fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3426 ]

[ SECRET POST #3426 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3426 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Renaud (French singer)]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 048 secrets from Secret Submission Post #490.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
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How many of your favorite authors are straight white men?

How many of your favorite books have subversive or progressive themes?

If comics count, barely anything I read falls under that. It's not even intentional.

I reject the underlying idea.

Which is what? That you should support none straight white male authors?

Re: How progressive is your reading list?

ibbity - 2016-05-21 23:47 (UTC) - Expand

Re: How progressive is your reading list?

(Anonymous) - 2016-05-22 17:07 (UTC) - Expand

Having an author be a straight white man has absolutely nothing to do with how progressive a story is or isn't, anon.

At any rate, I prefer my stories to be genuine stories, not agenda-driven or preachy (whether conservative or liberal). I like reading things that are different, sure, but I'd probably hate anything that was written deliberately to be "progressive."

90% white, 60% men, I have no idea if they are straight or not.

Uh, none of them are particularly subversive or progressive. Somewhat liberal, mostly, but not presenting anything groundbreaking.

I have no idea. I've never looked up an author of a book I am reading. I just go by if the summary sounds interesting. So unless the name is an obvious race or gender (and even that is tricky), I have no idea what the person who wrote my book is like.

I also don't particularly look for books that are progressive or subversive. If the premise is interesting, I'll give it a shot (audiobooks have made this much easier). The last four books I've read are The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, NOS4A2, The Girl with All the Gifts, and House of Leaves.

Yeah, this. I have no idea about the ethnic background of most authors I've read books by. (And +1 about a name not always telling you anything about the author in some cases. I never read anything by her, but I always assumed Robin Hobb was a guy due to the name. )

Yeah, same here. Sometimes a book sounds interesting because of a progressive theme, but mostly I choose my reading material based on whether the characters and plot interest me or not and how well the piece is written. I don't honestly know the gender ratio or the ethnicity ratio or the sexuality ratio of the authors I read, because I prefer to take a book on its own merits rather than choose my reading material solely on ideological grounds or to stick it to the man. (Exception: If the author's gender, sexuality, or ethnicity is important for an understanding of the book, or if it's related to the book, such as if the book is a memoir of growing up female in a culture where women are repressed.)

Same. I really don't know if they are white or male or anything. I can only tell if they have an obvious name (Timothy is male, Victoria is female) but honestly it's more about the story.

I tend to read a lot of YA and I have a lot of female authors. It's really just the books that grab my attention compared to anything else.

Re: How progressive is your reading list?

ketita - 2016-05-22 05:44 (UTC) - Expand

How are we defining progressive? I have stuff that was ardently progressive from 100years ago which everyone screams racism at these days. Is the stuff which people are calling progressive today really going to be progressive? What about the stuff that tried, but still falls into the occasional stereotype use? And whose standards are we using? I need more definition. I think my bookshelves are pretty good, even if some of it has to be read in context of their day, but who knows.

Re: How progressive is your reading list?

dancing_serpent - 2016-05-21 21:06 (UTC) - Expand

Do I get any points for non-American or -British authors? One of my bookcases is arranged by nationality of the author because I like to read books from as many different backgrounds as I can.

I follow Mark Oshira, so nothing ever written except his essays is progressive and you are all filthy cishet ablebodied favouring racialists who are fat phobic and full of imperialist tendencies. ALso if you criticize me in any way you are bullies who need called out and dxed. Mark!

It's incredibly, 100% progressive. It's so subversive it transcends gender, race, sexuality, nationality, etc and has ascended to a higher spiritual level beyond such meat-people concerns.

I'm re-reading Lord of the Rings. That's all I'm reading right now because I don't have time to read anything else or look for anything new.

I think its central issue -- the treatment of heroism and human psychology and the limits of goodness and people's mental/emotional willpower under great stress and trauma -- is STILL incredibly goddamn progressive and rare to see at all in any kind of heroic/adventure story, let alone see it treated with so compassion and acceptance.

The other supporting aspects of the story is quite conservative in terms of representation, and racist/sexist and dated in parts, and it's by a straight white male author who isn't very interested in writing about things that don't apply to straight white males.

Most of my other favorite authors are women though, but I haven't picked up any new authors in a long time :( I should remedy that once I have more free time.

I really only enjoy the problematic shit tbh.

I don't know about favorite authors, but I got curious about the breakdown of my to-read list, so I did a quick rundown. I'm not looking up all of their sexualities, but here's what I got for race and gender:

White, male: 19/56 (33.9%)
White, non-male: 26/56 (46.4%)
Non-white, male: 6/56 (10.7%)
Non-white, non-male: 3/56 (5.3%)
Non-white, gender unknown: 1/56 (1.8%)

Of course, if we include my manga to-read list, the number of non-white authors increases substantially. :P

Hell if I know. I won't go out of my way to learn anything about the people who create the media I enjoy, I just wait for the eventual callout post to hit my dashboard on Tumblr if they've done something horrible.

Considering my favorite author is William Gibson, I'm not sure how to answer the second question.

Uhhhhhhh let's see. I have almost no cluse about authors because I don't look into it.

As for the rest, ASoIaF is the least progressive thing I have read in a few decades, but the rest is generally pretty good either intentionally or unintentionally.

I don't read white literature, so... Pretty progressive I guess?

My list so far this year has been mostly gay romance, some lesbian romance, a bit of non fiction, a few children's books, some P.G. Wodehouse, and a couple of mysteries. The latest Star Wars novelization. Oh, and a couple of adventure-y paranormal fiction books.

One of the NF books was "Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls," which taught me a lot about weight and culture, history, etc. I'm also reading a book about Native Americans by a Native author.

But I'm not kidding about it being mostly gay romance. I've read over 100 books so far this year and that's the vast majority.

1. I don't know, I rarely track authors

2. Probably quite a few?

a lot of my favorite authors are gay.

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