My pal M. has a really great book collection – a mix of high literature and weird indie comics, an array of nonfiction and cookbooks for every occasion. I always like checking out which new titles are living on his shelves as well as thumbing through the old ones. He’s generous about lending, too, so that’s an added bonus.

But there’s just one hitch: Hardly any of his books are by ladies. Once I counted two women authors. Two!

This is a problem that extends well beyond M.’s bookcase, so it’s hard to blame him. In fact, a new count by VIDA: Women in Literary Arts demonstrates that women continue to be underrepresented – grossly so, in some cases – by the big book reviewers.

The 2012 count includes data on women authors reviewed compared with men, as well as the gender breakdown of the reviewers themselves. And since VIDA has been at it for three years, patterns have begun to emerge. What’s depressing is that some of the trends are so damned bad.

Harper’s, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review – all reviewed women writers at such a low rate that it’s tempting to find a nearby copy of one of them and throw it across the room (and I would do it, if I weren’t so busy rolling my eyes, Liz-Lemon style).

VIDA did note that some publications have made headway. According to the VIDA blog:

“The Boston Review, with its slightly heavier load of male reviewers, has made a dramatic improvement proportionately of who they review since we began. Threepenny is taking a slow but steady approach with incremental yearly steps up from 29 to 34 to 36.5% women published respectively. Poetry remains the most consistently equitable in its publishing practices, reaching a 45% height of women published in 2012: look to the poets!”

The VIDA count is important (as are others, like Roxanne Gay’s accounting of writers of color). Yet literature isn’t just a numbers game. Writers and readers huddle around the written word to connect, or to tap into something outside of their own experience.

When so many voices are silenced through omission by the big guys, we all lose out. We miss the unique stories – told by writers of every chromosomal composition – that make our world simultaneously bigger and more intimate. Worse, we might miss the stories in which we see ourselves, those works that resonate as we suffer and celebrate, wonder and discover.

The literary industry must do better; I believe this. But there’s another part of this, too.

Those of us who are voracious readers must dig deeper (and, fortunately, this can be pleasurable in its own right) to uncover the many skilled writers whose work does not ever get highlighted in Harper’s. We must continue to take stock of what we’re reading. We must keep looking at our bookshelves.

For a complete look at the VIDA count, check out the charts here.

By Melissa Breazie