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Why is it that not many girls like Fantasy?


rumple9

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Is BSC really the least talked about? I think it's just cause it's not the initial trilogy and no longer the newest book either. I remember quite a bit of discussion back before The Heroes came out.

I did like Monza quite a bit. She's not what you expect from the setup of the book.

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Regarding women and obsesive collecting, let us not forget the grannies with their cabinets full of china shepherdesses/Royal commemorative plates/flower fairy statuettes etc etc. There may be fewer social outlets for women to express geeky collector mania, but that doesn't mean you can't find em if you look outside the usual geek definition.

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Is BSC really the least talked about? I think it's just cause it's not the initial trilogy and no longer the newest book either. I remember quite a bit of discussion back before The Heroes came out.

I did like Monza quite a bit. She's not what you expect from the setup of the book.

It could just be a time thing. I think I missed the initial hype for it as well as I read it a couple of weeks/months after the first wave.

Monza is definitely not what you expect. Spoilers for Best Served Cold below.

Maybe it's because us GRRM readers were already desensitised to sibling incest with Jaime - Cersei, but I didn't even find it that shocking or outrageous all things considered. It even had a similar power dynamic to Cersei - Jaime, with the slightly older woman running the show. In that light, it was doubly interesting to contrast ambitious, ruthless, gritty Monza with ambitious, ruthless, but increasingly desperate and paranoid Cersei. Monza never loses sight of her objective and she's relentless where Cersei falls prey to more traditional female vices like hysterics and desperation.

The power dynamic is different for Cersei and Monza though, as Cersei really needs to hide her children's parentage, while Monza really doesn't care whose it is as she is the real power. I LOVE when Monza idly ponders who the father is and decides it doesn't matter. That's an inverse of every Jerry Springer episode in existence and of the female shame of having omg not knowing who the father of your child is you awful slut!!111oneoneone.

Talk about holy taking charge of the reproductive power batman. And unlike with Cersei, it's not seen as something bad.

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I actually agree with FLOW on Dianora in Tigana, though I haven't finished the book. Still. Becuase it's fascistic great man wagnerian crap with bonus bloat and purple prose. But I will, dammit, I will so I can make a really excoriating goodreads review. I have a purpose in life.

I'll look forward to that. Cos I really hated Dianora. Stupid woman. The rest of it was pretty good, though. Best opening chapter ever. Best whoa! moment ever. And I could live with the bonus bloat and purple prose (just about).

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Twilight's action does not involve the female heroine in any other way than that she gets captured, or that someone whisks her away. Bella Swann is never active, not even once. Twilight is an abomination of a book, and I believe it should not be used as shorthand for "stuff women like" but for "really atrocious stuff nobody should like".

While many here would agree with you that Twilight was an atrocity its impossible to disagree with the fact that teenage girls and 40somethings generally love the hell out of it. Difficult to rationalize why, sure. But it's there.

Like i said there is probably something in these tropes thats just hardwired into us. From Gilgamesh to ASOIAF i would say they have been fairly consistent.

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It could just be a time thing. I think I missed the initial hype for it as well as I read it a couple of weeks/months after the first wave.

Monza is definitely not what you expect. Spoilers for Best Served Cold below.

Maybe it's because us GRRM readers were already desensitised to sibling incest with Jaime - Cersei, but I didn't even find it that shocking or outrageous all things considered. It even had a similar power dynamic to Cersei - Jaime, with the slightly older woman running the show. In that light, it was doubly interesting to contrast ambitious, ruthless, gritty Monza with ambitious, ruthless, but increasingly desperate and paranoid Cersei. Monza never loses sight of her objective and she's relentless where Cersei falls prey to more traditional female vices like hysterics and desperation.

The power dynamic is different for Cersei and Monza though, as Cersei really needs to hide her children's parentage, while Monza really doesn't care whose it is as she is the real power. I LOVE when Monza idly ponders who the father is and decides it doesn't matter. That's an inverse of every Jerry Springer episode in existence and of the female shame of having omg not knowing who the father of your child is you awful slut!!111oneoneone.

Talk about holy taking charge of the reproductive power batman. And unlike with Cersei, it's not seen as something bad.

She does lose sight of her objective somewhat. Or rather, she kinda gives up on it to some extent. The book first gives you the impression of the gritty, ruthless badass warrior chick that is kinda cliched at this point, but strips that away over the course of the book to show a woman who's not that simple or that static in her character.

