Reading Eric Flint’s posts has brought to me a point about reading diversity.

From the comments. William Underhill:

The other thing that did peturb me is K. Bradford’s recommendation to cut back on reading works by white male authors. As a reader, I’m not really interested in the sex, ethnicity, politics or sexual orientation of the writer; I want to know if they’re going to tell me a good story.

Here’s the thing. We’re all creatures of habit, of convenience. For me, anyway, its easy to get into reading ruts and I suspect I am not alone. I really am curious if the people who claim to “not care” about the writer’s identity really are that disconnected from writers as people.

For me, I found that if I don’t make a conscious effort to seek out different voices, diversity just doesn’t happen as much as it might. And its my loss if I don’t read diversely. So I have made a conscious effort to read more books by women this year (I had decided to do so before Tempest’s challenge as part of my work at Skiffy and Fanty).

I think its a good challenge. Its exposing me to authors I might not have otherwise read.