An 800 lb. Gorilla in the Room: Men and Reading

Interesting Huffington Post article from last week called Why Men Don't Read:  How Publishing is Alienating Half the Population.  After reading it, I couldn't help but to find myself somewhat in agreement with the major points stated.  While I could and would quibble about other contributing causes that do affect how males in general tend to approach reading (and particularly, the reading of fiction), there is quite a bit of truth in that piece.

More and more, reading has been pitched lately as a social experience, contrary to previous centuries' emphasis on a solitary approach.  There are book clubs, whether they be at someone's house, in a library, on TV shows like Oprah's, or online.  Then there are sites like Goodreads and Shelfari that seem to be oriented to the notion of pitching one's book collection in a nice, graphic-intensive format.  These are all fine and dandy, but...are most of these developed with men in mind?

For the book clubs, almost certainly its popularity is not due to males embracing the trend (although there certainly are quite a few men who are willing and do participate in these sorts of social discussions).  As a way of encouraging "average" readers, particularly females, to participate, book clubs have been a rousing success.  Companies provide their own "starter questions" at the back of several books that tend to be chosen for these discussions and on the whole, most everyone is well pleased with the results.  But do these appeal to the "average" male reader?

Since it is difficult at best to define what constitutes the "average" male reader, the only data that I could even think of analyzing would be the books purchased for these book clubs and who they are marketed towards.  As the Huffington piece notes, due to market perceptions that males don't read (especially fiction, if one takes the NPR piece linked there at near-face value), there really isn't much pitched to males.  There are very few Louis L'Amour types out there today.  Maybe Cormac McCarthy could be marketed as such, but pay closer attention to how even McCarthy has been pitched in recent years and questions may arise about how he's been marketed as well.

Speculative fiction, along with comics/graphic novels and some historical fiction, may be one of the few genres of fiction remaining today where there is a near-representative ratio of female and male readers.  Yet look at what gets discussed as an aggregate.  The majority of the blogs on my blogroll are edited by male readers.  It is a bias of which I am acutely conscious, but part of that reason is that despite the hundreds of wonderful female authors that I have read and reviewed in recent years, I find myself not being drawn to several of the discussions and books reviewed by some female bloggers on their sites.  I am not saying that those books or those bloggers are inferior, but rather that the books being discussed, particularly the "new" urban fantasies (define that as you may) with the paranormal romance elements, are not intended for readers such as myself.  Just as I would not expect (hope, perhaps, but not expect) for the majority of female readers to enjoy tales where males struggle to find themselves in a strange world, it is difficult, it seems, for the majority of male readers to understand the appeal of female coming-of-age stories and romances.

It's perhaps a lamentable trend in literature, these divisions into "male" and "female" spheres.  But as more and more of the book buyers are women and more and more of the marketed is oriented toward females, where does that leave the male reader?  Should males have to adapt in some fashion to the changing socio-cultural climes?  Perhaps.  Should there be more "outreach" done to keep males interested in what's being published? As around 48% or so of the global population, one would hope that might be the case.  Is this trend part of a more global trend when it comes to educational rates and feelings of happiness and security?  A plethora of polls over the past decade would seem to support this assumption.

But it'll never be easy to change all this.  That 800 lb. gorilla is still in the room, breathing down our necks.  What should we do about it?