&gt; There are lots of female authors, and they&#x27;re well publicized [...] this is exactly the book list you&#x27;d expect from a cohort of 25-35 year old startup founders<p>If you look at any &#x27;best books of the year&#x27; lists though, most of them are written by men, even though most people in the publishing industry are women.<p>I suspect it&#x27;s partly because if you look at the gender gap in reading preferences, women tend to read and write more books in winner-take-all areas. E.g. if you want to learn something about foreign policy then you might need one specific book out of the thousands that get written each year, but if you want to read a novel about relationships then there&#x27;s not much reason to go beyond the best couple dozen of the year.