It is estimated that men account for only 20% of the fiction-reading market. In other words, women almost completely dominate the fiction-reading market. They buy and read the most books by a large majority. If it were a presidential election, it would be called a landslide.
In the article linked above, the British author Ian McEwan conducted an experiment where he opted to give away free books to lunchtime crowds in a London park. He gave away thirty books, the vast majority of which were claimed by women. The men reacted to his offer negatively, often frowning, “in suspicion, or distaste.”
Look at this list of Barnes and Noble 2014 Best Sellers. On the first page, 16 of the 20 top books, judging simply by cover design, appear to be targeting a female audience. The books that are clearly targeting males? Game of Thrones and the new Stephen King book; both of which have such a popularity as to attract both male and female attention equally. Setting those two aside, men are given a book about the New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera and a Rush Limbaugh book about Paul Revere. That is, two non-fiction books.
Dare to venture to page two of the list and you will find a third non-fiction book geared toward men called Capital. I haven’t read it, but the description makes it sounds like a work of Marxist apologia. These are a man’s choices: he can read a history book written by a conservative radio entertainer, a treatise on neo-Marxist philosophy, or a book about a baseball pitcher. Or, he can check out some old classics of fiction that were “red pill” before “red pill” needed to exist.
The last time I saw fiction discussed on ROK, one of the highest-rated comments was disparaging toward the prospect of men reading fiction. The comment claimed, essentially, that it is not worth a man’s time to read fake stories while he is being lied to daily by the media. The funny thing about fiction, though, is that it is often more reflective of reality and more revealing than the modernist re-workings of so-called non-fiction that men seem to find more valuable.
Here are three books I’ve read within the last year that could not be published today—or at least not without considerable backlash and cries of misogyny and so forth:
1. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway is a story about an American expat living and writing in Paris. He spends his days roving through its restaurants and cafes, meeting up with his circle of male friends, and entertaining a flaky but attractive divorcée named Brett Ashley who inevitably becomes the center of male attention. To varying degrees of desperation, the men try to seduce Brett Ashley. They take her on trips into the mountains. They flatter her with wine and trip over each other catering to her wishes. For a while we are convinced that these men are not jealous of each other’s aspirations with Brett Ashley because they hide it so well.
By the end of the novel, after friendships are destroyed and blood has been spilled over her, we come to grips with an immutable reality; a woman can sow seeds jealousy and anger among the men who have fallen into her orbit, and the man who finally wins Brett Ashley’s admiration was a man full of quiet ambition, who was focused on himself and his own aspirations, and who never paid much attention to the woman’s whims.
Dancing, I looked over Brett’s shoulder and saw Cohn, standing at the bar, still watching her.
“You’ve made a new one there,” I said to her.
“Don’t talk about it. Poor chap. I never knew it till just now.”
“Oh, well,” I said. “I suppose you like to add them up.”
“Don’t talk like a fool.”
“You do.”
2. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)
The Big Sleep is the 1939 debut mystery novel by Raymond Chandler, who would come to be hailed as the father of American noir fiction. The story follows Philip Marlowe, a private investigator who has been hired by an old and dying oil tycoon to keep an eye on his two wild and alluring daughters. Marlowe works long hours, gets little sleep, and runs afoul of some shady characters.
The mystery story is not perfectly contrived, but Philip Marlowe is; he is an ideal. His attitude, demeanor, sense of honor, and self-control allow him to manipulate just about every situation in which he finds himself. What would the average man do if he found the beautiful daughter of his client in his bed, naked, uninvited?
“I bet you can’t even guess how I got in.”
I dug a cigarette out and looked at her with bleak eyes. “I bet I can. You came through the keyhole, just like Peter Pan.”
“Who’s he?”
“Oh, a fellow I used to know around the poolroom.”
She giggled. “You’re cute, aren’t you?” she said.
…
I looked at her again. She lay still now, her face pale against the pillow, her eyes large and dark and empty as rain barrels in drought. One of her small five-fingered thumbless hands picked at the cover restlessly. There was a vague glimmer of doubt starting to get born in her somewhere. She didn’t know about it yet. It’s so hard for women – even nice women – to realize that their bodies are not irresistible.
3. Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski (1982)
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski tells the story of a boy coming of age in depression-era Los Angeles. The book was one of Bukowski’s later novels, but chronologically comes first in his “Henry Chinaski” series, and is followed by Factotum, Post Office, Women, and Hollywood. Chinaski, the main character and narrator, tells a story that couldn’t be told in hyper-sensitive company today. He talks about the girls he wanted to sleep with (all of them), the fist fights he won (a couple), the fights he lost (many more), the jobs he tried to hold, the friends he tried to lose, the aimlessness and the lack of purpose in his life.
