So one story (or group of stories) going around the writing blogs in the last week is that most of the mainstream "best of" book lists are loaded with titles written by men (lists such as these from publishers weekly, amazon, and then there was the whole snafu about Tor--I think--putting together a "best short fiction" collection that excluded women writers earlier this year). I've been reading up on some things that might be peripherally related to this phenomenon, and I seem to have come up with these facts:
1. The abovementioned assertion that most mainstream "best of" book lists are loaded with titles written by male authors.
2. Most fiction is written by/read by women.
3. Both the Nobel and Booker prizes this year were won by women.
4. The Pulitzer Prize has, in the last decade, been about evenly split between male and female writers.
5. Most men don't read books.
6. Most men who do read books tend to read either non-fiction or male-oriented genre fiction.
7. Mainstream "best of" book lists are loaded with titles written by males...oh, I said that one already, didn't I?
8. I have no evidence to back this up except what I experienced in college and what I've seen around the internets, but most "serious" and "scholarly" literary criticism/writing seems to be done by men.
9. Female writers do not "write like girls." Flannery O'Connor could have kicked anyone's ass.
So I take all of that and I ask a couple of questions: how many of the writers who read this blog (and there are hundreds of you) are men? How many of those men read commercial/literary fiction? How many of you (all of you, I mean) know men who read commercial/literary fiction? How many of you know men who read fiction at all?
I had lunch last week with one of my best friends, and he assured me that he's going to go all out and make himself read One Whole Novel Each Year. Wow, I said. Okay, really I just gave a world-weary sigh and said nothing.
So I'm looking for not only thoughts about why males keep topping "best of" lists in mainstream press (because we live in a patriarchal society, duh), but anecdotal evidence regarding male readers. What's going on in the world? How often do any of you give a book to a man as a present (and then the man actually reads it)? Et cetera.
Also (I'm throwing out a lot of questions today, I know), if it's true that males read less than females, what do you think is the cause, and how can this be corrected?
Edit to add: Here's a cool site.
I don't know the answer to these questions, but I have noticed that women I know read much more fiction than men I know. My husband, for example, reads blogs about cycling and science articles online at every opportunity. He loved reading novels in high school and college but just doesn't anymore. He can't explain why. He says that he has trouble paying attention to narrative writing now. My husband's best friend likes to read narratives, but he only reads non-fiction. He says that is what he finds interesting. My father is the only man I know who regularly reads fiction--literary, genre, whatever. My mom thinks he's "weird."
ReplyDeleteI wonder--It seems like women have been the biggest consumers of novels for hundreds of years. Is this a cross-cultural phenomenon? Is it a male brain/female brain thing? (That would be hard to believe.) Or is it some kind of subconscious cultural conditioning that says that fiction is a whimsical entertainment appropriate for women and children? Is the act of reading a novel itself felt to be un-manly, or are men just conditioned over their lifetimes to be interested in different subjects and leisure activities? I don't have any data on these questions, but I'm very curious to read other people's insights.
I know a few men who read literary fiction, but most of the men I know, who like to read, prefer commercial. My husband is a big fan of authors like David Baldacci and Vince Flynn. I have given him those sorts of books for presents, but he will usually get them for himself. My father never read novels until in his late 60s. He thought he didn't like to read, but then he discovered Louis L'Amour and became a fan of reading. Sometimes I think it's a matter of finding the right fit.
ReplyDeleteIn some ways I think men tend to be people of action and reading is a passive thing. My son doesn't like reading. I have to force him through it. He likes to move a lot, and sitting still reading a book drives him nuts. My daughters don't have the same issue.
1)How many of the writers who read this blog (and there are hundreds of you) are men?
ReplyDeleteMe!!
2) How many of those men read commercial/literary fiction? How many of you (all of you, I mean) know men who read commercial/literary fiction?
Me!!!
3) How many of you know men who read fiction at all?
Uh, me again!
