have a lot to look forward to!

[lassarina]

Given that so much of what I read is either female fantasy authors or romance novelists, I have little trouble with the "cis white men" thing, though I'm probably still reading a lot of cis white authors.

I use GoodReads to track what I'm reading, or at least I'm trying to. It's a slow process.