He talks about race. He talks about the arrogance of literature. He sympathizes with Nazis because his teachers are all communists. All of it is performed in the simple and hilarious tone of a shiftless misanthrope:
My father liked the slogan, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
But it hadn’t done any of that for him. I decided that I might try to reverse the process.
I couldn’t sleep.
Maybe if I masturbated to Miss Meadows?
Too cheap.
I wallowed there in the dark, waiting for something.
With the general acquiescence of men in most spheres of influence, the fiction market has been conquered by women to such an extent that it, in the minds of men, is synonymous with “feminist-friendly-fantasy-story.” All the ass-kicking heroes are women (Katniss, Tris, Clary). They have men by their sides as accessories, but little more.All the empathy is reserved for female characters (Hazel, Hetty and Sarah). Men are there to either oppress them, or at best marginally assist them the way a booster chair helps a baby eat, but never to outshine or outstrip them in any way.
Men, if they wanted to read fiction today, would be relegated to the Science Fiction aisle, but even that is increasingly shoddy and subject to confused modernist thought. So we stick to simple books about retired baseball pitchers.
Who is to blame? We are. Not only did our male ancestors read more fiction, but they wrote more fiction, too. Take a look at Modern Library’s top 100 novels and tell me what you notice about the top 14 authors on that list.
Fiction has the power to illuminate truths in ways that even non-fiction cannot. We identify fiction as great when we recognize that it is in alignment with human nature. When characters in stories do not behave the way we would expect them to behave in real life, we (men) become suspicious. The book may still sell, and it may even entertain us in some superficial ways, but it won’t be a classic. It won’t make you nod along the way you do when someone else identifies something you thought was your own exclusive truth. It won’t leave you remembering it and looking forward to re-reading it.
It is time for men to start appreciating fiction. Once men can appreciate great fiction, they can again begin to produce it. It is up to us to remove the toilet paper that is stocked on most Barnes and Noble shelves and replace one more jewel in the broken and tarnished crown that is modern masculinity.
Read More: On The Importance Of Fiction Writing
Frankly I can hardly stand the current popular writings. They all have at least some PC-crap embedded – feminism, gender, gay-agenda, big government is beautiful etc. There was a huge cut-off somewhere in the 1990 where men were started to be seen only as fool, idiotic husbands or violent criminals. Bukowski likely would not reach the status he enjoyed back in the 70s when he became famous, since his books would be attacked violently or not even published or promoted sufficiently. Art obviously has to bow to the PC-dictatorship of today.
Truth. This is one of the reasons I try to read books written pre-1960 before all the PC nonsense/feminism crap.
Michael Moorcock. Feminist-free writing. There is a reason one of his heroes is nicknamed “Womanslayer”.
Thanks. I’ll have to check that out.
Well, his name IS More-cock!
I think you’re mistaken. He’s a social justice warrior
Not in his books. Elric Womanslayer.
I don’t know that there is an actual decline in men’s fiction writing. You are correct that this kind of stuff just wouldn’t be published by any major publishing company. All of the interesting stuff being published now(fiction or otherwise) is being self published, or published by independently funded sourced(Vdare etc.) The thing is, you have to wade through a lot of crap to find it. It’s the same with film. Modern movies are basically watered down PC garbage, remakes etc. Big publishers just aren’t into publishing poetry or fiction really, as it does’t sell as easily as stuff like celeb biographies. The big problem IMO is that publishers and film production companies no longer take risks. They only do things that are safe bets to make money(think of the number of movie remakes now vs 10 years ago,) and they don’t care anything about quality.
Absolutely correct. Great comment.
That’s spot on, as far as I can tell. Granted, you’ve always had commercialization force a more restrictive set of styles, but I think it’s gotten worse as you’ve had more and more consolidation in the publishing industry. Self publishing is a possibility, but it is hard to get exposure. When I was in college, I stumbled across this book: http://www.amazon.com/333-Miles-Craig-Birk/dp/0615323073/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1409280512&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=333+miles I think it could stand a bit of refinement, but it represents a lot of what this website is about. I think it’s a bit too blunt, not in content, but rather in style. But it’s much more real than a lot of what you see at the checkout lane. Here’s another good one, but a bit more low key: http://www.amazon.com/Loafing-La-Brea-Michael-Hughes-ebook/dp/B00IBT74JM
Good points. On a similar note, we saw the same type of thing happening with the beer industry (over the past few decades). The craft beers (smaller brewers) went away (or were bought out) only to have the large corporations (with watered down beer) take over the industry.
We’ve recently seen a reverse in that trend…better beer is back (thank god).
Hopefully, this movement will happen in other areas (i.e. writing, movies, etc…).
Obviously women hated him in real life. Aged 55 and hitting it off:
Funny, but reminds me of something more serious that people should watch out for:
There’s some kind of movement in feminism to find tidbits of misogyny in great historic men in order to discredit them and their accomplishments on grounds of sexism. With the left’s arsenal of neologisms and made-up offenses, they could do it to anybody. Do not fall for it.
