[Cross-posted at Making Things Up.]

Let’s say you’re a reader. You love to read. And you especially love, let’s say, mystery novels. Just imagine for a minute for me. You are a mystery novel fan. And at the end of the year, you think to yourself—you know what? I am going to write up a list of the best books of the year! Not the best mysteries, mind you, but the best books. You read all sorts of things, right? So: best books of the year.

And you make a long list. But you want to whittle it down to the very best, so you cross a book off here and scratch another off there until you come up with it: the top ten. Ten best books of 2009. And then you look at the list again, and you have to scratch your head, because: lo and behold, they’re all mysteries. Every one of them. All mysteries.

But you didn’t set out to make a list of the best mysteries. You gave all books equal consideration, you didn’t give preference to one genre over another, right, it just—shock and surprise!—turned out that way. The best books of the year, according to you, just happened to be mysteries, each and every one. You were surprised. You were even, dare we say, disturbed to find that no one but mystery writers wrote a great book this year.

Now, what do you do with this list of yours, this Best Books of 2009? Well, let’s think. Do you publish it? Does it seem likely that this list, this list of all mysteries, is truly representative of all the books published—or does it seem, based on the outcome, does it seem to have been, perhaps, colored by your own personal prejudices?

Why, prejudices! You might exclaim. It’s not as though I wrote a Best Books of 2009 list that included only books by only male authors! Or, say, 90% white authors!

Oh, wait.

Now, look, I’m not suggesting that any of the books on the PW top ten are bad books. In fact, I'm sure they’re among the very best books published in 2009 by white men. But are they truly the best of all books? In a year that has seen new books from A.S. Byatt and Margaret Atwood, by Zadie Smith and Alice Munro and Lorrie Moore? Really? How could one—how could a committee assembled by a trade publication!—come to such a conclusion?

It’s a mystery.

She Writes has declared today a Day of Action, and encourages everyone (yes, you! and me!) to buy a book written by a woman in 2009. Learn more at She Writes, or on the She Writes Facebook page.