What I enjoyed was that it really looks like your typical revenge and the horrors of getting what you wished for or some such at the start, but Monza is more complex then that and the story shifts her off in more interesting and unexpected directions.

It's Shivers, funnily enough, who follows the arc you expect from this kind of story while Monza herself becomes more and more disillusioned with her whole crusade.

It's a quest for revenge that, to Monza herself, ultimately kinda peters out rather then ending in a huge bloody revenge.

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Also, is this Glenda Larke any good? Got the first Stormlord book here on the pile. BUt its a 400+ pile, but if its good I can move it up the queue.

Yes. Definitely. Absolutely. Go for it. The Stormlords trilogy is one of my favourite series, almost as good to my mind as Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet. Not quite got the depth, maybe, but great characters, brilliant magic system, elegant writing style, original world-building - by which I mean *not* pseudo-medieval, *not* pseudo-anything-identifiable - and an honourable mention for most creative swearing in a work of fantasy. And the female characters are fully rounded human beings, out there doing stuff (good and bad) every bit as much as the blokes, and getting themselves into and out of their own messes, even when pregnant.

And can I mention again my other favourite female author, Andrea K Host (<- should be an umlaut in there), whose Medair duology has a totally gender-neutral world and a terrific female protagonist, as well as being a cracking read in itself.

[On reading female authors] My current tally is about one third female to two thirds male, without (as far as I'm aware) any conscious selection by gender. I just read stuff that grabs my attention. That's about the same ratio of female to male authors, as best I can tell (but that came from Wikipedia, so suspect by definition).

There is a real dearth of hard numbers on this. In 16 pages (and counting) on the subject of women reading fantasy, we've had Ran's numbers of females on this board (40%) and one Harris online poll of <3000 people (20% of female respondents read SF, which presumably includes fantasy). And that's it, bar a vast amount of anecdotal evidence and 'everybody knows' assertions. And a few mentions of B*kker, but I think we got away with that.

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While many here would agree with you that Twilight was an atrocity its impossible to disagree with the fact that teenage girls and 40somethings generally love the hell out of it. Difficult to rationalize why, sure. But it's there.

Like i said there is probably something in these tropes thats just hardwired into us. From Gilgamesh to ASOIAF i would say they have been fairly consistent.

I wouldn't liken "book readers" to "Dan Brown lovers" either. I have an objection with "Twilight" being used as shorthand for "what women read" since it's insanely demeaning to women. People took offence at "Bridget Jones Diary" being used in the same way, and "Bridget.." is a paragon of feminism, lovely composition and fabulous prose in comparison to "Twilight".

Really, you have no idea.

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This thread has inspired me to go through my Goodreads collection and see what my female:male ratio is. Of course that's not indicative of much besides what books I've read in the past couple months and what books I own, but I'm curious now. Considering I read every single Anne McCaffrey book ever written (by HER), it can't be too skewed! (Of course that's not on Goodreads though.)

ETA:

Huh, at some point I did go back and add all those Anne McCaffrey books. I even rated them! When the hell did I do that and how did I possibly rate books I read a decade ago when I don't even rate the books I read now?! Sometimes I don't understand myself.

Anyway, to my surprise, of the 297 books I've read and entered on Goodreads, 142 were authored by females, which is right about 48%. That does include all types of books, so you've got the random beach read chick lit stuff and Jane Austen and such. Amongst my sci-fi shelf, 40 of 74 (54%) are female authors--and this is where all those AMcC books are. For my fantasy shelf it is 61 of 130 (47%).

Honestly that is much higher than I was expecting. I can say that I am sometimes hesitant going into books written by women if I feel they will be too "womany" which is entirely subjective and even I don't exactly know what I mean by that. But I think that it probably helps that I am a huge fan of YA. Yeah I know I'm 24, but I still love re-reading books I fell in love with as a kid and even reading the new stuff by those authors or just new YA stuff in general. Of course it's lighter reading and I like to mix in my doorstopping "adult" fiction too. Why does it seem that so many more YA authors are women? Is that just me steering clear of "boy fic"? (55 of my 74 YA books on Goodreads are by female authors--that's 74%!)

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Apparently you've never been to any gathering about Tolkien/Lord of the Rings. The females outnumber the males every time that I've been to one. That includes the movie audiences. And so far I'm seeing the same thing for GoT on HBO. So far I'm only running into female fans of the series. My husband has no interest in it and he says only one of the males that he works with watches it and that he hears the females in the office talking about it all the time.

