I Attempt to Diversify (2010 Reading Goals)

At the start of 2009 I didn’t post publicly about my reading goals, as I had the year before. I set my one real goal at the start of the year, to read a book a day for the month of January. I didn’t post about it because I figured there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to follow through. And I was right. I also had a goal to read two books a week, or 104 books during the year. I’ve had that as an ongoing goal for a few years now. In 2009 I read only 93 books.

So what happened? The book a day goal was too ambitious for me. I’ve averaged two books a week in the past, so that should have been something I could accomplish, but two things interfered. First was that I read a lot of short story anthologies this year. I never work through those quickly. The second event that prevented me from reading so much was my return to work in June. There was a noticeable decline in quantity after that point. At the end of May, too, my reading goals changed.

For my trip to Wiscon, I decided I would read only books by female or non-white authors for the trip. Just as an experiment. I knew my reading skewed white male. The panels and discussions at Wiscon didn’t directly change my goals, but the experience there was nevertheless a turning point. After I returned, rather than have a vague goal to increase my reading of non white male authors, I decided to put in place a general rule that would actively increase my reading in that category. For every book I read by a white male, I would start a book by someone non-white or female. It’s not a rigid rule, just a rule of thumb that would keep me reading more diversely than I had previously.

Before Wiscon, I read 37 novels¹. 25 by white males. 11 by white women. 1 by a black woman. No novels by any male writers of color. I read 11 non-fiction works. 10 by white men. 1 by an Arab man. I read one anthology, a Gardner Dozois Year’s Best collection.

After Wiscon, I started 29 novels. 10 by white men. 10 by white women (one of which I gave up on). 1 by an Asian woman. 2 by black women. 1 by a native American man. 4 by black men (one of which I gave up less than a couple dozen pages in). 1 by an Asian man. For non-fiction, I read 8 books post Wiscon. 3 by white men. 2 by white women. 3 by Asian men. I read 6 anthologies post Wiscon. 2½ edited by white men. ½ edited by a white woman. 1 by an Asian man. 1 by Hispanic women. 1 by a black woman. Something to note about the white men who edited the anthologies I read during this period: their anthologies make an effort to be diverse.

Quite the change for the better I think.

So my reading goal for 2010 is more of the same: After I finish any book by a white man, I will start reading a book by a writer of color or woman.

I am officially not attempting any quantity goals for the year. I expect I’ll still read quite a number of books, but I’m not going to track reading rate this year, or even think about it.