Soapbox time
I am a reader. Always have been. I learned to read at a young age and when I arrived at kindergarten the teacher discovered that I was already a voracious reader so while my classmates were learning their ABCs, I was in the hall reading articles from Reader’s Digest.
In my half century of reading very few days have gone by where I didn’t have my nose in a book (or Kindle these days) for at least a part of the that day. It is nearly impossible for me to fall asleep at night without at least a little reading but if the book is good I will often read for an hour, thereby wiping out benefit of going to bed at a reasonable hour.
Being not just a man but a man among men, my reading tastes are decidedly traditionally masculine. I am not interested in love stories that could be made into a Lifetime movie. I like books with heroism, war, monsters, challenges overcome. To be honest I still read the same kind of books I read as a kid, lots of sword and sorcery and sci fi.
For a very long time the art of writing, especially fiction, was a male dominated field. Names like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury were synonymous with high adventure and science fiction. Books by Ernest Hemmingway, Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, were required reading for “serious readers”. Sure there were female authors, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen among others, but most authors were male.
On the other side of the equation, there were also lots of male readers. Having a library was considered to be a very masculine flex. From older men to younger boys reading about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, lots of guys read and lots of guys wrote.
That seems to have changed. A lot.
I use Goodreads to track my reading so my profile has 9 years of almost 500 finished books and nearly 300 “to-read” books. That is to say that the Goodreads algorithm has LOTS of data on which to base recommendations for me and yet….it sends me emails like this one of book giveaways it thinks I would like….
Despite having extensive records of hundreds of books I have read, am reading and want to read, I get recommended a list of “Book giveaways picked just for you” that consists of 8 books, 7 written by and for women, and one written by a guy named Chad Harbach titled “The Brightness” and it drips with estrogen based on the description….
Yep, that sounds like a book a guy with my reading habits would be excited for!
This is a trend that has been quietly building for years. I was reminded of it by a recent Faceberg post…
The post in question is a couple of years old but the key statistic here is that around 70% of “publishing professionals” are women, meaning they decide what books get published. I would guess that of the 30% that are men, a significant chunk are faggots and/or non-Whites with a grudge against White people.
Shockingly this has made it difficult for men to get published, although not impossible. From the New York Times article she referenced, The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone….
Male underrepresentation is an uncomfortable topic in a literary world otherwise highly attuned to such imbalances. In 2022 the novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote on Twitter that “a friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good.” The public response to Ms. Oates’s comment was swift and cutting — not entirely without reason, as the book world does remain overwhelmingly white. But the lack of concern about the fate of male writers was striking.
Like so much of modern “progressivism” it is hopelessly schizophrenic, with the author David J. Morris saying a few paragraphs later…
To be clear, I welcome the end of male dominance in literature. Men ruled the roost for far too long, too often at the expense of great women writers who ought to have been read instead. I also don’t think that men deserve to be better represented in literary fiction; they don’t suffer from the same kind of prejudice that women have long endured. Furthermore, young men should be reading Sally Rooney and Elena Ferrante.
Men don’t write or read and that is a problem! Also I think it is great! No wonder these people are all so hopelessly fucked up, their entire personality is built on endlessly shifting cognitive dissonance.
I have never heard of either Sally Rooney or Elena Ferrante but according to her wikipedia page Sally Rooney “has called herself both a feminist and a Marxist, and much of her work addresses related topics” and Ferrante is a pseudonym for an anonymous writer that may or may not even be a woman and the books I saw written by “her” are all targeted at women. Well that is exactly what young men are going to want to read, some feminist screeds by a Marxist and stories about women written by an anonymous woman/man.
Because the author is a crackpot, definitely liberal and I would suspect homosexual, he mentions Trump, Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan but clearly has no idea why young men are drawn to them and Nick Fuentes and to a lesser extent Tucker Carlson, despite the huge differences between all of those guys. You can figure this out just from this line…
This is why, for example, I make sure that my male students read “The Handmaid’s Tale.” It’s not just their edification that matters; women also benefit from the existence of better men.
