Posted on 08/07/2021 5:01:35 PM PDT by Rummyfan
A writer for The Guardian, M. A. Sieghart, has asked the perennial question, “Why do so few men read books by women?” Curiously, the people who always ask this question never follow up by asking how women authors might better appeal to men or how the publishing industry might get a better share of the underserved male-readership market. No, the assumption is always that men have something wrong with them and need to change. It’s not the books that are the problem, it’s you. The customer is in the wrong.
Sieghart notes that the top-selling lady novelists have a disproportionately female readership, but though she treats this as a mystery with sinister implications, it’s not actually hard to understand what’s going on when she names who those top-selling authoresses are: Jane Austen, Margaret Atwood, Danielle Steel, and Jojo Moyes.
She proposes the answer that men don’t take women seriously. The actual answer, obvious to anyone outside Sieghart’s elitist cultural bubble, is that men aren’t interested in what those women write. Danielle Steel writes trashy romances. Jojo Moyes writes trashy romances. Jane Austen wrote non-trashy romances. Atwood writes a variety of things but is best known for a pearl-clutching feminist screed that confuses Baptists with the Taliban, though she also churns out an occasional apocalyptic science-fiction novel disturbingly obsessed with child pornography.
To put it briefly and bluntly, men don’t want to read that shit.
(Excerpt) Read more at deusexmagicalgirl.com ...
Slap Shot.
Well, yes, Shirley Jackson and “The Lottery”.
If it’s an author that’s unfamiliar to me, I play the %s. I seem to enjoy a much higher % of male authors than females. Reading time is precious and I absolutely hate to quit a book even though I would probably rather read something else. No doubt I miss many good female authors because of that. Andre Norton and James Tiptree Jr. were both women who wrote under male names because of this attitude.
Freegards
I have found that books by men often have too much violence and not enough character development, so I usually avoid them.
Women read about romances that lead to sex.
Men read about sex and macho stuff and skip the romance.
Because we like books about machinery and there are very few books by woman that are about machinery?
I agree. I think this article is more about why men don’t like “chick flicks” or “romance novels” or “romantic comedies” , stories aimed at a women’s audience. It’s not really about men not liking something written by a woman.
Books written by women tend to be about feelings and pretentiousness. That is of no interest to most men.
They all sound like a grammar school teacher, slowly pronouncing and enunciating the words.
Men seem to be more direct voices and .. purposeful.
If paperback writers think they could make more money if they were another gender, they can easily change it.
or even easier they are free to use a pen name.
I was brain-deep into the first novel, "Silver Pigs", before I was even aware that the author was female.
The assertion is probably false. Just off the top of my head, I’d say half the books I read are by women, and some of my favorite writers are women. Highsmith, for example, and her Tom Ripley saga (the Ripliad), Strangers on a Train, etc. Karen Hancock and her Christian fiction, which I repeatedly read, in particular her Guardian King series. I’ve probably read that series 20 or 25 times, as it is very edifying to the soul.
Just because some stupid leftist feminist claims men don’t read women doesn’t mean it is true.
The popular fiction that's cranked out on a regular basis tends to be corny. Much of it is written by women.
I liked Out Where the Crawdads Sing.
But of those top four Jane Austen is the only one I have ever read a complete book by.
Quite simply they are not very interesting story tellers.
Popular does not mean good, male or female. James Patterson falls into that category IMHO. His stuff is just flat.
King bores me silly.
Grisham wrote one half way decent book and the rest were snoozers.
Do not get me started on Woods.
I’ll second Shirley Jackson.
“Unbroken”, about WWII hero Zamperini, was written by Hillenbrand, a female.
Yes, Agatha Christie! Another favorite of mine.
I read all the Greg Hurwitz Orphan X series. I like to have fun reading anymore.
I like a lot of older and classic literature by women. Can’t think of a contemporary female writer that I like. That could be due to publishing industry bias. Any woman that isn’t a properly woke, radical leftist that fills her books with leftist politics isn’t going to make it very far. That often goes for the men, too, but the left considers it particularly bad when a woman, black, gay, etc. has a conservative worldview.
I’ve read Twain, John Irving(’A Prayer for Owen Meaney’ might be the best book I’ve ever read), Ayn Rand, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hunter Thompson and yes, Steven King.
A significant other tried to get me to read VC Andrews, and I hated the style, it ruined the story.
No, I can’t warm up to female writers.
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