A Bluestocking Knits

Booking Through Thursday asks a rather provocative question this week —

1. Do you tend to read more books written by one gender over the other? I haven’t ever considered this!  Upon reflection, the last three books I’ve gotten from the library — assuming that cookbooks don’t count, although in the strictest sense of the issue, I suppose they should — A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by William Shapiro, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton by Kathryn Hughes, and Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England’s Tragic Queen by Joanna Denny makes it two to one for the women. 
2. If so, which one? Men? Or women? Is this a deliberate choice? Or just something that kind of happened?  I am glad to say that I do not choose books on the basis of their author’s gender, but instead on the interest said books may hold for me, the recommendation of another reader I trust (as a personal friend or as a professional reviewer), or on other writings by the author.  The only situation I can imagine where this might happen is that of encouraging certain categories of author, such as regional, cultural, maybe even occupational.  It doesn’t seem to me, thank heavens, that women authors need that kind of promotion much these days.  That said, one of my favorite subjects is women’s issues, but I don’t consider the author’s gender in the choosing, but whether he or she writes well, knows the subject, teaches me something that I didn’t know before, and so on.
3. And (without wanting to get too personal), is this your gender?  I am in fact female.

As a postscript to this question, looking at my short list above, I did notice that of the three books I checked out from the library a few weeks ago, I bought the one written by a man after reading merely the first two chapters, finished reading one of the two written by a woman (the biography of Mrs. Beeton), and am seriously considering dropping the second of the two written by a woman (the Anne Boleyn biography) due to clumsy writing and egregious scholarship.