My shelves runneth over...

with lit from female authors.  Am I a femireader?  Yes, I made that word up, hush and let me have it.  During yet another passionate conversation about books, I came to the startling realization that I'm slightly prejudice against books by men or with male lead characters.  I'm not talking about Grisham or Patterson or Sanford or Stephen King.  I can read about Grisham's many male characters and Patterson's Alex Cross series, as well as Sanford's Lucas Davenport series, but the average male author, not so much.

Don't get me wrong, I love Ravi Howard, Jabari Asim, Roy Pickering and Daniel Black.  Their works fascinate me and I thoroughly enjoy reading them, but I don't actively seek books by or about men.  And it's not that they're not writing, they are.  I remember when Eric Jerome Dickey first started out.  I loved his books, but I remember loving them because he wrote from the point of view of a woman so well.  The other male authors I mentioned write from the male perspective and I still enjoy them, so I don't think writing from the female perspective is the determining factor in whether or not I'll enjoy a book written by a male author.  I've certainly digested my fair share of E. Lynn Harris and Carl Weber, not to mention some of Omar Tyree's horrid work.  But I guess as a woman, I want to read things from the perspective of other women.  Am I limiting myself by doing so?

I had a conversation with a co-worker some years ago about her husband's reading habits.  I know a lot of men that will only read non-fiction, but her husband read just about anything, with the only requirement being that it was written by a man. He said that, in his opinion, women authors just didn't get it.  Their writing was unrealistic and too sentimental. I remember thinking how can he just stereotype female authors like that?  But is he really any different from me? Somewhat.  I don't shun books by men like he does books by women.  A quick glance at my bookshelves will show an almost equal representation of male and female authors.  I think I have something to learn from both sexes.

Going even further, I think that I, and everyone else, has something to learn from both sexes and all races.  I'd like to think that my shelves are just as diverse when it comes to race as they are when it comes to sex, but they're not.  Though I don't actively seek male authors, I do actively seek Latina, Asian and other people of color authors, particularly women.  Do I feel more of a kinship with them and seek a better understanding because they're women? Probably.

So what do your shelves look like? Do you find that you prefer male to female authors or have you ever given it a thought? How diverse is your reading selection?  Are you a proclaimed femireader or will you read anything, even the cereal box?

#BookReview: Red Polka Dot in a World Full of Plaid - Varian Johnson

Had I not been desperate for something to listen to on a recent road trip, I probably would have never picked up this book.  That's not to say that anything was too terribly wrong with it, it just trended on the YA side and that's not really my thing.  But given the choice between listening to this and the same 10 songs over and over again on satellite radio, I went with this.

Red Polka Dot is the story of Maxine, a recent high school graduate, who learns that the father she always thought was dead is, in fact, alive and well and living in Oklahoma.  Determined to meet him, she sets off on her own from South Carolina, only to have car problems.  Her best friend Deke comes to her rescue and the two make their way to Oklahoma where Maxine discovers that not only is her father Jack alive, he's white.

This first effort from Varian Johnson was crammed with entirely too many messages for such a short book.  There was Maxine's discovery that she was biracial and how it affected her outlook after believing that she was black for 18 years. In addition, she had to deal with how others around her reacted to her as a result.   There was also a strong Christian lit element with Deke and Jack both talking about their beliefs repeatedly and trying to convince Maxine to come back to church.  And then there was the problem of defining her friendship with Deke.  In the midst of this, she had to find time to create and define a relationship with her newly discovered father.  And like a soap opera, the author managed to wrap all of these issues up with a nice neat bow within a week.  While this may have played out well for a younger reader, it was too idealistic for a cynical older reader like me.

What did you like about this book?
It had good messages, there were just too many of them to give any one proper attention and fleshing out.

What didn't you like about this book?
The narrator of the audio book has the same last name of the author.  While Johnson is a common last name, I couldn't help but wonder if she was related to him.  That could be the only plausible reason for using her as the narrator.  I picked up a distinct Caribbean lilt in her voice, which was distracting since the character was supposed to be from South Carolina.  Another problem was that the narrator was only capable of doing three voices even though she gave voice to every character in the book.  As a result, all of the male characters, with the exception of Deke, sounded like an old white man sitting on his porch holding a shotgun and all of the female characters, with the exception of Maxine, sounded like Florence Jean Castleberry (that's Flo for those that remember the TV show, Alice).  It may have been more economically feasible for the author to use a relative to narrate, but the voices she used were annoying and made listening to the book almost unbearable.

What could the author do to improve this book?
Pick a theme and stick with it.

199pp
Listening time: 5 hours, 50 minutes
Published November 2005

Theme: At Seventeen by Janis Ian