The May 1 issue of Library Journal presented its annual “Men’s Summer Fiction” roundup, featuring the latest books from Ace Atkins, Gregg Hurwitz, and Mike Lawson, among others. That list stopped me cold—I have read and enjoyed most of the included authors. Curious, I looked at the “Women’s Summer Fiction” piece in the same issue and found Mary Kay Andrews and Claire Cook, whom I adore, and several other writers I haven’t read. But what was more upsetting to me than the presence of gender-specific collections was that all the writers on the women’s list were women and vice versa.

As a woman who reads a lot of crime fiction and not a lot of women’s fiction, I have long been accused of reading “guy books,” which, considering my gender, is inaccurate. In close to two decades of dealing with the reading public, the only thing I’ve learned about what men and women read is not to assume anything. So why does LJ feel the need to continue to pigeonhole readers?

From the horse’s mouth

I decided to go to the source on this one: authors. Do they write for gender? Do they want their books to be categorized that way? I received thoughtful and passionate responses, like this from best-selling author M.J. Rose (The Hypnotist): “I am continually horrified by sexual divide in the way books are marketed. Books by men are marketed to men and women. Books by women are only marketed to women.”

Thriller author Meg Gardiner (The Nightmare Thief) captured my feelings exactly: “[I’m] really surprised that they’d concoct two lists playing so deeply to stereotypes. They might as well have stamped each list with ‘Warning: contains cooties.’ ” And Tess Gerritsen, who writes the popular Rizzoli & Isles crime series (The Silent Girl) expressed her astonishment: “I can’t imagine anyone [in this day and age] would think to classify my books as ‘women’s summer fiction.’ ”

Robin Burcell (The Bone Chamber) told me that when she first started writing, she geared her books more toward women because statistically they buy more books. “What I discovered (happily) was that I was picking up a strong male readership...I get more fan emails from men than women these days.”

Do dudes write just for dudes?

I also checked in with a few men whose books would never find their way onto a “women’s summer fiction” list. Joseph Finder (Buried Secrets) had the most scientific answer: “I actually have more female readers than male. I know this from a good survey I did of my readership recently (over 60% female, and not female buyers but female “readers”), and also from some Google Analytics my web manager did.” Even the creator of that most macho of characters, Rambo, doesn’t see one gender dominating his readership. David Morrell said, “I believe that my readers [are] evenly divided in terms of male/female…. It’s a stereotype that men and women can easily be categorized in terms of the kinds of books they read (or films they prefer). When I write, I never consider the gender of my readers.” Lawrence Block (A Drop of the Hard Stuff) put it most succinctly: “I never think about it.”

S.J. Rozan, whose popular mysteries revolve around New York sleuths Lydia Chin and Bill Smith (The Shanghai Moon), took the lists to heart. She said, “First- and second-wave feminism have come and gone, and emotion-forward or lighthearted stories are still ‘women’s’ while action is ‘men’s?’ I despair. No, I don’t write to gender. I don’t read that way, either. And with the exception of those men who don’t read women, I don’t think readers generally do, either. Though I must say, I bet one reason some of those men won’t read women is because they see lists like this.” Still, there is that small contingent of men who refuse to read women authors, hence the popularity of writers who use initials rather than first names. J.D. Robb was an unknown with her first book—what man would pick up a Nora Roberts title? Turns out, plenty of them.

Fiction by genre, not gender

Alafair Burke, the daughter of crime writer James Lee Burke and an acclaimed thriller writer (Long Gone), recently blogged about this on the mystery site Murderati, writing, “To say ‘I don’t read women’ is very different than preferring certain types of books over other types of books. Some of the most inventive, brilliant, and, yes, bad-ass crime fiction being written today comes from women. Using gender as a proxy for subgenre is a darn lazy way to choose books.”

What troubles me most about these segregated summer reading lists is that they just perpetuate the same old stereotypes. Need I remind anyone that most writers strive to achieve the success of that best-selling women’s fiction author, the male Nicholas Sparks?

This is the 21st century, people! Why haven’t we moved past this? Librarians are smarter than this, aren’t we? Do we really need LJ or anyone else to spoon-feed us books by gender? We do love our lists, and I would never suggest doing away with them, but why can’t we have summer reading lists by genre instead of gender?

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Stacy Alesi worked for Borders before moving to the Palm Beach County Library System in 2001, and is the guiding force behind the popular “Writers Live!” program, bringing best-selling authors to the library to discuss their work. She created and maintains the BookBitch.com and the BookBitchBlog, as well as the Florida Authors Wiki. Stacy is a regular reviewer for Library Journal and contributed a chapter to Nonfiction Readers’ Advisory, edited by Robert Burgin (2004). Stacy is an MLIS candidate, August 2011, from the University of South Florida