Okay, the majority of my friends read, and read like crazy, and it's not nonfiction. My partner . . . well, we've been together 15 years and he's read maybe four books in that time. He prefers sci-fi, btw.
Now, let's take this theory a bit further in that . . . the majority of my friends are gay men. So, does that fact skew the results somewhat? Is there something in the brains of women and gay men that drives them to read more than heterosexual men? Does it drive 'what' they read - commercial and mainstream fiction versus action/adventure save the world type of fiction? Or, is it just that some people love to read, and some don't?
Very interesting post. I really think some psychology student could do a great paper about this. Too bad I'm not still in school.
S
My husband reads FAR more non-fiction than fiction. He loves a good novel, but has much higher standards for starting a novel than for starting non-fic, and I have no idea why. He bemoans his inability to find a good novel to read, but refuses to start many books that seem like obvious pics to me, because they're critically acclaimed or highly recommended by someone we trust (like, you know, HIS WIFE). But then he'll pick up non-fiction that we KNOW is sub-par.
ReplyDeleteI am baffled.
I've given many books to my father, but they were all sports related, and more like coffee table books than a traditional non-fiction. He enjoys those books, but reads them once and puts them on the shelf to languish for years. I've never seen him read anything remotely close to fiction. For him though, I think it's a matter of attention span. He just doesn't like to sit still that long and read. He reads the newspaper every single morning, and that's it.
ReplyDeleteOne of my brothers read a little bit in high school - mostly Tolkein and the like - but now that he's an adult and in the Army he hasn't touched a book. The other brother hated reading. Hated it. The only books he willingly read were by SE Hinton.
My brother-in-law claims that he likes to read, and has accompanied me to the bookstore many times, but I've never once seen him read or known him to finish a book.
Uh yeah, Scott. I think we're the exception to the rule. I read constantly, I read all kinds of things, and I know for a fact I would be a very hollow and saddened person if I ever stopped this kind of activity.
ReplyDeleteI also have noticed however, how few male writers there are (at least according to the percentage of writer blogs anyway). Sure it's a very unscientific way to take a poll, but I am willing to bet it's at least somewhat accurate.
I think part of it has to do with what men usually excel at. I will be the first to say that it's difficult for alot of men (not all, of course) to talk about things. Emotions, anything other than sports, whatever.
I'm probably going to get myself into trouble here with all the men, but oh well.
Anyway, writing is a mental exercise rather than a physical one. And it's not unfair to generalize that men tend to prefer engaging in physical activities as opposed to mental ones. Women are the opposite. Oh, and ladies - that's not to say there aren't women out there who like getting a little physical on the basketball court or whatever, but on the whole I'd say this generalization rings true.
Yes this is a massive amount of generalizations and unscientific opinion, but there you have it.
This question comes up as soon as kids learn to read. Boys are more likely to struggle with reading early on, and teachers, parents and librarians are always looking for a "boy" book that will hook the reluctant readers. There are authors who make a career out of writing for boys who might not otherwise pick up a book.
ReplyDeleteBoys (and later men) often read because it is connected to something they want to DO. That's why boys and men read about sports or home repair or in the case of fiction, spies. Girls and women tend to read novels because of the way reading makes them FEEL.
As librarians, when faced with a kid who doesn't know what to read next, we are taught to ask boys what they like to do and find a book relating to that. Many of the novels boys (and men!) read are very heavy on the cool gadgets factor,(Harry Potter and James Bond are classic examples) so even if they're not about doing something real, there's a character doing something fun.
I think this question is hard to answer on a blog because most men who read blogs are also men who read books of all sorts and often enjoy writing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Lotus: "In some ways I think men tend to be people of action and reading is a passive thing."
As for the man I live with (my husband,) he reads magazines more than anything. He likes to read, but not often and not usually anything that would take a long time to read. I also find the comparison between what he reads and what he watches on TV interesting. He reads magazines (so non-fiction, factual stuff) and he often watches reality shows and news, like the Outdoor channel or ESPN or CNN. When he watches fictional shows they are always action/drama/adventure and he insists on switching the channel at every commercial break, thus he rarely watches an entire non-fiction show.