“There’s some kind of movement in feminism to find tidbits of misogyny in great historic men in order to discredit them and their accomplishments on grounds of sexism. With the left’s arsenal of neologisms and made-up offenses, they could do it to anybody. Do not fall for it”
QFT.
The Leftist elite will hijack anything for their agenda.
And on the subject of changing things, we have to look at the e-reader technology today. It is currently possible that all your books on Kindle and ibooks can have their text ‘altered’ i.e. someone can change the content from the source which automatically then gets downloaded electronically to each persons device who purchased a copy. This is why I’m still a fan of printed books which cannot be changed.
On amazon there already are copies of the U.S. Constitution with preceeding chapter that is stating that some of the aspects of the constitution are ‘antiquated’ and ‘obsolete’. This is certainly worthy of concern.
something to be wary of, but bolderisation has been around for a long time. Copyright libraries will always hold original texts which will prevent alteration unless it’s deliberately malicious. Feminism does have (a lot of) form with trying to displace the male canon from curriculum etc, and I would imagine that is still the goal.
Err, I take it you meant Bowdlerisation?
The problem with feminism and why it will fail is that it never ask women to rise and shine. It never ask them to excel in any area. Rather, they try to make them on the same level as men, not by taking them up but by taking men down.
Everything is based on finding flaws everywhere else instead of simply improving themselves.
Great article, and classic books mentioned here. I agree with Brandon, there are still many great works of writing to be found, but a more dedicated search is needed to avoid the PC claptrap. This might be a decent place for readers to start mentioning some of the more modern works they feel are worth reading. I’ll start with a (not entirely modern) recommendation for some Bukowski as well: The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993 (http://www.amazon.com/The-Pleasures-Damned-Poems-1951-1993/dp/0061228443) Don’t let the word “poetry” dissuade you. Bukowski’s work is like nothing you’ve ever read. The polar opposite of the modern day simpering hipster faggot that springs to mind when one hears the word “poet”.
I don’t know about you guys but I just don’t feel like I have the time for fiction reading these days.
I’m struggling to understand the real world. Most of my personal reading is non-fiction.
I do appreciate fiction and all the better for people who read it and gain some insight into human nature. But personally, as soon as I’m done my final Masters project I’m picking up a history book, finance book, computing book, or something along those lines.
Yep. Used to love fiction, now I feel like I’m wasting precious life even when I read quality fiction. Have started a number of fiction books over the last two years only to put them down and pick up non-fiction instead.
I read fiction as an imagination and peace of mind nurturing practice. It does me much more good than web browsing or video game playing.
Everybody reads fiction in their childhood and teens but the demographic trend is away from fiction and towards non-fiction throughout adulthood.
Not surprising. But I would also bet that men comprise 90% or more of the non-fiction market. If women read at all, it’s fluff like FSOG. Men read everything.
True. Look what’s on the bookshelves of “educated” women, I reckon never any work of non-fiction beyond what’s mandatory at university. Most have exactly *zero* interest in learning about a subject, *especially* a science, if it’s not required for some exam. They need “honours” programs to learn more. On the other hand, an interested guy doesn’t need some 50min dumbed down lectures to learn about great works. He reads them cover to cover in his own time.
I had exactly this discussion with a woman from work who spends her time obsessing over obscure rock bands. But she would never pick up a book on a serious subject like economics, history or philosophy. To be educated is not necessarily the same thing as having a credential. And very few women in my experience are really educated, regardless of the letters they may have after their names.
Men have to read everything (especially non-fiction or How To’s)….or else nothing would work.
Women have that luxury of fluff.
I think a point that’s missed here is that men only have a certain amount of time alloted for entertainment. I’m reading a book on engine repair at the moment so I can better myself. My leisure time is spent with brilliant works of film (I.g. citizen Kane) and the occasional sports game. Working, workouts, sleeping, cooking, hobbies, women et al. Take up most of my time. Perhaps it’s difficult for most of us to get into heady works of fiction as our minds need something less mentally taxing after a day of self improvement and creation. Whereas most women will spend all their free time on Netflix, shitty bars and emotionally titillating novels. Just my $0.02.
True statement. It’s tough to find time and the mental energy needed. I spend my days reading heavy text at work so when I get home, cracking Dostoyevsky is not at the top of my list. Lately, I’ve been catching up on comics/graphic novels after a 20 year hiatus at home for my fiction. Despite their panning by red pillers there are some good freaking writers out there (Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, etc.) and for visual artists like myself, the illustrators are freaking amazingly talented.
Citizen Kane sucked.
It didn’t establish the parameters for modern day shot styles at all… oh wait, it did. Learn some history you ignorant swine.
Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.
i have some sympathy for that approach, because I often feel that way myself, but getting the balance right (in whatever ratio) is superior in my view. Depriving yourself of actually great minds and great literature is potentially to lead an intellectually impoverish existence, just as living vicariously and dependently in the wonderful world of fiction may be to indulge in escapism which clearly may be the opposite of being red-pill or (mentally) self-sufficient. Lastly I would point out that much of the twentieth century take on literature has been about ‘democratising’ literature not just in terms of turning it into crap (what you find on the shelves of your average bookstore) but also de-throning the all-mighty (male) author just as the male masters have gone to the block in every other sphere related to the humanities etc. The death of the author (Roland Barth) was about who controls meaning, etc, and its the ‘reader’ who comes out worst. That’s one reason that good literature is suffering because the author has fallen off his pedestal, is no longer the authority, pronouncing on the world, but rather is now subjected to the endless criticism and re-interpretation of his work by professional critics and Goodread amateurs alike. Its the latter, the market of women, that is ruining literature, and blurring the lines of chic lit and actual writing
The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time.
A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.
I agree in parts. I don’t want someone else’s mind dominating my own, or having to worship at the altar of a ‘great mind’ but there’s also a danger to depriving yourself of that self-same great mind. Its part of the furniture of a full existence
Cogent.
Nope. Writing is art, like music or painting. That’s like saying only listen to music when you can’t write anymore yourself or only go to a museum when you can’t paint anymore.
Art is what separates us from the animal kingdom and a cultured person appreciates the arts in all its forms and takes time out to study and admire the works of others.
That might be one of the silliest things I’ve ever read on the internet. Reading enhances your own thoughts, and gives you the tools to better articulate them. Not liking to read makes you that much closer to a slug.
Горе от ума, товарищ Ленин
I’ve been a voracious reader since early childhood and if one thing and one thing only has kept me from going stark raving mad it is reading.
I would say don’t become another member of the herd but not reading period – I just don’t agree with here.
Don’t lose yourself (stick your head in the sand) either to escape reality (the problem with video games today as well).
Reading can lend a hand in understanding life, today. History does repeat itself.
The only fiction I have read in the last 10 years comes from Tolkien.
The rest of it we should only collect to burn for heat when civilization collapses (and thank God).
Spot fucking on.
The publishing industry is dominated by women. Don’t expect your work to be publised unless it adheres to the principles of second wave feminism. I know several women who had their works published by large companies that no straight man would ever consider reading.
Meanwhile, the creative and innovative pieces of male fiction will languish in obscurity.
tall order, but we have to create the market, in order to enter it, only then wil the lady readers return
actually that’s one advantage men have here. Women read books by both men and women, although increasingly women. I read the occasional crime novel by women (often to regret it) but generally men don’t read much chick lit for obvious reasons
E-books by-pass the publishing establishment altogether. There’s an online virtual ‘clearing house’ of sorts, but I can’t at present recall the site.
Yeah, it’s hard to find stuff that isn’t so commercial. Some people try self-publishing. It’s sort of hit and miss, but I’ve come across a few decent books. Here’s one: http://www.amazon.com/Loafing-La-Brea-Michael-Hughes-ebook/dp/B00IBT74JM
I agree…it’s dominated by females. But that’s what so great about today and technology. You no longer need those large publishers to reach the many readers. And, if it’s good it will sell (or at least people will read it).
It’s similar to the way recording artists can now distribute their work and let the audience be the judge (not the large agencies).
I totally agree that with free self-publishing in the e-world, this need never happen. No fiction has to languish in obscurity. It can always find a market online. After all, even that piece of shit 50 Shades of Grey that nobody would publish found an audience online. if trash like than can find an audience then the good stuff will never languish unread.
I really agree with this. Its something that has worried me for a long time. Men are withdrawing from the humanities and the social, into more ‘autistic’ realms (however important they may be) and their mental life is suffering. The ‘dialogical’ voice of literature starts in the individual mind. That requires men to feel they can speak honestly and with integrity about the world about them. As doors keep closing in the mansion of that mind men are locking themselves into a single voiceless room. The great works of fiction are largely male (although there are good books by women as well), and they are also arguably the works that have best succeeded in portraying the drama of the human soul, of politics and history. Those aren’t necessarily subjects that will have books flying off the shelves at your local supermarket literature section. Its a damn shame that literature is now being dictated by the lowest common denominators, particularly by people especially women who want to see the drab minutiae of their lives and relationships represented in literature, or just want their egos massaged in unimaginative escapism.
In UK the orange prize (now bailey prize or something) was established precisely because of the indignity that women were the majority of consumers of literature but the minority of writers. So there is nothing accidental about this decline. Its a concerted effort to marginalise the already too successful. The great author, the great artist, etc have been the targets all along, for progressives and leftist literary critics and as elsewhere they have largely succeeded at great cost to civilization. Men recede from areas where they can’t get to the top easily, where the prizes are being withdrawn, literally in the case of women only prizes.
