When I realised a couple of years back just how few books by women authors there were on my shelves , it was the source of some embarrassment - not least because the massive imbalance had gone entirely unnoticed. As this Guardian article by Mary Ann Sieghart underlines, though, I'm far from alone in this - not that that makes it any more excusable, of course.
Sieghart suggests that many men instinctively dismiss books by women out of hand as not for them, refusing to engage with a female perspective on the world and thereby reinforcing their own blinkered male gaze. True, perhaps, though not for me. I've asked myself whether a more unconscious form of bias might have played a part, but have come to the conclusion that the sort of books I'm most frequently drawn to reading - non-fiction tomes about music - are more often written by stereotypically nerdy male obsessives.
Still, I'm now making a conscious effort to rectify things. This week's holiday reading is Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's Booker-winning novel The Discomfort Of Evening - though I'll admit to having snuck a second-hand copy of Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman's Jim Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive into my bag too...
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