What do you think of that??
I'm a man and this my first time to read your blog. I was directed here from female blogger that I follow. I will come back now that I know you're here.
ReplyDeleteI am a very slow reader so I don't read as many books as I would like. But of those that I read I try to do a good mix of fiction (classics & newer fiction, crime, sci-fi) and non (especially history books and Bios). I don't fixate on any one genre but when reading fiction I do lean toward more literary works like Cormac McCarthy and Jane Austen.
How to get men to read more? Heck if I know. Tie them to a chair with no TV? Books with more pictures?
Lee
http://tossingitout.blogspot.com/
I'm an editor on one of those scholarly lit-crit publications you mention in #8, and I'm married to an academic, so I can give an insider's perspective on why men still dominate the publications, even if women dominate readership of fiction AND English department faculty.
ReplyDeleteIn a word: children. Women often gravitate toward academia because of the flexible work hours that enable them to have time for kids. What they don't have time for is persuing scholarly publication to the degree their male counterparts do, especially the single guys and empty-nesters.
I'm a man, and I read literary fiction and commercial fiction in roughly equal amounts, although my writing interests are (so far) strictly in the literary fiction realm. Of the people I know who are avid rather than occasional readers, nearly all are women. I know lots of men who never or barely read for pleasure, and even the few I know who read a lot read as much nonfiction as fiction.
ReplyDeleteTo change gears here: You say that the "best of" lists are loaded with works by male writers, the Pulitzer has been split roughly equally between men and women in recent years, and that most fiction is written by and read by women. I don't disagree with any of those points. But I wonder if those facts, as presented, suggest more than they say. For example, do the "best of" lists include non-contemporary works (i.e., works from eras when women couldn't get published in anywhere remotely close to the numbers that men were, and thus women authors are actually a much smaller sample size than men)? Also, the "most fiction is written by women" point seems obviously true to me, but is it also true that most of the fiction that would generally be considered for a "best of" list is written by women.
As to that last point, I'm not sure. My anecdotal evidence tells me that most romance, YA, and cozy mysteries are written by women, but (rightly or wrongly) books from these genres rarely make "best-of" lists that aren't genre-specific. What's the gender breakdown of people writing literary fiction published by mainstream publishers? I don't know. I seem to see a fair amount of it by men, but then that may be that that's because the awards and "best of" lists are abnormally skewed to men and thus I hear of the men disproportionately. Maybe men write literary fiction in a higher proportion than they do other genres. I don't know.
How many of the writers who read this blog (and there are hundreds of you) are men?
ReplyDeleteI'm one. Someone else will have to tally up the rest.
How many of those men read commercial/literary fiction?
See prior response.
How many of you (all of you, I mean) know men who read commercial/literary fiction?
Other than myself, I know a few but the majority of guys I know do not read fiction. I would say the majority read non-fiction.
How many of you know men who read fiction at all?
I do, but not many.
if it's true that males read less than females, what do you think is the cause, and how can this be corrected?
For many guys I know it's a matter of prioritization and time management. I have several friends who read enough sports news to quality as novel-length, especially while fantasy football leagues are ongoing. This is pure speculation, but I'm guessing that men read less because it impacts the time allotted to other necessary activities:
- Golfing
- Watching football / basketball / baseball / hockey
- Honey-do lists
- Trying to wedge in some time with spouse and children
- Reading that is done is often work-related (not counting the constant checking of Crackberries, which can also amount to an enormous volume of reading)
- Because so much male reading is work-related (at least for a lot of the guys I know) they do not see reading as relaxing
I grew up with three brothers and a mom and a dad. We all loved to read and we all read mostly fiction. A few times we read memoirs and non-fiction. To this day, if someone in the family reads a new book, within two weeks the rest of the family has read it as well. I love it.
ReplyDeleteI'm now engaged and my future in-laws also read a ton. The wife = mostly self-help. The husband = strictly sci-fi. The kids (two girls, and my wonderful manly fiance) = fiction.