Egad. Not only is the entire premise and plot of The Handmaid’s Tale preposterous and silly, the book itself is poorly written and frankly boring. I can read books by liberals who insert their politics into the story (and that is basically every liberal author) and still enjoy the book, but The Handmaid’s Tale is just awful literature. This seems like a good time to repost one of my favorite memes:
Fat chicks still show up to “protest” just about anything wearing those stupid outfits. Anyway…Making young men read The Handmaid’s Tale doesn’t make them “better men” and it certainly doesn’t encourage them to read and to write. If anything it would have the opposite effect.
If you make young men eat bowls of vanilla ice cream mixed with a scoop of dog shit, it will not encourage them to eat ice cream later in life.
In a shocking revelation to some, (most) men like certain kinds of books and (most) women like very different kinds of books. As it just so happens, (most) men like books about swords and war and high adventure and masculine themes and rescuing damsels in distress, and no surprise a lot of men like to see the hero boning the rescued damsel. I find most sex scenes in fantasy and sci-fi to be juvenile and silly but to each his own. There is some crossover of course but this is mostly true and if you let people just be people it is how most of it will shake out.
It is true to an extent that books written by and for men have a cast that is male dominated. As an example, Frank Herbert’s Dune is centered on Paul Atreides. Sure his mom the Lady Jessica and his wife Chani are supporting characters but so are men like his father, Stilgar, Duncan Idaho, Gurney Halleck and others. The women in his life and in some cases the morally ambigious women like the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam serve a purpose in the books but the main character is always Paul. In other books like the Lord of the Rings there are very few female characters at all and their contribution is limited, especially compared to the movie adaptations.
I can see some of the criticism from women about the lack of female characters in older books but today? It isn’t even enough to have female characters. Any females in the book must be written in hushed, reverential tones. They must be the proverbial Mary Sue, with no flaws and infinite ability.
For centuries men have written books aimed at other men as their audience. Now that is officially Not OK. Even classics of literature are not immune to having Modern Women screeching in Goodreads reviews about their “problematic” treatment of women or race or homos. Books written by men, for men, that are not mostly fags scolding normal men for being normal men, are forbidden. Books written by women for women, even or especially ones that serve entirely as a vehicle to screech at men are acceptable and encouraged.
There are lots of (imo trashy) books written by women and for women. I don’t read those but I also don’t wish the authors ill. I certainly don’t read, or pretend to read, these books and then bitch about how they portray men in a review. If I were to read a book written by a black lesbian feminist Marxist, I would expect it to sound like a book written by a black lesbian feminist Marxist and recognize it was not written for me and would likely portray men in a negative light.
It is a tough question. Fictional books like science fiction and fantasy provide an imaginative escape for men who live in a less adventurous age. These novels gave rise to role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. In turn these table top and role-playing games have been largely supplanted by video games, where we see the same complaints about “representation” and “toxic masculinity” in video games that have traditionally been male dominated. Many of these games have world building that novelists should envy.
I don’t know that the “literary male” is ever going to come back. In a world full of electronic distractions it is difficult to sit down and read, I know I find my attention span isn’t what it used to be as there is always the siren’s call from my computer or phone. There are still guys writing books for guys but not like they used to. On the bright side we have hundreds of years of literature already written and accessible while you are sitting on the toilet. I find myself mostly reading older books, and re-reading old favorites. I can read Dune or The Godfather over and over and enjoy it more than most modern crap. Not to mention the thousands of non-fiction books written over the last century that are worth reading.
One thing is certain, making young men read The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t going to reverse the decline in the “literary male”.
Boy thats a long poast, but a goodun for sure! I too have been a voracious reader all my life.
I Find myself lately going back into my library and re-reading books now. Nothing captures my imagination as of late. I’m one of those guys that put himself into the books character wise. In the story so to speak.
Just one of a plethora of reasons to get rid of the 19th….
Modern books are just not the same, and that isn’t just the nostalgia talking
I too am a voracious reader. (and i really miss newspapers and the death of magazines has been a serious blow)
Paper BTW, none of this electronic nonsense
I have tried to give neighborhood boys good books (as a gift, brand new) through their parents because as you say most new books are TRASH and if you aren’t interested you aren’t gonna read it. And if this kids don’t start reading by Jr High then it’s not going to happen and they will always struggle to read and thus learn. (almost like it’s designed to do this). I’ve been trying to do first books in a series as that might get them interested and give them 10 or 20 books to read before having to branch out.
