Men Don’t Read
Try googling ‘Men’s Book Blog”. I did.
On a whim I thought I’d have a look and see what kind of topics male readers were discussing. What were other men reading? Who had discovered a hidden gem that had passed me by? Was anyone writing insightful pieces about the world’s best authors?
The first search result wasn’t for a book blog. Rather it was a website for men that had a post about books. Books like ‘The Power of Vulnerability’ and ‘Male vs. Female Depression’. Just a simple picture of the cover and a link to Amazon. By the time I got to ‘Fathers, Fatherhood and Mental Illness’ I’d seen enough.
The second result was thankfully a blog. It just hadn’t been updated since 2013. After that was an article about mens blogs in general and a piece from Salon I couldn’t be bothered to read.
So instead I tried the search ‘Book Blog for Men’. The first search result didn’t even load when I clicked on it. The second was just a wall of book covers that hurt my eyes. Then came an interesting article from Huff Post. Ironically the article was only loosely related to my search, but still, it provided an answer of sorts. The title was ‘Why Men Don’t Read’.
I’ll save you the read. In summary, a male editor pitched a very famous mans autobiography to an editorial board full of women. They’d not heard of the man, had no interest in his story and assumed nobody else would either. In a move that sounded like a Sitcom scene, one of the editors rang her teenage nephew who said the book sounded great. On the strength of this kids opinion she gave the go ahead and the book eventually became a New York Times bestseller.
The lesson?
The publishing industry is dominated by women and they work on the assumption that ‘men don’t read’. To further emphasise his point the author highlights the Nook and Kindle adverts that are clearly marketing the e-readers at a female only audience.
Like the author, I found this jarring. As a teenager I was reading. So were my friends. During my degree years I volunteered in a local community book shop. In my late 20’s I was actively collecting books and in my thirties I ran my own bookshop and listed my vocation as ‘bookseller’.
What was the theme that I noticed through those years?
I learned that the second hand book trade, both booksellers and their customers, were overwhelmingly male. Of course there’s a little generalisation, but essentially the book trade involves male dealers selling books by male authors to other men.
How does that work when men don’t read?
Maybe the answer is that they do read. Just not the books that the publishing industry currently markets.
And here we come full circle. There’s not much in the way of men’s book blogs because there’s not a great deal being published that interests men. Aside from a few authors like James Lee Burke and John Connolly there’s not many current writers that I read. When I talk to friends about books, which is surprisingly often, they’re the same. They read – my brother read nearly 200 books in the last year – but not the latest bestsellers. Neither are they waiting for the Booker Prize shortlist.
I’m looking over at my bookshelves now. There’s HP Lovecraft and Arthur Machen. Modern authors ranging from Clive Barker to Bernard Cornwell. Polar exploration next to poetry and Cormac McCarthy shelved alongside Orwell and Hemingway.
All I wanted was a blog that highlighted these kinds of books. The books that I know men read. In the end it just seemed easier to create the blog I wanted rather than hope one might turn up on page 14 of a google search.