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My personal theory is that its because Epic Fantasy is by and large written for men/boys by men/boys.

...

And that, IMO, is why girls much rather read Twilight then they would Lord of the Rings, because something about these tropes seems hardwired into us.

The adrenaline urge is common to humans, male and female, not just to men. I think that's what a lot of the boys-toys theorists are missing - action stuff as adrenaline fodder, not as excessive appeal to penises/testosterone/whatever.

But at the same time I think it's what leads to your first comment above - epic fantasy as written for men by men - where the adrenaline urge is specifically assumed in the text of an adrenaline-soaked book to exclude females (I exclude character study-focused SFF and the like), the appeal for a female reader nicely in touch with her adrenaline urges may be reduced. The same applies to agency. It's not just geeky boys (and men) who wish they could act upon the world and change it - women and girls do that too - and as long as we in RL are so strict about dividing people and their actions by gender, there'll be appeal in epic fantasy that allows its female characters to affect the plot. (Because so much of this is about the readers' RL experience being projected onto the story.)

I'd suspect it's easier for women to read for their action side than for men to read for their romance side, at least in that chicks-in-leather urban fantasy thrillers are aimed towards the former demographic.

(An aside: "feminine" as a way of describing RL women: what is feminine? As soon as you define it as clothes, shoes and passivity, and as soon as you're finding positivity for women only in that mould, while coding corresponding "masculine" traits as preferable overall... that's another source of this muddle. "Feminine"'s been too negative in terms of human behaviour for too long - and people's traits mix all the time. That's where the shoujo kick-ass fits in. Amazingly enough, there are female adrenaline junkies who also wear makeup and style their hair.)

I don't exist in a solipsistic paradise where stereotypes and media reinforced images don't influence me.

This. I refer you all to the "are there any good female authors?" threads where at least one and I think more male boarder(s) stated that they would never read a female author's books because they thought they'd be crap. That's a function of the lack of solipsism you mention - received ideas.

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Heh, personally I too prefer "Best Served Cold" to "The Heroes", which I also loved. In fact, it is equal with "First Law" in my regard.

Lyanna, you didn't miss much worthwhile re: discussion here, because IIRC it was focused on how unrealistic Monza's butt-kicking was for a mere woman and how she was a bland character, as well as (deserved) love for various supporting male characters.

Re: Ilona Andrews, I have read the first 3 books in the "Magic" series and their are _not_ vampire/were pron. I did not fall in love with them or anything (maybe partly because the very word "alpha" makes me tired at this point, LOL), but they are certainly quite OK and if the next book(s) happen to appear in my library, I am certainly going to read them. In a hot bath. While sipping some ice-cold beer. Mmm...

Re: female fantasy authors, I have been actually reading a lot more of them than most here, apparently, (not on purpose), but I have to confess being wary of their tendency to include fairly extensive romances with a happily ever after at the end of them, which usually hurt my enjoyment. Not that male authors don't include bad romances, but they tend to take much less space, get in the way of the general plot less and can have much more varied outcomes.

Because of that, I do find that I enjoy _urban fantasy_ written by men and/or with male protagonists much more, even though a decently written female protagonist would normally be a plus point for me.

Funnily enough, female-written SF seems free of this and when the same writer has both SF and fantasy works, the latter would often suffer from it, while the former remained untouched (Cherryh, Bujold). Which is why I am inclined to ascribe this lamentable feature to publisher pressure and/or the notion that since they are going to lose some male fantasy readers for being female writers, they might as well try to attract some romance crowd instead. SF was considered too far out there for such a cross-genre appeal to be possible, I guess.

But at the same time I think it's what leads to your first comment above - epic fantasy as written for men by men - where the adrenaline urge is specifically assumed in the text of an adrenaline-soaked book to exclude females

Sadly enough, that's used to largely be the case in epic fantasy written by women, too. Mosty due to the notion that epic fantasy had to be set in a historical-seeming setting with attendant patriarchy and that female author having a female protagonist was a kiss of death, sales-wise, I imagine.

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I just looked through my goodreads list, and apparently, out of 714 books read, 140 were by female authors (and a number of those were the classics they made me read at uni).

There's some anonymuses and people with ambiguous first names in there though.

Could anyone imagine that the Anonymous who wrote The Book With No Name and its sequels is female?

