Male vs female Authors

[Clericnon2boxed]

I've noticed that most books I have are written by males and I dont regret it. The few books written by female authors, I ve read, further pushed me into the direction of preferring books written by men.

whats wrong with books written by females (maybe I picked the wrong ones but it was still absurd):

Feminism, somehow the story always involves men treating woman bad or a woman having to fight for equal rights, or struggling with whatever female odd complexes, I dont want to read about that thanks.

Other things that turn me off:

pets, female maincharacters with pets are super annoying hard to say what I cant exactly stomach about but ugh

going into lenghty details about family relations/history or boring happenings they have

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Am I alone with my sentiments ?

[brekk]

Originally Posted by Clericnon2boxed

pets, female maincharacters with pets are super annoying hard to say what I cant exactly stomach about but ugh

Could it be the middle aged women who would make up for the lack of a relationship with a guy, by instead having a very close relationship with her cat. NOT IN A SEXUAL WAY PERVS!

The middle aged single bitch becomes the old maid. The middle aged single woman with a cat, becomes the crazy old cat lady.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

I like both. I mostly read fantasy, just because what counts as "popular fiction" is horrible high school worthy writing(see "the DaVinci Code") and two of my favorite fantasy writers are women (Robin Hobb and Lois Mcmaster Bujold). I also just finished "Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" and while not as great as I thought many made it out to be, it was quality stuff.

[Kiely]

Think the only books I read from a female author are the Book of Words trilogy (bakers boy etc), not a bad read but I didn't rate them greatly. I didn't see much feminism or such influences at all though. Jordon's a blatent sexist though.

[Icedtea]

Yeah, I just can't really connect much with female writing and usually just read male writers' work. The only exception being the Harry Potter series.

inc lolznerd

[Khorum]

Some of the nastiest, dirtiest fiction I've ever read were written by women (Anne Rice writing as Anne Rampling for one). I'm pretty convinced the quality and shortage of female novelists isn't a function of talent or some weird magical limitation imposed by being the owner of a cunt, but some institutional lack of vision on the part of the publishing industry and the market pressures.

If Bronte or Austen were born today, I have doubts if they'd get published or even win some shelf facings from the recent Dan Brown or recovering rockstar Tell-All SKU at Borders.

[Eomer]

You may want to check out Margaret Atwood. I've never read a single one of her books, but she's damn near a Canadian institution. And I don't think she deals overly much with feminism or issues relating to it. I think.

[bunnie]

While I do read both male and female authors, the ones I tend to perfer are pretty much always female.

I enjoy reading a book with female characters I can grow attached to and I feel most male authors have a hard time writing women. They tend to be very stereotypical women and never feel quite real enough. While male authors understand what appeals to a man when he writes his women, I don't think he quite understand what appeals to a woman. For example, before I read George R R Martin, my husband was sure I'd really enjoy reading about Arya. When I started reading the books, Arya's chapters became one of those I disliked most. I always felt she was way too stereotyped into being the "tomboy" and I could never relate to her when everything about her seemed exaggerated.

There is probably a closet romance novel fan hidden in me, but I also find that men write sex badly, it is often just too plain. Women seem to be less afraid of writing steamy sex scenes. Whether it is a love scene where it is supposed to be overly flowery, a scene where the sex is supposed to be uncaring and dirty or even just your generic screwing, women tend to be less shy and more descriptive. I feel men hold back when writing about this topic and I don't really know why. I'm not asking for the beautification of love making from a romance novel or paragraphs about their emotions, I just don't want my author to be shy about it.

My favourite series of all time is the Kushiel's Legacy Trilogy by Jacqueline Carey. It took me a bit to get into at first but once I did, I couldn't put it down. The first book really had everything I had been missing. It is a fantasy (actually considered erotic fantasy) book that feels a little more real in a way. Based in a fictitous world of post medieval France, Terre D'Ange was founded by a fallen angel with the philosophy -- love as though wilt. It has its heroes and villains, political intrigues and war, love and betrayal and definetly not to be forgotten, the courtesans of the Court of Night Blooming Flowers. I haven't been able to find a book that has captivated me the way this one did. Everytime I read something new, I compare it to Kushiel's Dart. It has become what I judge all books I read now off of.

While I do like strong female characters, I'm not into that whole feminist thing and despise female authors that write in that 'girl-power' style. But a good woman author, I tend to enjoy more than a good male one.

[Tirinal]

I imagine that's because men don't know what female sex is like and really don't care what male sex is like if they're not the ones having it. It makes for a skewed perspective.

[Zehn - Vhex]

It's bad enough when an author wastes a chapter or two on shitty erotica as is. It's even worse when pretty much every female sci-fi author will have a gay male lead character and insist on pointing out how amazingly gay he is.

[WarderX]

Ayn Rand is my favorite female author. I feel she is very good at "writing men". She's certainly no feminist, however. She was pretty criticized by women back in the day because her books have strong gender roles in which the man is dominant.

"Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself." -Atlas Shrugged

[kegkilla]

i admittedly don't read much, and being forced to read Jane Austen novels in high school is probably what turned me off from books.

[Grimmlokk]

Always kinda shied away from female authors til I read Coldfire Trilogy. Didn't even know C.S. Friedman was a woman until well after the fact. I didn't go out and actively seek women writers after that or anything, but I stopped cringing at the thought of reading them.

My sister is a huge fantasy/sci fi reader. And easily over half her collection is female authors. One day with nothing to read I was digging through a huge bin of her books and pulled out a Kate Elliot one. 1st Crown of Stars book, and I ended up really enjoying the series. More recently I read the first two Exiles books by Melanie Rawn and was fairly entertained. I can't bring myself to read any of her other series because I don't think I can handle 2 of them featuring almost entirely female main characters, but 1 hasn't killed me yet.=)

Besides a few Weis/Hickman books(I know Hickman is a man=P) those are the only female authors I can think of that I've read a few books from. I really don't much care what the author's sex is as long as a book is readable. People who refuse to read a book by a female author because they read one that was bad, or think it will be all feminazi rhetoric are missing out on a lot of good reads. If I avoided all male authors because Terry Brooks is shit I'd never have read Ice and Fire or Ender's Game.

[Tual]

Just finished reading Death Gate saga, and it was the first series i've read written a woman, and I really enjoyed it, but mainly because it was something different for a change. Can't compare it with any other female authors so can't say much about it.