I tend to read works by male authors because, as a male I feel the stories relate more to me than do those of women authors. I inhabit a male world, am comfortable here, and want to immerse myself in story-tellers telling stories most relevant to me.
Not that I don't read female authors -- I certainly do. But for every Agatha Christie, there is a Raymond Chandler; for every Louise Penny, an Eric Wright; for every Elizabeth George, an Ian Rankin; for every Ngaio Marsh, a Robert B Parker. And then Georges Simenon, Conan Doyle, Rex Stout, Erle Stanley Gardner, Hulbert Footner ....
What surprises me is that there are as
many female authors in my collection as there are -- the mix might be as high as 45-55 in e-books although much wider divide in p-books. Then again, I have been collecting (and pruning) p-books over the years whereas e-books are rather recent and somewhat driven by what's available. There's little classic gay male fiction as ebooks -- it tends to be "romantic/erotic" vs "literary". And works like Hermann Hesse or Thomas Mann in English are currently hard to find in ebooks or hideously expensive. So Carolyn G Hart suddenly shoots to prominence in a nascent collection.
