That doesn’t justify my lack of diversity, but I would have read it anyway, regardless of the race and gender of the author.

I don’t think it’s something you have to justify, honestly.

Every book I read is a book I would have read regardless of the race and gender of the author.

Which is to say, I only read the books I’m interested in reading. There’s no quicker way for me to get bored with a book, and subsequently get bored with the act of reading itself, and then go several days or even weeks without reading a single page, than for me to pick up a book I have zero interest in.

Then again, I don’t choose my books based on “comps,” as they’re apparently called, like many people do. I’m not the sort of person who can read a dozen books that are just like the last dozen books I read, with only minor variations. So I do read very diversely in terms of genre, and that in turn means I probably read almost as many books by women as by men, but not intentionally so.