So in my families of readers that's 6 males reading fiction and 4 females reading fiction, with 1 female reading self-help.
Scott, this is an interesting post. I have some of the same questions that Jabez mentioned. What are these "best of" lists, and do they come from a survey of older books, when not as many women were represented? It may be a matter of time. With writers like Jhumpa Lahiri, Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates, and J.K. Rowling dominating different writing genres, revised lists might be more 50/50.
ReplyDeleteI'm always surprised to hear people say they are surrounded by readers because I myself don't really see it where I live. Of the people I know who read, the majority of them are women. The men I know who read prefer newspapers and magazines, which is reading, but feels more like reading for a purpose, reading to get information rather than for pleasure. I would say that if the trend among writers was to write more for information than for story, we might get more male readers.
My husband wasn't a reader before we started dating. He preferred short magazine articles, etc. I told him he just hadn't found the right books yet, and introduced him to action/adventure/suspense novels...and now he reads quite regularly - we shop for books together. For him, it was a matter of finding page-turners that would keep his interest. No literary and very few non-fiction reads for him.
ReplyDeleteMy brother-in-law is a fantasy/sci-fi reader...he reads a lot of that, but nothing else.
My dad has dyslexia, so he reads, but slowly. When he reads, it's genre fiction (big Dan Brown fan, likes action/adventure novels).
Most of the other men in our "circle" don't read (one will occasionally read a non-fiction "how to succeed in life" type book, but that's it). Sadly though, the majority of my female friends aren't readers either.
My husband hasn't read a book in years. He watches movies and reads the Crutchfield catalog.
ReplyDeleteThe last book he read was a non-fiction book on car stereo installation called Auto Audio. I actually remember the exact title because he asked me to order the damn thing from my Amazon account.
My little brother still reads a lot of fantasy.
Ah, I think that men would read more if you just threw some boobies into the mix. Boobies are the key to keeping their attention.
My brother I think is pretty evenly split between fiction and non-fiction. When there's a book I know he's dying to get his hands on but can't, I'll buy it for him for his birthday or Christmas. He is an avid reader just like everyone in my family has been. So maybe we're anomalies in the whole process, but I know one man who reads and reads just about anything fiction or non.
ReplyDelete*raises hand*
ReplyDeleteMan here. Yes, I read, mainly literary fiction. The last few were Shusaku Endo, Faulkner, Hemingway, and (embarrassingly) R.A. Salvatore (!). What can I say? I've a weak spot for commercial fantasy novels every now and then.
I've always been a reader, though, so I'm not a representative sample by any stretch.
My boyfriend reads boating magazines and books on programming. Sometimes he does math problems for fun. That's it. I keep trying to push something even in the maintstream category on him. No bites. He's smart. He has a PhD in electrical engineering. But I don't think he's read a work of fiction since college.
ReplyDeleteHowever I have known other men who read. My father read science fiction compulsively. He always had a book going. His retention was questionable, but he had an insatiable appetite for reading books he would almost immediately forget. Does that count?
I have a male friend who is always reading a book -- and I think he has good retention. He reads primarily sci-fi and fantasy. I gave him a John Irving book, though, and he made it all the way through.
I have another male friend who is a walking encyclopedia of literary fiction, poetry and art films. I think he's read more than most English professors.
I had a friend in grad school who wrote poetry and had a B.A. in English. He was very well read and an amazing poet. He frequently bemoaned he never did an M.F.A.
I had a male friend in college who read every Phillip Roth book available. Although this friend was also a fan of Jewish writers.
So, I guess I've known several men who were avid readers.
Men don't read because of the social norms we have in place. We are all predisposed to some sort of social bias that makes men not feel like a man if they aren't working out or screaming at some pixels that have shown a representation of a football stadium; and women don't feel like women if they aren't feeling emotion.