I’ve given a couple the first book in the Horatio Hornblower. series (which i love BTW despite finding it late in life) and the feedback is it’s a little over their heads. (which also proves my point that government school is pathetic. IT was written for 12 to 14 year old boys. In the 1930’s and 40’s, shows you how far we’ve regressed.
I’ve given away the first book in the Sharpe series, which is again historical fiction but it was written in the 1990’s (and it has a TV series that’s relatively true to the books so they could double up) but so far no feedback.
this is for boys graduating 5th grade which is really too early but freaking stupid middle school makes them move up one year early and if they don’t do it over summer break they will NEVER do it once in middle school. (almost like government school is designed to make you dumb)
I’d be interested to hear other’s thoughts or suggestions.
If you can read, quickly and effectively you can learn and do anything. If not, you’re dependent on others. And podcasts and videos are a slow, stupid way to get most information across. I can read much faster than they can talk (and they don’t edit it).
LoneC,
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re : podcasts and YouTube videos
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I can read probably three hundred times faster than human speech.
I automatically open the transcript, rarely referring to the parent source.
THIS!
People often refer me to videos and podcasts and I ask them for printed word. The internet moved away from printed text because you can’t monetize it as effectively, which is very frustrating.
Here’s one to hook them, “Death in The Long Grass” by Peter Capstick. The memoirs of a White hunter in Africa and South America. It’s all high adventure with testosterone and large caliber weapons.
I own that and a few like it, great stuff
i know that book. good idea. thanks
All of Peter’s books are highly recommended, as are Jeff Cooper’s.
I just don’t have the time for a 2 hour podcast. Reading comprehension now is abysmal, books I read as an elementary school kid would be out of range for even most high school seniors.
100%
if they can even stay interested that long.
I”m sure you’ve seen the posts on substack and such from college prof’s telling how NO ONE reads anymore
I’m gonna miss running water.
All the genre titles these days are Romantasy books with a strong girlboss protagonist who is the Mary Sue of all Mary Sues. Leigh Bardugo, KF Kwang Sarah J Maas etc. Most seem to have a bit of bodice ripper style soft core in them.
I’ll stick to Asimov and Heinlein or reread the Lensmen.
Not to mention the ubiquitous guy with six pack abs on the cover
I have also been a reader most of my life – every genre except horror. These days I want something entertaining, to keep my thoughts from the dumpster fire that is klown world. But everything I read – and I go out of my way to find something that fits my parameters – is infected. I start a TEOTWAWKI book and have to put it down because it’s all about women and their worries, and they are all weak and emotional characters. I try a LitRPG book and it’s set in a mythical village somewhere that’s roughly based on imaginary midieval England . . . but find characters named Juan and Pradeep. I try to search Amazon for books written by men – no such parameters available. I occasionally find something that starts out okay but then goes off the rails. I’m running out of casual reading, and don’t want to get into political philosophy or anything ‘deep’ – I know what I believe and value at this age, after many years of travel and experiences, and reading what’s happening in klown world is all I can handle. I don’t need the stress of reality, and there is no area left – no interest, habit, hobby, or reading genre – that the left has not infested and ruined.
May I suggest to you “Tales of New America” by Gunther Roosevelt.
I have a ton of books in the queue to read that are all more than two decades old so I am not in danger of running out
@3G4me – Search Amazon for Raconteur Press books. The owner is former military and has made a point of publishing mens and young boys books. It doesn’t come up unless you search for it specifically, and I have enjoyed the books (not all) I’ve purchased by them.
Best thing my mom ever did for me was to teach me that it wasn’t just cool to read, it was cool to WANT to read. At 58 years old, that ethos has served me well my entire life.
My mom wasn’t much of a cook or a housekeeper but she taught me to love to read at an early age and I am eternally grateful for that
For a believable, mentally and physically tough female, paired up (not ‘that’ way) with an equally mentally and physically tough male, the Modesty Blaise + Willie Garvin combo cannot be beat.
I first read the first novel (their capers were previously in comic strip format but not published in my country) when I was eleven or twelve or so.
