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.

[Dan Coleman]

True, until about the first half of the 20th ct. Until then, with exceptions, women didn't do that kind of work because they were home raising children. Doing anything outside the home was unusual. Much better now, I agree. And, yes, doctors still have a low opinion of nurses, as I know quite a few of them. But the pay is a heck of a lot better now and you don't see them fleeing the profession to teach school, where it takes 20 to 30 years to make the salary of a starting nurse. Also why men are migrating to nursing.

Don't know these damn responses won't settle under the comment one is replying to.

[I. J. Parker]

You could ask why not more women become doctors.

[Dan Coleman]

More women are becoming doctors and that's a good thing.

[I. J. Parker]

In response to the question: "What is the answer?"

Well, we could try to cite the reasons why books were included, and conversely, why not.

[Dan Coleman]

There is that, as Jesse Stone would say.

[Dan Coleman]

Sandra, I think your question here--quite legitimate-and the answers posited, also worthy, still leave us at the same place. We just don't know how we could better determine which works in any given year might be superior or more favorable to others. I guess all we can do is keep trying to find a way. But it's a qualitative thing, and how are we to assume one's idea of quality is better than another's? We can view things from a gender perspective, or an academic one(highly analytical), or a populist one(sales), and we're never going to agree enough, as readers, to say definitively which IS the best, or one of the best, this year. But you're probably right in insinuating it could be, and should be, taken more seriously, that we ought to at least, as Jon suggested, not short someone because of some reason unrelated to the work, itself. Some how, some way, more judges have to consider a larger number of works, spend more time and other resources searching for the proverbial diamonds in the rough. And I think that will only happen when folks step up and appoint themselves as judges, very democratically, proactively.

[I. J. Parker]

The judges need experience and education, preferably in literature. The criteria exist. They need to be applied. And gender of the author (or anything else about the author) doesn't enter into this. People are too quick to scream discrimination. There was a time when I thought the Edgars panels were loaded with women's libbers set to level the playing field any way they could.

My guess is that PW judges bring the experience of having read an enormous number of books to their chore. That should count for a lot.

[Sandra Parshall]

I wish PW would say who the "judges" are. Editors? Regular PW reviewers?

The intro to the list states they chose the best out of 50,000 books published this year, but no one can possibly believe every judge read 50,000 books.

We also have the question of whether genre fiction should be judged against literary and mainstream. Perhaps the "best" books list should be the #1 books in various categories. That doesn't address the gender issue directly, but my bet is it would increase the chances of books by women being included.

[Dan Coleman]

Yeah, maybe the Best in Category is the best that can be done with it. Wouldn't judge a great literary book with a cheap detective novel. Perhaps some loose system wherein a number of judgments are rendered by, say, academicians schooled in literature, as I.J. suggested, populist sales numbers, librarians, students, other readers, etc., topped off by an on-going poll with ballot boxes in book stores(not online), libraries, and so forth, with counts regularly posted to an online point. With the voting coming from a variety of sources, the results wouldn't be as likely to be commandeered by a particular interest group. Maybe ballots furnished with each book checked out, bought, or assigned to a course.

But if some folks can proclaim that THESE are the ten best, or one hundred best of the year, then they can also claim which is THE ONE BEST. And there will never be agreement on something like that.

A broader judging system might allow some books to rise to the top of the heap of both the eclectic and narrowly-focused readers. Probably the best that can be done, the closest you can get to I.D.ing the best books.

I guess.

[I. J. Parker]

I agree that categories should have been observed. Different categories have different criteria.

Not sure about ballot boxes. Favorite books isn't quite the same as best books. And are we going to control how many ballots a person can cast?

[Dan Coleman]

Yeah, that's a problem, stuffing the boxes. Like I say, it's like hitting a moving target.

[Jon Loomis]

The idea that PW or anyone else is really going to arrive at a list of the ten best books in a given year with which all reasonable persons can agree is just silly. In attempting to do so what they're really doing is publicizing themselves, and trying to stimulate debate and discussion around their particular list (so more eyeballs on their website, etc.). It's a reasonable strategy in that sense, but the odds that any such process (whatever it is--they don't tell us much) is going to actually generate a useful list (if there even is such a thing) would be astronomical, IMO.