In January, I signed up for the Australian Women Writers reading challenge. I figured I might as well go for gold, and selected ‘Miles Franklin’ level: I pledged to read 10 books by Australian women – any genre, published at any time – during 2014. I figured it would take me nine months or so to knock them off. But as of April 2, I am done. It was really easy, and I’m only half-way through the list of books I wanted to read.
So I’m kind of perplexed as to why your regular Australian reader (usually a woman, I believe) reads so few Australian women authors. There are plenty of books written by them. They write in all the genres, including ‘literature’ (whatever that is…). Some of them are even really good.
Anyway, if you like a bit of structure to your reading, or a goal to aspire to, why not sign up. You can do it here.
And if you want to see what I read and what I thought of it, that’s here.
And if you want to read a totally nuts exchange of comments on whether we should bother trying to read more women writers, have a look at this.