ReplyDeleteSo, why don't men read fiction? Because the vast majority of men are told that imagination and enjoying quiet time is for women and children. I don't believe that the vast majority of my sex don't read fiction because it's a "passive activity" because how many hours do they spend in front of a television. Males don't read because they are intellectualy lazy. One of the main ones I do believe is because of social pressures to be a meatheaded, incompetant fool. Be a bumbling blockhead and you will have friends... what else does popular media tell us, if not this? Just look at the great family sitcoms of the last decade: Everybody Loves Raymond, The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of Queens, How I Met Your Mother, Malcom in the Middle, etc... the dumb, stereotypical mid-level father-figure pervades all these shows. So what are guys, who primarily watch television anyway (because of society and the human desire towards sedation) going to see as their place? Ding-Ding-Ding! Stupid, crotch-scratching, beer-bellied, good-for-only-their-incomes, wastes of space. This sort of artificial norm of masculinity pervades all societies and leads us all to the idea that a man is supposed to be, above all else, base. Base desires, base emotions, base conflicts, base solutions. Easy things for easy people. A well-written novel goes directly against that mind-set and so, men don't read fiction, and they sure-as-shit don't write it.
I know lots of guys who read. They tend to fall into the category of 'nerdy guys,' but then again most of the girls I know who like reading have been called 'nerdy girls' at some point.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting, what you say about 'writing like a girl.' I'm not sure what that really would mean. I can usually tell if, say, fanfiction is written by a girl, especially by how the males are written; however, in many published books, I couldn't have been sure about the author's gender based on the writing alone.
In my small sphere: my father reads lots of commercial fiction and non-fiction; my father-in-law reads literary fiction; my ex reads sci-fi/fantasy but within that I include authors such as Vonnegut and Bradbury. The majority of men I know read in some fashion, although I would say most of them don't read as many books as the women I know.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if this is bad....but I honestly don't think that I would have noticed the list was all men if others hadn't pointed it out.
ReplyDeleteWow, there is a lot of blog hijack going on here but you hit a hot topic.
ReplyDeleteMen...correction, heterosexual men are logical thus right brained therefore chose a practical read.
Women (and homosexual men) who are more idealistic chose fiction.
That's my two cents.
My husband reads a TON of fiction-- from classics like The Three Musketeers to Heinlein to the Honor Harrington series. We actually have a lot of the same tastes as far as that goes--maybe he's a bit more interested in military sci fi than I am. He also reads a TON of non-fiction, like reference books and history books. I don't know how people can read books cover to cover that simply list the different kinds of tanks and their technical specs, but he does, and he loves it. My two brothers both read fiction too-- one with more frequency than the other, but still plenty of commercial and classical literature. My father however, seems to read only Non-Fiction.
ReplyDeleteIf there are men who don't read, they're not related to me, so I can't shed any light on the subject, I guess.
I have no doubt that there is a gender divide when it comes to reading tastes and habits. However, critical opinion is often shaped by men and it is very hard to challenge the critical assessments that have been developed by male-dominated academic and literary institutions over the past 100 years. We are still living with the influence T.S. Eliot's Criterion magazine, which championed some unfashionable authors and deposed some fashionable ones. Personally, I've never understood how Henry James established such a cast-iron literary reputation without ever demonstrating an understanding of the feelings of ordinary people. Theatre audiences were perhaps a better guide to how we should rate his work when they spontaneously booed him off the stage at the opening of Guy Domville. Poor
ReplyDeleteHenry. I know people of both genders who read a lot of fiction and they have very different tastes. Personally, I like Agatha Christie's approach: she read everything. It didn't seem to do her any harm.
I am a male, though I often don't fit traditional masculine stereotypes. However, I do overwhelmingly prefer to read non-fiction. I have specific subjects that I'm interested in reading about, and it would take many lifetimes for me to get through all the relevant material on topics that interest me (and not just because I am a slow reader). When I read non-fiction, I typically am more actively engaged with what I'm reading. I make connections: link information I am learning about to other information I'm already familiar with, compare theories, etc. I don't generally find reading even literary fiction as intellectually satisfying as reading non-fiction in my areas of interest. And I often get a hollow sort of feeling while reading novels, or immediately afterwards. Reading a novel seems like a lot of energy to put into imaginary characters and situations.
