In 2009, I discovered that, in the preceding five-year period, only 8% of the books I had read were by women. In the following two years, I improved that percentage a little. It was only this year when I finally accepted that I just wasn’t doing well enough, and committed to making my reading at least 50% written by women. I’ve seen such targets accused of arbitrariness, yet it seems to me that all reading lists are arbitrary because there are more good books out there than can be read in a human lifetime.

I’ve found two things particularly hard. First, finding good books by women. Obviously my regular haunts were directing me towards male authors. It took time to find new sources of recommendations, especially because the world is so filled with recommendations for books written by men. Second, I started to resent the constant bombardment with those male recommendations. It seemed that if I didn’t read a good book by a woman, ‘the world’ didn’t care; if I didn’t read a good book by a man, I would be reminded daily that I should be reading it. I think this is why things like Meanjin’s recent Tournament of Books and the Stella Prize and the Australian Women Writers challenge are so important.

Ah, yes, the Australian Women Writers challenge: read three, six, ten, or more books written by Australian women in 2012; and review some of them. The objective is to counteract the phenomena I described above. To make it easier to find good books by women. To give daily reminders that there are books out there, by women, that are in want of reading. And to do so in a local context — a context that often makes writers doubly invisible, as both women and Australians.

I’m going to take the challenge, to help me to continue reading equally next year. This year, half of the books I have read were by women, and half of those by Australian women (or at least women who chose to publish in Australia):

That’s seventeen books, a mix of the literary and the speculative. So, as a Dabbler in more than one genre, I will be attempting in 2012 to read at the Franklin-fantastic level — to read ten and review at least four books. The latter being where this weblog comes in.

I can’t promise more than four reviews (at least one of which should be of substantial length) so updates will not be frequent. The first might not even appear until March. Reviews will be shared via the POST REVIEW box on the 2012 Challenge page, and the #aww2012 hashtag on Twitter.

This weblog doesn’t host comments, but please email me, tweet me, post about me on your own weblog. I promise that I’ll write back, and post links or ‘letters to the editor’ on this blog when appropriate.

What will I be reading in the new year? I’m not sure yet, but I’ll probably start with My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin, The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner, and The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood.

Finally, I’d like to thank Elizabeth Lhuede for organising the challenge. It’s a big thing, and, I think, very important. I hope lots more people sign up for it.