Guys and Books

It is one of the great and tragic mysteries of the reading world that the male half of our species reads nowhere near the same amount as its female counterpart. This is a phenomenon that begins relatively young, and carries into old age. It has not always been this way, so you have to ask: what happened? Honestly, I don’t know, but does it ever bother me.

It’s not like there aren’t books to suit every taste imaginable. It’s not like there is anything inherent in the delightful process of reading that would drive men away. I know many men who read a lot, and who could be easily classified as bibliophiles to boot. For every one of them, however, there are certainly five or six women with the same designation, and even more guys who don’t read at all.

Public librarians across the U.S. and Canada are troubled by this. Downright perplexed, in fact. There are seminars and workshops given by experts on how to get boys to read, how to draw them into the library. The rising popularity of graphic novels in libraries can practically be attributed to this effort, and they work on some level. Still, it’s not enough.

I’ve asked my husband, now a bibliomaniac like me, why he read less in his teens and twenties. He had a few one-word answers: TV, videogames, computer, movies, and going out. If he were the type, one could add sports to the mix as well. Is this unique? No. I’d say his list covers most obstacles to male reading in that age group. He got into reading again by taking out books on those very subjects, and from there branched out. That’s a good place to begin. In terms of fiction, here’s another.

The phenomenon of ‘Chick Lit’ swept across the literary world in the late nineties and just gets more popular as time goes on. There is a male equivalent, called ‘Lad Lit’, or ‘Dick Lit’, for the twenty and thirty-something crowd. It hasn’t been as big, to be sure, but it’s still out there, no matter how low key. Leading the pack is Nick Hornby, but do check out Jonathan Coe, Irvine Welsh (of Trainspotting fame) and Roddy Doyle.

On this side of the pond, the McSweeney’s crowd is the way to go. What began as a literary journal has grown to much, much more than that. Involved, among others, are David Eggers, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, and Paul Collins. The last of these is my favourite of the bunch.

I just finished his most recent book called The Trouble with Tom : The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine, about – literally - the resurrection and reburial of Mr. Paine’s body several times, in America and Britain. Collins loves digging into strange and neglected historical phenomena, and this is another manifestation of that. I suppose it’s false putting him with fiction, since he pretty much writes non-fiction, but he’s still with the gang, and a great writer.

I’m in the painful process of putting a bibliography together on ‘guy reads’ for the library. It’s only difficult because there is very little out there in terms of resources. I have my helpers, though, and please feel free to become one of them.

Comments

[Chris Miller]

Guys like to read history, don't we ?
i.e. -- books not so much about how people feel -- but about what people have done -- how things have shaken out.

Being a bit self-centered -- I've never been very interested in how anyone is feeling other than myself --- except for people who lived in other eras -- other cultures. So I don't read contemporary fiction -- but I've become a bit fanatical about historical Chinese novels lately -- like "Dream of Red Chamber" and "Three Kingdoms" and, more recently, the Japanese novelist, Mishima.

Thankyou for being a librarian -- it's a profession that has served me far better and more often than doctors and lawyers.