Books That Men (have/will/do) Read

When I was younger and had friends, most of them could read just fine, but reading books for pleasure wasn’t their first choice of leisure activity. My friends had other stuff (often called hobbies) that they liked to do, and they didn’t consider reading as a hobby. Reading was what you did when you couldn’t get to your hobbies (unless you were reading about your hobbies).  Today, men have the opportunities to have more hobbies than ever, and even though some of these hobbies might seem counter-productive, they’re still there and are usually more important to most men than reading current fiction for fun.

This leads to a common observation today that men tend to not read for pleasure, especially fiction, anymore. Book readers, a lot of them women, usually attach a negative judgement to that observation, but the only public discussions I have seen about this topic are by book readers (usually women) with other book readers (usually women). Nobody seems to talk to the males who don’t read fiction to find out why they/we aren’t reading fiction, so these book readers (usually women), in my mind, have no credibility when they make judgements about why so few men read fiction now.

Here’s why I am more credible than a lot of people who talk about this topic.  I am male.  I read.  I know men who don’t read much fiction, and I know why they don’t read much fiction, and I understand it (meaning I don’t look down on them because of it).  I don’t see NOT reading fiction as a character flaw.  I know men who read avidly, and I also know men who read only when there’s nothing else left to do, and I know men who don’t read at all. The short version is that some men simply don’t like reading, and then others that don’t mind reading have other things that they’d rather do.

When I was teaching, I tried to get my reluctant readers to enjoy books. I really wanted my students to enjoy reading in general, so I’d escort them to the library once every couple weeks and let them choose their own books for easy projects that they could present in small groups without any classroom pressure. I read a lot of YA fiction and talked about these books and left copies of books in visible spaces in my classroom. Most of my efforts were futile as far as I know (in the library, the girls would hide behind the shelves and gossip while the boys would beat on each other and have fart contests), but a few students got into the reading projects, and I saw the carryover into their regular reading habits.

When I told my youngster co-workers at the grocery store (I did that for a few years after teaching) about the city’s main branch library five minutes away, they would seem surprised that anything like that even existed. The youngsters had admitted to me that they didn’t read (when they found out I was a retired English teacher, they’d confess their lack of reading to me as if I were a priest). I’d ask them about their interests and about the movies and television shows they watched. From there, I’d make some book recommendations and suggest that they check out the city’s main branch library. I also warned them, however, to stay out of the main branch library’s bathrooms. I appreciate the big city main branch library, but you never know what ‘treasures’ you’ll find in the bathroom. Ugh!

From what I’ve observed, men and women tend to read different kinds of fiction. Men read adventure novels and thrillers because we live through the exploits and achievements of the protagonists. We’d love to be the physically superior hero who’s also smart enough to think his way through life’s adversity and challenges, no matter how far-fetched those challenges might be in the novels we read. Women, from what I’ve seen, tend to read romance type novels because they live through the protagonist who’s often swept off her feet by a handsome guy who can solve her problems (or give her the dramatic problems that she loves to have). We read these low brow books to imagine ourselves doing what we can’t do in our own lives… to some extent. If you read this paragraph and don’t think you’re like this, that’s fine. You might be right… or you might be in denial. I’ll never know (and you might not really know either).

Some women act like they’re superior to men because women read more fiction than men, but now that I know what a lot of women read, they don’t have much room to brag. A lot of current fiction is so poorly written that it probably makes women dumber when they read it. That’s okay.  A lot of current fiction has made me dumber when I read it too, so I  blame the books and not the women.  The problem, though, is that some women still keep choosing to read these current books/novels that make them dumber, and that’s their fault, not the fault of the books or the publishers. If I know ahead of time that a book will make me dumber, I’ll (usually) choose not to read it.

Having said (or written) that, the books that men (have, do, will) read in this blog post might not be the most sophisticated books (they’re not sophisticated at all), but they won’t make you dumber.  At least, they didn’t make me dumber; I’ve always been like this and would have been like this anyway. Keep in mind that these books that I’m posting aren’t the only books that men (have, will, do) read. These are simply the books that I have seen men read for myself or heard them talk about, usually enthusiastically. Also, you can click on each book to read previous blog posts about them. What you choose to do with this information is up to you, but IGNORE ME AT YOUR OWN PERIL!!!

As mentioned earlier, I’m not surprised that men today might not read as much fiction as they/we did decades ago. There’s a lot more of other stuff to do now. Reading is often not a man’s first choice of leisure activity.  Yeah, I’m a man, and reading is often my first choice of leisure activity, but I’m an outlier, and I recognize that. I’ve had friends who COULD read but usually didn’t because there were other things that were simply more important to do. A book would have to be really good to get their attention. That is one reason why I say “Just because you CAN read Moby Dick doesn’t mean you should” at the top of my blog page.

Some men read nonfiction in order to learn things but think fiction is a waste of time. I’ve been through that phase (as mentioned in Is Reading Fiction a Waste of Time?), but it didn’t last long. I like stories too much to stay away from fiction for very long. People in general need stories. Morals are taught through stories. Philosophical and religious ideas are given in stories because the average person will listen to and understand the parable or the story but will doze off during a lecture or simple explanation.

Way back in the 1980s, I was taught that women would read stuff that was by/about men, but most men wouldn’t voluntarily read stuff by/about women, and that was partially why more books, even fiction, seemed more geared towards men in the past (that and the …PATRIARCHY).  Now that most current fiction seems geared towards women, a lot of men have voluntarily stopped reading current fiction. By ‘a lot,’ I mean me and a few guys that I know. I have no reliable data to support that claim. So which is it? Is so much fiction aimed at women because men tend to not read fiction anymore? Or do men not read fiction because so much of it is meant for a female audience? Is it both? Is it neither? Did I learn fake/bogus information in the 1980s?

Me? I’m not complaining that fiction overall seems to be aimed at women rather than to men or to a general audience.  I have plenty of old books to read, more than I’ll ever be able to get to.  Any man who wants to read fiction geared towards men can find old stuff that’s cheap, to the point, and entertaining, everything that most men want in fiction. Men who like to read don’t like to pay $20 for a new book anyway when a $3 beat up used paperback will do just fine.

I admit that I and my friends and family members who read could be outliers and that the vast majority of males no longer have any interest in reading. I also understand that a lot of women will read the same books that a lot of men like. I know that I’m using a lot of generalities in this blog post and that there are exceptions to every generalization that I make. I also know that I’m using anecdotal evidence, which isn’t really evidence according to a bunch of experts about evidence. I know this.

I SAID THAT I F***ING KNOW THIS!!!! YOU DON’T HAVE TO KEEP TELLING ME!!!!… Ahem…. Excuse me.

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If you’re a man who wants to read fiction but isn’t sure where to start, the above books have a pretty good track record, and you can usually find them cheap at used book stores or online. Even better, a lot of these (or similar novels by the same authors) will probably be at your local library. Library books are free, and the pile of books that you read don’t clutter your home when you’re done with them. But if you live in a big city and you go to a main branch library, you might not want to go to bathroom there.

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Enough about me and what I think? What do you think? What books do you see men reading for fun? Do men generally have different reading preferences than women? Is this just another stoopid issue meant to promote division and make people argue with each other? Show your passion for reading by leaving a comment below!

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