I have read and re-read them all over the years. Modesty Blaise is as far from a Mary Sue as it is possible to get.
If a smart director made a good movie from these books it would succeed with us.
I find that most books by women lack the depth that solid literature requires. Sure, the Brontes wrote well but it was all about the frilly, estrogen-laced pastimes of finding the best marriage possible among the field of available men.
“Oh, I do SO HOPE that Mr. Darcy shall accept my invitation to dine anon.” [Blecccch].
Margaret George’s “The Autobiography of King Henry VIII” is a commendable, deep and long exception.
I can’t think of another female author on the planet who could craft any of the works of a Gary Jennings, for example.
Jenning’s “The Journeyer,” or “Aztec” or “Raptor” are three of the most entertaining and masterfully crafted works that I have ever experienced. “The Journeyer” I have read FOUR TIMES, and I get something new out of it every time.
Want to know who “Thorn the Mannamavi” is? “Raptor” will take you there, with a character who foreshadowed the Trans Movement by several centuries! [I will go so far as to say that a person unfamiliar with Gary Jennings’ books has missed many hours of rollicking, pure reading delight]!
As well, there is not one book by a black author–male or female–that I would bother to read.
I have no time for blather, you see.
TakeA,
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I look for the author portrait.
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I open a book to the rear overleaf.
If the author is a brownie, I presume I would need vocabulary lessons to understand dialogue and settings.
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That violates the First Lesson Of Literature:
* Readers enjoy simple.
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A couple points:
.. Avoid clichy insider abbreviations.
Writing about living on a ship, I got called on ‘PFD’ and ‘transponder’ instead of methodically explaining the equipment and their purpose.
My intention was maintaining cadence –flow and rhythm — but apparently, that particular reviewer was a landlubber and preferred getting mired in irrelevant details.
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.. Eliminate vain attempts at dialogue using colloquial sillyisms : “Rastmus beez gone done totin’ dat bales all de lifflong days.”
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I can already tell you I have zero interest in neither Rastmus nor his livelong days.
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And if Rastmus falls off the paddlewheel steamer into The Great Muddy and his money-grubbing mother travels around displaying his rancid corpse for weeks in the summer sun, I could possibly place myself as one of the characters.
Vastly amused, upwind, and a significant hike away, but still…
You might not be able to judge a book by it’s cover but you often can judge a book based on the picture of the author.
I have no quibbles with women authors, I just don’t want to read their books. What irritates me are women that complain because male authors write books that don’t appeal to women.
I cried as a lil’ shaver not knowing how to read so I paid attention when they taught ABCs.
LOL over Cambridge mooncricket claiming non verbal until 11 and no reading or writing until 18.
Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them as Orwell said.
Bible was the first book, one of those Catholic family versions that you could use for weightlifting and chock full of Caravaggio!
That story is so bizarre it would be impossible to believe in a different time, I ought to write something about it.
Art, have you read The Dog Stars? It came out about 10 hrs ago. It’s apocalyptic and was fantastic. It is coming out as a movie in about 3 weeks. I recommend the book first, but the movie looks good.
I haven’t heard of it but I just downloaded it and will check it out
Yrs
Another voracious reader from a young age. When I was between age 5-12 the bookmobile (anyone else know what those were?) neighborhood stop was in our driveway. Kept us reading all summer. During the school year I always had multiple books checked out of the library.
Agree with everyone above about the scarcity of well written books by men anymore. Seems like too many of today’s male fiction authors find it necessary to fully integrate their personal politics and beliefs into their books.
We used to have a book fair at our elementary school library, my mom would send me with a literal blank check. She never questioned money spent on books.
For pure fun… and weirdness: Carl Hiassen
For a series: the “Prey” series by John Sandford
All caught up on the Prey series, including the Virgil Flowers off shoots. The Lettie books are ridiculous and I refuse to read more. I’ll check out the Hiassen guy.
AS, anything by Nelson DeMille is likely worth your time.
When Lucas started to soften I began to lose interest in the series. I never finished the series and only read couple of the Flowers offshoots.
Another I failed to mention are the Dave Robicheaux novels by James Lee Burke.