The focus on the politically incorrect aspect of these novels is important I think. If men are to reclaim their rightful place in literature it will I think be by doing two things: providing them with an outlet for expressing thoughts that are not strictly permissible or correct, and getting back to literature that is actually intellectually stimulating, not just good writing (as in the above examples) but also which also demonstrates the play of big ideas. Where in modern literature is there something like the tale of the grand inquisitor in Dostoyevsky?
The only interesting male writer I’ve read in years has been Houellebecq who has great ideas, but is practically a doom and gloom prophet of male obsolescence.
good work
What do you mean with “autistic realms”?
less chitty chatty, like STEM
not that I’m knocking science. There are two parts to being a renaissance man once one can get past CP Snow’s division of the world
I can understand that, but given a limited amount of time, a lot of the mathematically inclined prefer to allocate their time to reading works of technical nature. Many STEM subjects/topics are so extensive, it requires a considerable investment of time to get to a decent level. I doubt if it’s still possible to be a “jack of all trades”.
True, but we need to get the balance right at least. Literature and the humanities are much of what defines culture and its not good to be on the margins of that
To some extent, I think that people in every era looked with disdain on the popular culture of the time. What I wonder is what from our current time will be looked to as groundbreaking. I see Tom Wolfe’s fiction as a pretty good portrait of our (the US) contemporary culture. Some of it is over the top, but it gets to a lot of politically incorrect ideas by showing how people actually act. I think that’s the key; you have to find a way to convey to the reader the ways in which people process their surroundings and express their intentions.
but previously men could feel confident that they occupied a valued, sometimes privileged position, from which to look with disdain on popular culture. The irony is that when today we look down at popular culture we are also perhaps looking up to the extent that culture that increasingly excludes us, including at a political level. I haven’t read Wolfe, having given up on Bonfire of the Vanities a long time ago so I looked him up on wikipedia. interestingly he appears to criticize modern writers for their lack of honest engagement with the world. In an attack on the literary establishment “Wolfe places the split from realism at 1960; after which the literary establishment turned to absurdist novels, magical realism, minimalism, postmodernism and foreign writers, “the gods of the new breed.” (essay: stalking the billion footed beast)
He seems to be saying that everything changed in the 60s when arguably popular culture took centre stage (and high brow culture came to be sniffed at?) Interestingly some of his targets were very good male writers such as Calvino and Borges.
Yup. Women lit= me me me, my vagina, the heroine’s feelings, ad nauseam. Solipsism: I, woman, am the Universe. Nothing else matters. Muh feelings muh uterus. Mary Sue’s adventures.
Fiction is for women and children when I read it’s not for entertainment it’s for learning.
Dostoievsky, Tolstoi, Victor Hugo …
Their fictions are full of teachings too.
There are four reasons why Men don’t read fiction.
1) Men aren’t lemmings
The reason why all those books are towards the top is because women buy what Oprah, Ellen, Steve Harvey, or some other talk show hack recommends. They all buy Fifty Shades of Grey, Fault in Our Stars, or some other drivel because they have absolutely no originality. Men on the other hand pursue books related to their interest. I guarantee that if you took a random sample of 5 people checking this sight, at most 15% of our selected choices of reading would overlap. Men actively research what would be interesting for their purposes. I know women who will read a book they hate just because “all the other girls said it’s good.”
2) Men live in reality
Women honestly live sad lives. Feminism tells them to be strong, independent, career-alphas, which is completely against their desire and natural tendency. They then read fiction books that provide an unrealistic world to escape a miserable existence. See Fifty Shades of Grey or whatever this Divergent crap series is. Meanwhile men will read about history, how to improve their career, a hobby (for example just got a great book on woodworking), or something socio-political. Go to any party. Women will drone about some kid’s book, while men discuss interesting topics based on what they read.
3) Men are mature
Look at how they read books meant for the adolescent to pre-teen market: Twilight series, Harry Potter series, Fault in Our Stars. Meanwhile men are more apt to read non-fiction on self-improvement (4 hour chef) or how others overcame struggle (The Blind Side).
4) Men live in the now
Men are more likely to keep up on current events and trends. Whether reading Drudge Report, ROK, or some improvement blog, we care about ourselves and
society. I know of only one woman that can have an honest, educated discussion about the latest news. Even my sister, who is getting a PhD, is a dolt when it comes to a recent development. Women instead regurgitate some drivel from NPR at best, but usually whisper about some naughty detail in Fifty Shades or Twilight
Even in reading, women are simplistic and inferior. And we allow these idiots the right to vote…
Bravo sir!
Women consume all those gossip tabloids that line the shelves at the grocery checkout. Advertisers know women don’t read the news.
