Do Men Read… Little Women by Louisa May Alcott?

No, of course men don’t read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

That’s it! This is why you’re not supposed to directly answer a question at the beginning of a blog post; the blog posts are too short.

Besides, the real question should be: WHY don’t men read Little Women?

The answer to that question is a bit more complicated. Little Women has the words little and women in the title. Men don’t read books with the word little. Men don’t like the word little. If you don’t know why men don’t like the word little, don’t ask. I don’t want to be the one who explains it to you.

Men also won’t read a book called Big Women either, but that’s for a completely unrelated reason.

No offense, but men don’t want to read a book about women. I remember a study that showed women would read books about men, but men wouldn’t read books about women. Maybe the study was about reading habits of boys and girls instead of the habits of men and women, but the results would probably be similar. Or maybe my memory is playing tricks on me.

Some men claim to have read Little Women, but most of them are lying, probably because they want women to think highly of them. Maybe a few men were forced to read Little Women in a class, but they shouldn’t have complied. Reading Little Women harms a man’s ability to function appropriately with others. It isn’t healthy for men to read Little Women.

I think I saw a study about how unhealthy it was for men to read Little Women, but now the internet has vanished the study. At least the internet didn’t “debunk” the study; they just went ahead and vanished it. Or maybe I just made up that study. If you’re offended by a study that suggests reading Little Women harms men, I can also make up a study that says it doesn’t. Then you can choose which of my possibly fake memories you can agree with.

I think everybody would agree that most men would read a book called Big Men, except for men who claim to have read Little Women. Despite what people think about men, Big Men wouldn’t need car chases and explosions and random violence. That’s not what being a Big Man is all about.

A Big Man lives in a world of temptations and addictions but resists/defeats them. A Big Man resists the temptation of promiscuous sex because he understands the long-term consequences of irresponsible behavior. A Big Man doesn’t cheat on his wife because he knows how it would affect his wife (plus there’s that vow in front of God thing). A Big Man doesn’t waste time on idle self-destructive behaviors like playing video games or watching porn.

Big Men would be about a group of men who face these temptations; sometimes they resist and sometimes they screw up, but in the end most of the immature guys turn into Big Men.

Big Men would be so awesome that even women would want to read it. Maybe Little Women is that awesome already, but I’ll never find out for sure. I’m a man, so I can’t read it.

*****

What do you think? Do you know any men who have (claimed to have) read Little Women? How awesome would the novel Big Men be?