For something written recently, it is hard to beat the novels by Matt Bracken, especially “The Red Cliffs of Zerhoun”. A lot of old books, available as e-books in various formats, are free at Project Gutenberg.
My older sisters, bless ’em, taught me to read at a very early age and reading has always been my main pastime. I’ve had both the walk-in closets in the two guest bedrooms in my house converted to library shelves to hold my books (in addition to the overflowing shelves in my office), and still you can find stacks of books scattered throughout the house. (Screw any guests; if lack of closet space means they leave sooner, so much the better.) With the thousands of books I own, maybe 5% were written since 1990, and those are just the ones that hold the latest research about topics on which I write. The rest–largely fiction, sci-fi, or classic literature–were mostly written before I was born, because hell yeah books and authors have changed.
I think I have always read… books, the cereal box at breakfast, TIME, Life, Look, the morning paper, the evening paper, Britannica, World Book… ye gods I’m old. As a teen, used to ride my bike to the grocery store and get another of the Conan series. Lately, I’ve found William Kent Kruger to tell a great story, most set it the wilds of the north – Upper Peninsula. I have learned over the years that folks who don’t read have missed something special. I’m glad I haven’t, and I have mom and dad to thank for my love of books.
Man has two primary means of learning about the world around him: Direct lived experience or learning from the experience of others. Option two often involves reading. Since no man, no matter how active and inquisitive, can experience everything in one lifetime, that leaves reading and study as the means of learning those about things you cannot experience.
Reading about fixing cars probably won’t make an auto mechanic out of you, but you can learn a great deal about how mechanical devices function in such a manner.
I was an introverted and curious kid, in part because I was somewhat small for my age in grade school. I learned about reading and thereby entered a fascinating new world of exploration, adventure and knowledge. I began reading voraciously in 4th grade or so and never quit. I am now in my late middle age. I get asked fairly often how I know so many things. I always tell people, “Because I read a lot,” which happens to be the truth.
Of course, the internet and smart phones compete for the attention of the young these days, but images on a TV, movie or computer screen do not engage the mind in the same manner as reading a book. Or at least that is what a lot of neurological studies seem to show.
Reading is also immensely enjoyable as a means of traveling in one’s mind, to far-away places, or places found only in the imagination of science-fiction and adventure writers.
Romance novels should be banned. And I was stuck thinking that I had outgrown fiction, since so many books showing up in the 2010s didn’t spark any excitement. But, no, I went back and re-read some classics and the entire field had just gone to hell.
I got an early push towards reading due to something that could otherwise be viewed as a misfortune. At the age of six, I was diagnosed with Perthes/Legg/Meunière, a malfunction in joints of bones, in my case in the head of my left femur. The affected area of bone gradually decalcifies, but after the passage of several years, it recalcifies. One must avoid putting pressure on the joint when it is in a decalcified state, or when it heals it will be in a distorted shape. I only got the all clear at the middle of fourth grade, after being restricted to being no higher than lying at elbow height, front or back, for that time period.
So, I got going with reading, a lot of reading, ‘cause that was pretty much all I could do. Books, encyclopedias, and I developed a fondness for the writings and poetry of Edgar Allen Poe. I have a scrapbook from about my seventh year in which I hand printed the poem, “The Raven”, which I enhanced by a crayon drawing of the protagonist, overlooked by the raven “perched upon a pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door”.
I remained a voracious reader ever afterward, particularly of (now classic) science fiction, a genre unfortunately increasingly in the grip of spiteful mutants. As with others reporting in this thread, my mom facilitated my bibliophilic propensities through regular raids on the local library’s holdings, along with book club memberships (remember those?).
My healing from my bone disorder was complete, btw. I later became an avid backpacker and mountain scaler in the Adirondacks, Catskills, Whites, Greens, and a few select peaks in Maine. There are 111 peaks over 4000’ in the NE US, and I climbed 101 of them before entrepreneurship took me out of that game. Great memories of backpacking and climbing with my dad who became interested, too. That alone would have made it totally worth while.
I sure miss my mom and my dad, both enormously influential toward my development as a person.
A novel that will bend your mind: “The Man Who Saw Seconds” by Alexander Boldizar.
Imagine being able to see five seconds into the immediate future.
Very enjoyable read.