Great effort and I like your screen handle too. Isn’t it depressing how liberals have destroyed not only the idea but the word itself?
you just keep right on making your sweeping generalizations if it makes you feel better.. i’ll keep on living my miserable existence taking guys like you to the cleaners so you have something to bitch about in your manosphere.
The door ———->
What? “She” confirmed the usual “redpill truth”.
Alphas dominate the world in all the top positions, so you can bring all the men you want to the cleaners, but you’ll come back crying to men to liberate you from your own self created oppression.
so true
Essentially, what you have shown here is that the responsibility of a man is to learn, teach guide and control. Control his woman and his children. Guide them down the correct path. With a man in the driving seat, a woman can busy herself with her phone, make-up, OK magazine, junk fiction etc., secure in the knowledge that she will get to her destination, knowing that the man is taking care of everything important.
If you watch TV you’re already into “fiction”. And most men do that as well. Would rather read a good fiction book than wasting my life watching Navy CSI.
Women also have a lot more free time, while men are actually doing stuff and moving the world forward women are crying oppression because they’re not represented in video games. There’s a reason why men do real degrees like engineering while women do geography degrees because they don’t/can’t push themselves.
I recommend that you read The Fault in Our Stars.It is a seriously good book.
I work in a library and can verify this. When I do see men checking out fiction, it’s usually the Tom Clancy/ Clive Cussler / John Grisham / supermarket paperback fluff stuff. There’s nothing wrong with reading that every now and then, but there’s such a legacy of great literature for men that shouldn’t be ignored.
Yhea I’ve noticed that, in addition to the library becoming an internet cafe, and a halfway house.
You nailed it. Most of the time I feel like I’m babysitting people before they get taken to prison or the mental hospital. I enjoy my job a lot, but it gets depressing spending so much time with the worst members of society.
That’s one interesting aspect about the library. I used to live a nearby county and the library (not a bad one, I might add) was filled with people doing plenty of things besides reading or bettering themselves.
As always, the lower classes want to be entertained. They do not strive to better themselves, despite being surrounded by volumes of knowledge and self-improvement materials & books. Books are there simply there to fill space on shelves for them.
Spot on.
” . . .there’s such a legacy of great literature for men that shouldn’t be ignored.”
Which is why I have Project Gutenberg bookmarked.
Don’t worry, it’s not like I don’t have real books too. It’s more like I’ve run out of room for more.
Even working in a library is looked down on for us blokes. We are made to feel effeminate if we have library jobs instead of so-called ‘real jobs’.
I work in a library and can verify this. When I do see men checking out fiction, it’s usually the Tom Clancy/ Clive Cussler / John Grisham / supermarket paperback fluff stuff. There’s nothing wrong with reading that every now and then, but there’s such a legacy of great literature for men that shouldn’t be ignored.
I don’t buy that “declining male readership” theory. Most guys probably just download books on torrent and read them on their pad. What’s the point of buying paper books?
Not being in front of a screen 24 h/7 ?
Not buying useless tablets that you will have to re-buy two years later ?
Not loosing all your library after that a nuclear disaster or an economical collapse wipped out all our computers ?
Have you seen the prices they ask for books these days? Especially for scholarly works.
Unless you’re a very poor medicine student, or you’re Theodore Roosevelt and reading three books a day, they’re still affordable.
I’ve seen mandatory textbooks upwards of 200 dollars. Of course, you can’t use the edition from the year before. I call it what it is: a blatant rip off.
Here I must agree. But there is a difference between that and relying entirely on virtual books.
rent your textbooks bookrenter.com
Buying textbooks is idiotic and a waste of money. Oh, they even have travel books on there
Why would you have to buy a new tablet 2 years later?? Instead of buying a book, just download them all to your tablet. What’s wrong with reading from a screen?
To be honest, there is always some bottleneck that gets improved but not solved (rather conveniently) with each updated model. Think a suboptimal screen, low amount of RAM, slow processor, there’s always something impeding the user experience.
Because all of these gadgets are programmed to self-degrade after an average length of two years, so you can buy a new one. This is called consumption society.
Reading from a screen is part of all the matrix thing (here the matrix term is almost used litterally). A permanently connected zombie is what the post-modern man is becoming through this type of crap
Have you noticed how everything that is virtual (computers, video games, tablets, social networks, movies) is getting better and cheaper while real material things are getting poorer in quality and higher in price ?
Most people have trouble to pay the rent but possess plasma screens in their appartments.
You can google “Tittytainment” to understand how the matrix is slowly being built up.
Until you run out of space to keep them. I did, then bought an ebook reader and became a library regular again.
Haha dude! You’re so stuck in the 20th Century.
Sounds like what a feminist would say.
Progressivism is a big joke.
I am just realistic. e-books are so much more practical. Paper books are good for vintage and should be preserved in museums.
Read my comment about the permanently screen facing zombie below.
E-books is to books what porn is to real women.
