Gender balance and personal library character

A recent episode of The Readers podcast talked about gender balance in reading.  Basically, do you read more books by male or female authors?  I don't consciously think about this.  If a book interests me, the gender of the author is irrelevant to me.  Since this is one of the topics of my year-end review, which I've only done in the last two years, I know that I tend to read more female authors than male.  I'm not sure why exactly.  Perhaps being female has something to do with it but I'm not 100% sold on it.  And since I read such an eclectic range of books, I can't say why the gender balance is so scewed.

Speaking of my eclectic reading, a new coworker asked me about the character of my personal library.  Oooh, hard question.  My library consists of more non-fiction than fiction.  My non-fiction collection consists of books on music, popular science, size acceptance, astronomy, travel, self-help, how-to guides, and books about books.  Of the 96 books in my fiction collection, 40 of them are series: Harry Potter (all), Twilight (all), Corinna Chapman by Kerry Greenwood (all), Jane True (all), Neanderthal Parallax by Robert J. Sawyer, Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences by Philippa Ballantine (all), Phryne Fisher by Kerry Greenwood (3/19), and Reincarnationist by M.J. Rose (2/4).  The rest of my fiction tends toward literary or general fiction.  Because books are becoming more expensive, I find myself being really particular about the books I add to my collection.  Usually, I tend to only add books I've read and loved and want to reread again and again.  But sometimes a book will sound so fantastic that I'll buy it before reading it.

Read on,

Paula