Can books have gender?

[Constance]

Bear with me: I'm not as crazy as you might think.

I recently read "Luna," "Between Mom and Jo," "Keeping You a Secret" (all by Julie Anne Peters), and "Talk" by Kathe Koja. I'm currently reading "Rainbow High" by Alex Sanchez, and I'm finding the narrative "voice" to be somewhat less pleasant than the other four.

One of the first words I thought of to describe the voice of "Rainbow High" was coarse. The narative style seemed "coarse" to me. Then, it seemed that "Rainbow High" was masculine and the other our were feminine.

I've mentioned that I find women easier to relate to than men. Now, it seems to be true for the writing styles, too.

[Cindi Jones]

I enjoy reading women authored works more as well.  Unfortunately, there are very few in the genres for which I have interest.  Women tend to deal more with the intricacies of life and they build their characters with more color. They can take a simple story and make it a delight to read.  Men tend to deal more with "special effects".  Each book must out do the previous.  They need super bad villains and super good heroes.

Cindi

[tinkerbell]

Are you talking about the writing style or the book itself?  In Spanish and French as in all the Romance languages, every noun/adjective has a gender.  A book is male while a magazine is female. 

Regarding writing style, it depends on who the author of such writing is.  I can usually tell the gender of the person by the words/style they choose when they write (or post  >)  Just read some of the posts here and try to guess.  You'd be amazed at the results! 

tink

[Cindi Jones]

Just read some of the posts here and try to guess.  You'd be amazed at the results! 

tink

Oh!  My goodness!  Here are some of my favorites:

"Went down to buy a car. Kicked the tires and found this awesome rag top."   instead of
"I went to the car dealership to look for a blue convertible. They had one that was adorable!"

OR

"I can't believe how freaking stupid these jerks are."  instead of
"These people are so emotional that rational thought escapes them."

Very common are spelling errors (for which I am famous).  Men will generally care less about their spelling and feel that whatever they can emit from the keyboard in the least amount of time is fit to read.  Women will usually carefully read through their creation, check spelling and grammar, and look for a nice flow of thought.

Spelling, grammar, and theme... you don't know what these are?  Do you ever wonder why all the girls received better grades in high school English?  They were busy learning how to be young women and not trying to figure out how to woo another classmate into bed.

Don'tchya wish that we could have a class for feminine writing or "sumthin"?   Doh!  >

Cindi

[tinkerbell]

ROFL    I could quote some more  >, but I won't! 

tink

[Cindi Jones]

Oh please Tink .... quote some more.  I just did two of my favorites.

In fact the first is one that really raises the hair on the back of my neck.  That is where we delete the pronoun!  I have NEVER seen a woman do that.

Cindi

[tinkerbell]

Oh please Tink .... quote some more.  I just did two of my favorites.

In fact the first is one that really raises the hair on the back of my neck.  That is where we delete the pronoun!  I have NEVER seen a woman do that.

Cindi

I was talking about quotes from this site!  >  I will PM them to you! 

tink

[Cindi Jones]

here's another:

... amount of dollars ...  instead of
... number of dollars ...

Why do men almost always do this and women hardly ever do it?

Cindi

[Constance]

To answer your question, Tink, I was refering to writing style.

The book "Between Mom & Jo" was written by a woman but narrated from the point of view of a boy. Though I couldn't relate to the boy that much due to subject matter (my parents were straight and they never divorced), I found this boy narrator easier to relate to than the boy in "Rainbow High" so far. The boy narrator in "Between Mom & Jo" is straight.

"Talk" has 2 narrators, a boy and a girl. Again, though written by a woman they boy narrator seems to be someone I can relate to easily. The boy narrator in this book is gay.

What physical intimacy appeared in the Julie Anne Peters books and "Talk" by Kathe Koja was subtle, whereas it's more graphic in "Rainbow High." It's not that I object to graphic depictations of sexual intimacy; I enjoy reading well-written erotica. And, I've read erotica written by men that doesn't seem "coarse" like Mr. Sanchez's work so far. Yet, the other male-written erotica doesn't seem to have the feminine voice; more like a gender-nuetral voice.

Am I making any sense?

[lady amarant]

I was talking about quotes from this site!  >  I will PM them to you! 

tink

Hey! No fair! You can't drop a hint like that and not share!

[tekla]

Somewhere on the web is a writing test where you submit something you wrote and it tells you if your a male or female.  Its hard to fool, but it can be done.

[Lisbeth]

There was a time many years ago when Deb was pushing one of her favorite women authors at me.  I tried a couple of her books and gave them up as boring.  Later when I came out, Deb started pushing the fact that I didn't like this author as "proof" that I was masculine, that if I had a female brain I would like her books.  I don't need to tell you how annoying that was.

Fast forward a few years, and Deb had grown up a little.  She reminded me of our disagreement over this author.  I heard the amazing words, "You were right.  She's just a bad author."

[Mina_Frostfall]

I don't know if it's true or not, but from my experience it seems like books written by men are far less sexual (as well as lacking romance). It seems like whenever I read a book by a male author, if it even has any sexuality in it at all it is barely described. Instead you see a lot of violence. I tend to read fantasy novels though, so I don't know about other genres. Is this because of gender differences or are male fantasy authors just nerds who don't know enough about sexuality to write it?

[Constance]

Since posting this thread, I've read two books by Alex Sanchez: The God Box and Getting It. I'd say that the romance in The God Box was well done; better than what I'd encountered in Rainbow High.

[Nero]

I don't know if it's true or not, but from my experience it seems like books written by men are far less sexual (as well as lacking romance). It seems like whenever I read a book by a male author, if it even has any sexuality in it at all it is barely described. Instead you see a lot of violence. I tend to read fantasy novels though, so I don't know about other genres. Is this because of gender differences or are male fantasy authors just nerds who don't know enough about sexuality to write it?

yeah I have noticed female authors tend to write a lot of sex into their novels.

[Emerald]

No, books don't have gender... but the writers, the writing style, the readers, and the characters within the pages often do.


On writing and writers:

"The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous."
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, critic and philosopher

"The androgynous mind is resonant and porous, it transmits emotion without impediment, it is naturally creative, incandescent, and undivided."
~Virginia Woolf, English novelist and essayist, author of "Orlando" and "A Room of One's Own"

Shakespeare, for example, is considered to be one of the few androgynous writers because his writing style is neither distinctively male nor distinctively female.

-Emerald 

[Mina_Frostfall]

I was maybe 15 years old when, at the dinner table my father says to me, "If you have any hope of making your marriage work, you better learn to cook, keep a clean house, and be good in bed."

That's horrible. I can't believe he'd say something like that to you!

[tekla]

you better learn to cook, keep a clean house, and be good in bed

Sounds like good advice for everyone.

[Lisbeth]

you better learn to cook, keep a clean house, and be good in bed
Sounds like good advice for everyone.

It sounds like something Heinlein wrote once, but he added shoot and butcher animals to the list.

[tekla]

And conn a ship.  Matter of fact....


A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.