More on boy books

[electricland]

I take it back. The gender divide in reading continues into adulthood. Well, according to one limited sample, anyway. I dunno. Is this broadly applicable? What's the last book you read? And are you male or female?

Here is an annoyingly breezy Telegraph article that attempts to Explain It All.

Playboy once published an Ursula K. Le Guin short story under the name "U.K. Le Guin" -- something about their readers being intimidated or nervous or bored by female writers. I mocked when I learned this, but it sounds like they were onto something.

Comments

[bryghtboy.livejournal.com]

The last novel I read was part of a pretty good (but schlocky) sci-fi series called The Searchers and it was the second in the series, it was by a guy named Chet Williamson. The last book I can clearly recall reading by a woman was "A Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" by Melissa Bank and I read that ... I guess about two months ago now.

Now I'm not a voracious reader of novels so my sample size is somewhat small, I did however complete an english degree so I should have something to say about now. The most violent reaction I can have here is about the two novels by women that damn near killed me trying to finish reading them for school. The two novels being To The Lighthouse by Virgina Woolf and Adam Bede by Geogre Eliot. Both of which struck me as having not a blessed thing happening that I gave two figs about. I guess all of that to say, if my only exposure to novels was through school I don't think I would ever try to read another novel by a woman ever again. Not ever, not never ever ever. Fortunately I'm surrounded by folks who are not only literate and literary but pushy about the shit that they read. :)

Which brings me to my last point, readership of novels especially is not (at least in my experience) dictated by critics or prize winners. It is dictated by what your best friend read and is just dying for someone else to read or what happens to be sitting on a shelf at the cottage you are staying at or by any number of things that have nothing to do with the cultured elite.