ReplyDeleteI also am an extremely poor visualizer, which probably detracts a lot from my enjoyment of fiction. I do not, however, compensate by watching TV and movies. On the contrary, I don't watch TV, except what I stream online (which is almost always either news or music related), and I almost never watch movies these days.
I did go through a spell of reading quite a bit of fiction a few years back, when I relocated to an unfamiliar city for health reasons, without a job lined up in advance. I think my life at that moment felt very "narrative" so to speak. Reading fiction seemed to fit in well with the extreme uncertainty of my condition. I read some novels relating to the region of the country to which I had moved, and I did some fairly heavy lifting, including: Bolaño's 2666, Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games, among other. I continued reading non-fiction as well. Being unemployed for over a year, without home internet access, left lots of time for reading books. However, since becoming more settled in my new city, I have gradually moved back to reading non-fiction exclusively, and I have no qualms about that. On the other hand, if I get a strong impulse to read fiction, I have no honor code to prevent me from doing so.
For what it's worth, when I was in my teens and twenties, I read hundreds of poetry books, so that's one of the ways in which I am sure I am not a typical male (or typical at all). At that time I still tended not to read much fiction. The fiction I read on occasion was often "poet's fiction," fiction, if not necessarily written by poets, written in a way foregrounded the materiality of language (e.g., William Burroughs). Some of the other stuff I gravitated to was angsty philosophical fiction, like Sartre's Nausea. At some point I largely lost interest in poetry, realizing that music gave me more of what I was looking for in poetry.
I am a librarian (heterosexual).
I am a male, though I often don't fit traditional masculine stereotypes. However, I do overwhelmingly prefer to read non-fiction. I have specific subjects that I'm interested in reading about, and it would take many lifetimes for me to get through all the relevant material on topics that interest me (and not just because I am a slow reader). When I read non-fiction, I typically am more actively engaged with what I'm reading. I make connections: link information I am learning about to other information I'm already familiar with, compare theories, etc. I don't generally find reading even literary fiction as intellectually satisfying as reading non-fiction in my areas of interest. And I often get a hollow sort of feeling while reading novels, or immediately afterwards. Reading a novel seems like a lot of energy to put into imaginary characters and situations.
ReplyDeleteI also am an extremely poor visualizer, which probably detracts a lot from my enjoyment of fiction. I do not, however, compensate by watching TV and movies. On the contrary, I don't watch TV, except what I stream online (which is almost always either news or music related), and I almost never watch movies these days.
I did go through a spell of reading quite a bit of fiction a few years back, when I relocated to an unfamiliar city for health reasons, without a job lined up in advance. I think my life at that moment felt very "narrative" so to speak. Reading fiction seemed to fit in well with the extreme uncertainty of my condition. I read some novels relating to the region of the country to which I had moved, and I did some fairly heavy lifting, including: Bolaño's 2666, Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games, among other. I continued reading non-fiction as well. Being unemployed for over a year, without home internet access, left lots of time for reading books. However, since becoming more settled in my new city, I have gradually moved back to reading non-fiction exclusively, and I have no qualms about that. On the other hand, if I get a strong impulse to read fiction, I have no honor code to prevent me from doing so.
For what it's worth, when I was in my teens and twenties, I read hundreds of poetry books, so that's one of the ways in which I am sure I am not a typical male (or typical at all). At that time I still tended not to read much fiction. The fiction I read on occasion was often "poet's fiction," fiction, if not necessarily written by poets, written in a way foregrounded the materiality of language (e.g., William Burroughs). Some of the other stuff I gravitated to was angsty philosophical fiction, like Sartre's Nausea. At some point I largely lost interest in poetry, realizing that music gave me more of what I was looking for in poetry.
I am a librarian (heterosexual).