My friend, you’re fighting an uphill battle. People in general prefer what is practical and easy. E-books are practical just like digital cameras. We are all gonna pick them on torrent. My advice to you: understand that your opinion (or mine) is worthless and can’t stop progress.
Except that people still go to theater to see movies, when the invention of T.V was supposed to make them disappear.
People also still listen to radio.
People still buy the dvd’s of their favorites tv series even when it is available free on the internet.
People mostly go to movies theater to watch big blockbuster in 3D which are much less palatable.
The radio is free.
I don’t know anybody who doesn’t watch downloaded tv series.
I am not arguing with you. I just take the world as it is.
I think e-books are a huge progress because they will generate a new type of authors:
– non-fiction authors will have to use new media, typically videos and websites. Guys like Roosh are paving the way.
– Novels will have to be more concise because nobody wants to read 900 pages on a screen. Short stories will be the norm.
3D is a big fail from what I heard.
Videos and websites won’t ever replace non-fiction and technical books, if it was the case, it would have happened a long time ago.
The only market it will affect is the mainstream and erotic litterature (I meet you halfway here) Hunger Games, 50 shades and all that crap.
Serious reading has always been an elitiste activity.
Most people don’t even read.
The bookstores will just loose the crap-novel readers, at worst.
The real readers will still buy real books.
Here’s some very good arguments why.
http://mashable.com/2013/01/16/e-books-vs-print/
3D is a fail? Tell that to Marvel studios and James CAMERON. The highest grossing movies of these 3-5 past years largely benefitted from 3D.
Youtube tutorials are replacing technical books. Welcome to the 21st century bro.
On the other hand, look at how Hollywood has flooded the market with those nonsensical adaptations of comic books. Young men may have surrendered novels to young women, but the comic books guys like don’t look much better.
The thing with comics is that they have always been a sort of political vehicle. In WWII, American comic book heroes fought the Nazis. During the Civil Rights era, you had a lot of themes that dealt with racism. Today, you have the same thing, just with examples that seem so contrived as to alienate a lot of more traditional readers.
i rarely read fiction. mostly prefer books on science or music.
I absolutely have no interest in fiction. The only kinds of books I read are either biographies of great men or self-development ones.
I agree. I’ve been reading some great biographies lately about explorers, military heroes, and books written pre-1960 with strong male influences.
PC will be over and done with in 3-5 years. Questions are though, will attention spans still warrant longer works, and what medium (hand-held books or kindle/electronic) will they be published in?
I think you’ll get a lot more print-on-demand, in addition to ebooks, just with the economies of scale. A lot of people still like hard copy, but it’s hard to justify the investment for a lot of publishers. The problem is that there isn’t that much market between the big companies and the vanity presses. There was a lot of consolidation in the market. You sort of need the equivalent of demand for indie movies/cable tv series.
Men make and read history.
Modern fiction is contrived nonsense and full of angst.
History is a truthful account of man’s response to heroic challenges. Even in societal collapse and military defeat the better nature of men rises from the ashes.
Mostly. But history is a lie agreed upon by the victors. Some guy said that. And listening to re-tellings of some noble fight against the forces of evil, it wears real, real thin after a while.
Just once I’d like to read a first-hand historical account that says, “Yeah they had some nice shit. We killed the lot of ’em, carried off their women too. They shoulda protected themselves.”
Contrived nonsense is one thing, but angst is underrated. It depends on what kind of angst. The Illiad, while nominally historical, probably has a lot of fictional elements to it. It is full of angst. The issue we have today is that we do not know what will be considered the Illiad of our time; I really hope it is not Fifty Shades of Grey, though I can’t begrudge anyone’s writing if it is successful in the marketplace. But it may very well be that our Illiad is something that is quite obscure right now.
Harry Potter.
Women generally aren’t interested in confronting literature or like to confront anything else much. They are a bit like children and liked to be entertained on a superficial sort of level.
It is a bit of a shame men aren’t interested in fiction anymore. I guess the allure of video games and reality TV whilst hammering fatties on cupid and tinder hoping she will be “the one” is the entertainment of the day.
The term “Tittytainment” has already arisen on this thread. This is the seminal work on the history of the term and its implications:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Trap
Raymond Chandler has a good 5 or 6 crime novels out there. Detective noir kind of stuff, makes you want scotch. Fantastic.
In the digital age, guys just don’t have the interest or time to read fiction. I think girls read fiction only because they can’t derive their entertainment needs from stuff like video games. They get pleasure from watching interplay between characters, that’s why they go for the young adult novels.
Bunch of goddamn philistines in this thread. Do you think the blue pill took hold in so many people because they read long and learned disquisitions on the internet? No. It’s because the Left captured the media: books, art, music, TV, and movies. Yes, they act as gatekeepers to keep us out but it’s not 1974 anymore. It’s never been easier to bypass the gatekeepers and sell directly to the consumer thanks to the internet.