It's really sad, a lot of people (myself sadly included) seem to be hardwired against liking female authors. Maybe it's due to the classic stuff (Austen and company) which I absoluetly loathe, and that type of content getting linked to by unconscious image of female authors.

I am trying to fight that though and have discovered some really awesome authors, like Catherynne Valente and Elisabeth Bear, among others.

I've skimmed a bit over the last couple of pages, but has the question whether women prefer to read books by women, and men by men been brought up? Are there any male authors who write straight (in terms of style, not sexuality) paranormal romance? Are there men who read any? Or like Twilight?

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As I'm not in work today I had a look through the books I have in my room and on my kindle, firstly books apparently attract a lot of dust and 130 of the 439 fiction books I can find on short notice were written by women. I'm not sure how I'd view that, yes 70% of the books were written by men but having bought at least 130 books written by women I'm not sure that unconscious bias against female authors is leading me to overlook books that I'd otherwise read because of the gender of the author. :dunno:

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It is almost embarrassing, 61 books by women (including anthologies where only part of the authors count) out of 381 entries. And this is on my incomplete goodreads list, which among other things lacks all the Verne and Pratchett books I've read.

What is also a bit sad is only 15 books on that list by modern non-anglo non-local authors, and that is making decisions as keeping Sedia as foreign and Rajaniemi as English (but keeping in mind close to 50 books on the list predate the glorious revolution).

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I probably own more books by men than women, but for the last decade I have had a reading plan where half of the fiction books I read are by women authors and half by men. (I also read 1/2 fantasy, 1/3 science fiction and 1/6 "other".) I don't think I like books by women any less on average than I like books by men.

Actually the one thing that puts a dent in my plan are the books I read as part of the faculty/staff book forum at my university. It just so happens the last three books that forum has read (Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, Room by Emma Donoghue, and The Help by Kathryn Stockett) were by women. I enjoyed all of them even though they were very different from each other. But I may read a couple of extra books by men this summer to balance out my reading. :)

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Are there any male authors who write straight (in terms of style, not sexuality) paranormal romance?
Andrew Gordon (half of Ilona Andrews) has been mentioned upthread but I don't know of any others that actually write full-on paranormal romance complete with HEA and its implications (a series with HEA cannot use the same hero or heroine in two books, for instance.) Outside paranormal you can find a few easily, and I'm sure there's a bunch using pseudonyms.

In YA the genre boundaries are much fuzzier - there is no HEA trope (and wouldn't it be awful if there was?) - so you have a pretty broad spectrum of actiony-adventury-romancy things (with female leads) that has a few male authors like Scott Westerfeld on the actiony side. I don't read YA non-SFF but there does seem to be a presence of love stories written by men, e.g. John Green.

Are there men who read any?

Speaking. Characters and interpersonal relations are really the core of my enjoyment of any book. Romances don't tend to be very good but they always at least try to provide characters and interpersonal relations, while often male-targeted SFF just doesn't. The ones I read also have bad guys and explosions.

Or like Twilight?

Oh hell no. I am guilty of liking much of the flood it spawned though. Apparently Twilight is so bad that if you try to copy it, you can't help but do better.

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Speaking. Characters and interpersonal relations are really the core of my enjoyment of any book. Romances don't tend to be very good but they always at least try to provide characters and interpersonal relations, while often male-targeted SFF just doesn't. The ones I read also have bad guys and explosions.

Yeah, the [lack of] interpersonal is what I think is killing my ability to enjoy a lot of [sFF] stuff nowadays. Part of it also the so called "adrenaline rush" which I see more and more as a continual execution of childish tropes.

ETA: Really, for characterization and use of speculative elements in different, more original ways I'm finding shorts are so much better.

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I don't think it fair to say women don't like epic fantasy. There are quite a few women who write it and write it well--off the top of my head I'd mention Glenda Larke and Margaret Weis (and more than a few who use initials for pen names).

Growing up I knew plenty of girls who read it. We read it for the kick ass adventure, for the mythical worlds and creatures. I like Sci-Fi too.

Several years ago, I introduced my now 17 yr. old son to Tolkien, Brooks, Salvatore (which he absolutely loves), Martin and I found that my younger foster daughter loved them as much as he did.

I do think it's true some of the same women who enjoyed epic fantasy also enjoy reading Urban, and like me, some of the paranormal fiction and for some of the same reasons. Mythical worlds and creatures and the adventure.

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