24 May 2009

Sunday Salon - 24 May 2009

Good morning fellow Sunday Saloners - all 380 of you!

I was struck this week as I compiled the 5th edition of the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Blog Carnival, how a specifically focussed community can develop around a blogging project. There are a dozen or so regular contributors to the monthly carnival and I look forward to seeing which Agatha Christie novel they have recently blogged about.

Apart from Sunday Salon, which also is a great community, I belong to a number of others (have a look in my side bar).
What these communities have in common is that their members blog about the books they are reading. Like me, many began their blog in order to write about the book they are reading. And that's my message to you to today - if you are not using your blog to reflect on your reading, then you should. Try to do a bit more than say "today I finished XXXX. It was great/dreadful/boring/motivating". Tell another reader just a little about the book (no spoilers please!), and then what you got out of it, or what you felt about it. There are heaps of guidelines about writing book reviews around on other blogs, but mine are readily available here.

This week's posts
Breaking News
Last week's poll had 33 participants.

Most pointed out through comments that they didn't consciously choose a book by the gender of the author, but it was suggested more than once that if you mainly read particular genres, then you have a greater chance of reading female rather than male authors. But we can all think of examples that are the exception to the rule.

To think about this in terms of my original post Is Writing Still a Man's World? then the answer is No.
If you play around with the poll results, then 33 people read 165 books. Of those, 83 were written by female authors which is just over 50%. What does that prove? I'm not sure..

This week's poll: Which of the 2009 Anthony Award Nominees for Best Novel have you read? Do check the list of novels. Even if you don't generally read crime fiction you may have read one or more of them.

Currently reading
  • now - THE BAD POLICEMAN, Helen Hodgman
  • next - RITUAL, Mo Hayder
  • after that - THE MYSTERIOUS MR QUIN, Agatha Christie
  • in the car - SEARCH THE DARK, Charles Todd (#3)
If you are looking for some crime fiction recommendations, check Smik's Reviews
If you are looking for some crime fiction blogs to follow then check Crime Fiction Journeys for over 100 blogs that I can recommend.

Happy reading!

4 comments:

Yvonne said...

Happy Sunday Salon!

I started my blog for the same reason and I love writing and reading reviews.

Color Online said...

Wow! Lots of reading and posting. In my dreams. Enjoyed your post.

gautami tripathy said...

Book reviewing is fun and so is writing for all those book memes!

Here is my TSS post

Dorte H said...

I am not quite sure what your poll means either, but we can hardly complain, can we? :)
Do you know how many of the participants were women, by the way?

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