There’s a bit of chatter going around about how men don’t read fiction by women.
I guess I could be some sort of outlier. My reading tastes have always been eclectic and gender-neutral. It’s not that I don’t think there may be patterns of differences between the way men and women write, but I find the differences interesting and broadening.
Some of my favorite contemporary spec fic authors are women: Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Nancy Kress, and Margaret Atwood. I like Candace Bushnell (yup, I’d rank Trading Up with Gatsby). In the last year, I read Gillian Flynn and Janice Y. K. Lee, among others. And as indicated in my post on Vendela Vida and Julie Orringer, it’s not as if I changed my habits last year.
Anecdote is not data, but it’s some sort of evidence.