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 ...
I remember the first two books I read that were written by women. “Mythology” by Edith Hamilton in 7th grade and “The Yearling” by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in 8th grade. Then we read “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson in 11th grade. I read the entire “Little House on the Prairie” series to my kids when they were young.
There were probably others, but nothing comes to mind.
I’ve read plenty of Ayn Rand, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Ann Coulter. I won’t read anything from a soy boy.
About all I read for fun anymore is sci-fi by old or dead men and I doubt that’ll change anytime soon. If I read any sort of woke crap I’ll toss the book in the little free library box at the park if the issue has something to do with global warming or climate change, it goes in the box.
Harper Lee wasn’t too bad at spinning a tale.
It is like watching an old movie and seeing the script writer was A WOMAN! You know it won’t be all that great.
Hint: they are still good movies.
The last romance novel I read was a Hustler magazine.
Went and saw the original POPEYE movie. When I saw the script writer was Jules Feiffer I knew it would not be any good.
It wasn’t.
DULL!
The story said what I was going to.. I don’t do romance novels.
I liked Shirley Jackson’s stuff back in the day.
Ayn Rand had good material but damn she was looooooong winded.
Read a lot of books by Agatha Christie and Sue Grafton.
Just have to write about something interesting.
I care about the subject matter, the quality of the prose, and if it’s an applicable issue, whether or not I’m comfortable with the political ideology.
I like the Harry Potter novels and Ayn Rand’s work product regardless of their biological sex—not in spite of nor because of it. The same applies to books or articles by any other authors: The biological sex is completely irrelevant. I’ve NEVER decided to read or not read anything because the author was male of female.
Well, yes, To Kill A Mockingbird.
You know why I read Larry Corria and Nick Cole?
Because I want to. I enjoy them.
You know why I don’t read a lot of womyns lit?
I don’t like it.
So rather than try to shame your customer, know your customer.
Leigh Brackett?
Nick Cole is a dam’ fine writer. The “Wasteland Trilogy” is excellent.
“If it’s a good book I don’t care if the author is a man or a woman.” Exactly. I just read the bestseller about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during the closing days of WWII. It was outstanding, and written by not one but two women of the female persuasion. I’m currently reading a memoir by a woman who returned to her family’s dilapidated orchard during the Depression to try to make a go of it. It’s also excellent. Male readers simply prefer history and biography and tales of honor, heroism and military conflict, while female authors tend to write . . . female stuff, emotional, preachy, overwrought nonsense.
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