Alphabetism
I’m currently reading McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. The first thing you notice about this book is that editor Chabon seems to have something against authors whose surnames begin with letters in the latter half of the alphabet. Of 20 stories, only two are by authors from the latter half of the alphabet. I mean, look at the distribution:
3 # #2 # # # #
1 # # # # # #
0 # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Um. OK, so maybe that’s not the first thing you notice.
It's not just you. I've idly noticed something like that over the years just by looking at my bookshelf. Several science fiction fans and critics have remarked on how many popular authors' names begin with "B", and then there are names like Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke to further front-load the alphabet. I don't have a wide enough selection of general literary fiction to make a good sample, but I do have a good number of books by names like Austen, Dostoevski, and Conrad.
But take heart, Mr. Lopez. With your name around the midpoint of the alphabet, you've at least got a fifty-fifty chance.
Posted by Jimcat on May 1 2003 05:39
I've noticed it, too. We have A through half of David Brin on one shelving unit and Melissa Scott through Z on another shelving unit of the same size. That's only in the novels section, of course, but I don't think short stories collections and anthologies skew it significantly. Our nonfiction bookcases split at Liboff, but that's misleading: the bottom shelf and a half of the latter one is my old paper journals, and there's a stack over a foot high that really belongs in the first bookcase but won't fit there.
Ah, the joys of obsessive book organization: you can apprehend distributions spacially.
You keep track of books read on your Palm, right, Zed? What's your distribution lately? I have 1116 books in my "books read" file, and #558 is a Gordon Korman. Alternately, the end of the M's is #718. That's skewed by the number of Kate Wilhelm novels I've read in the last year, though.
Posted by Mris on May 1 2003 07:15