Best books? Says who?

[Sandra Parshall]

The Publishers Weekly list of the "100 best books of 2009" includes shockingly few works by women. So what else is new? The Sisters in Crime response has been posted by SinC President Marcia Talley at http://sisters-in-crime-sinc.blogspot.com/.

Take a look and offer your own views on the topic.

[John McFetridge]

Well, that's the theory...

[John McFetridge]

Here, this should help.

[I. J. Parker]

Oh, Lord! We still scored placement essays. Our complaints had more to do with computerized multiple choice English language exams.

There's a lot wrong with the folks who run our education system.

[Dana King]

A program such as that to analyze speech and writing is something up with which we should not have to put.

[Jon Loomis]

Dude. I don't care if it doesn't work--I want one. Do you know how much easier my life would be if I didn't have to actually read the papers I assign?

[John McFetridge]

That isn't outsourced yet?

Using Churchill's speech reminded me why I love books so much. Yesterday I was reading a mystery novel, Robert Rotenberg's Old City Hall and he has a character thinking about the trouble he had learning english as an adult until one of his teachers explained that english came from Anglo-Saxon and Norman and Celt and lots more. "English was not a language, he explained, it was a car crash." Then he talks about how Churchill understood the power of language and how in that speech he used only Anglo-Saxon words, none of those flowery, foreign Norman words. Except "Surrender," the only three syllable word in the whole speech. "We will never surrender."

And he used that one to reinforce that even the idea of surrender was foreign.

[I. J. Parker]

Conversely, your children may be faced with that form of testing.

(Arrgh! This was for Jon's post.)

[Dan Coleman]

LOL!

[Dan Coleman]

LOL! Meant for Jon Loomis's comment.

[I. J. Parker]

Considering that books are acquired (by agents and editors) simply because the content may rack up high sales, it is very unlikely that the truly good books won't stand out by a mile.

[Eric Christopherson]

How about some actual probabilities...

Assume for the sake of argument that there are an equal number of women authors and men authors with equal skill and talent so that it's simply luck gender-wise as to who gets added to a list of the ten best.

In that case there is a 1 in 1,024 chance of all men being selected, and an identical probability of all women being selected or 1 chance in 512 that one gender would run the table. Long odds, but sometimes long odds pay off, and long odds always pay off given enough chances.

Consider also that there would be only a 25% chance that the break-out would be five to five, so three quarters of the time one gender would be expected to predominate. Finally, there would be an 11% chance that one gender or the other would garner 8 or more out of 10 slots. In other words, more than ten percent of the time expect a landslide for one gender.

[Eric Christopherson]

I should mention I have no idea whether my assumptions are accurate. I don't know, for example, whether there are an equal number of male and female authors writing the kind of serious books up for consideration. (And yes, what's considered serious is debatable.)