Rene Ribic:
> Like others on the list, I found the Best 100
Hardboiled Characters vote
> a mixed blessing. Although it did rather dominate
the discussion for a
> while the Characters vote did liven things up &
in particular it
> brought quite a few lurkers to surface. It was nice
to see several women
> lurkers announce themselves - we blokes tend to
dominate discussions,
> etc & I feel that it's not always our fault- it
would be nice to have
> our sisters (& the other lurkers) make their
presences felt more often.
Rene, The voting brought out a lot of lurkers who, to my
knowledge, had nrver contributed before. Aside from the
expected voters from English speaking Canada , USA, UK and
Australia, we had voters from Germany, Japan, Finland, Sweden
and Quebec which is mainly French speaking.. Judging from
every listserv I have been on, I think the majority of
subscribers are always lurkers. The sex is not important. It
is hard to contribute something useful without having special
knowledge or training. It doesn't help a list to have a lot
of messages like 'I agree' or 'I really liked some The
Maltese Falcon.' You have to contribute knowledge or some
reasoned opinion why you feel as you do. I agree with you
that many people are intimidated by Rara Avis. After all,
many of the members are writers or academics. Yet I have
never seen any contribution to this list get a response that
doesn't treat the original as worthwhile.
I agree with you that men are more likely to be on this list
than are women only because of its subject matter. I can only
judge by my experience. My sister is an avid mystery reader,
but I know she dislikes anything she considers too violent.
My wife can't understand why I like such violent books and
movies. I have managed to get her to read some of the
non-hard boiled Westlakes, but that's it. I know that's
certainly not a universal attitude. We have a fair number of
women who are pretty active on this list, and I know a woman
who still may be subscribed that regularly reads harder edged
books than I. Mark, ducking..
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 20 Apr 2002 EDT