Websites and blogs are good, but if you’ve got any kind of artistic talent and desire, then give fiction a try. Solzhenitsyn helped topple the fucking Soviet Union through the power of the pen.
But video games…
So make a fucking video game.
Women conquered the college English and Humanities Departments in the seventies, then publishing, editing, small-market fiction, and pretty much everything else in the eighties. I watched it happen. They forced out, through various techniques covert and overt, any males from academia and publishing who showed even the slightest resistance to the Great Liberation. . . who showed a preference for writing/art over Identity Politics. Then our Heroines patted themselves on the backs and called their self-serving evil ‘Good’. Because, you know, Women have been Oppressed since forever.
I published short fiction consistently in the eighties, mostly in lit mags, won some small awards. But by the early nineties it was obvious that fiction writing and university was no place for an actual man, so I dumped the totalitarians and my fiction writing, and never looked back.
Now the Grrls and their Enablers pass the awards and prizes back n forth to one another, hire each other, give the grants to each other, etc. Ideopolitics was the death of fiction writing. In fact, it’s the death of everything it touches or influences. But the third-raters got to pretend they were Important Artists for forty years, with lots of professorships and positions, and plenty of money to boot. So, as ever, They Won, having not only incrementally destroyed fiction writing in the U.S., but the opportunities and lives of the many (mere) male authors. Small price to pay for their careers of narcissism, comfort, and self-deceit.
Nice going Amerika.
Cheers.
And now they’re going after the video game industry. If you don’t name the Jews, you’re missing the real enemy behind the curtain in this topic as well as in many other ones.
Of course, absolutely right. Burn the toast, It’s the Joos. Dog shits on carpet, It’s the Joos. Too hot n windy today, Must Be The Joos. Let’s all play Pin the Tail on the Scapegoat, just like the feminists did with boys and men. Really, roxy, well done.
There are LOTS of you clonettes, too. Pathetic.
To open myself up to potential ridicule, that is why I still watch Japanese Anime from time to time.
The Japs don’t give a fuck about gender issues
“Why men’s fiction is suffering from a great decline”
2 reasons.
A. Because of porn
B. Because of video games.
Men are too busy to write fiction.
Oh come on, only blue pill men are obsessed with porn and video games.
Most red pill men, are practicing “nofap” (no porn, no masturbation. Preserve your sexual energy for real sex) and play little to none video games. The only game i play is Leauge of Legends, just one match for the period of two days. I waste only around 40 minutes.
You are correct. A little time wasting doesn’t hurt.
Its those who play Call of Duty 18 hours a day. Those who see the world through World of Warcraft. The female dragging her beta fiancee off of a train in China.
..and there are a lot of these guys.
Read anything by Richard Marcinko (founding CO of SEAL Team 6). His first book, Rogue Warrior, is an auto biography but the rest are fiction based in reality and full of manliness: killing, conquering, and winning
Cool. I read that book Rogue Warrior a long time ago, wasn’t aware he had written anything else.
“It is time for men to start appreciating fiction. Once men can appreciate great fiction, they can again begin to produce it. It is up to us to remove the toilet paper that is stocked on most Barnes and Noble shelves and replace one more jewel in the broken and tarnished crown that is modern masculinity.”
Not gonna happen. Unless you’re talking national coup or whatever. I witnessed how those fields were (and are) taken over, and no revival (male, that is) has ANY chance of being allowed. Every single corporate, government, academic, NGO, and private foundation is 100 percent against you, and for maintenance of Business as Usual.
The only medium available for men to write/publish truth the past 20 years is the one you’re on now. A few pop-author males have squeezed in the cracks of the Dame Dam, sure, but very few proportionally. Thx for the piece. Cheers!
It certainly won’t get better if everyone gives up. The beauty of writing is that you can convey realities in relatable way. You are right, in as much as a lot of deeper, less commercial fiction gets pushed aside. But I think that going forward, you are going to see a lot of decentralization. Just take Barnes and Noble, or more aptly, Borders, which no longer exists. You have much more variety today, It’s just harder to find. What needs to be done is to find a way for people with similar interests and tastes to sort through all the vast numbers of ebooks. There are also sites like Liberty Island that cater to more ideological forms of fiction. It’s all what you make of it, really.
Refusing to participate in evil isn’t giving up. It’s letting something that needs to die, die.
Those people very much wanted my participation, because it validated and supported what they were doing. Given that there was no changing their minds or ways, to remain would have been self-betrayal for financial (etc) reasons. Fuck Barnes and Noble and fuck The Economy.
I certainly agree that, ah, ‘going forward’, we are going to see a LOT of ‘decentralization’ lol
Cheers.
Read Yukio Mishima. At the height of his literary career, in 1970, he committed seppuku at a Tokyo military headquarters after failing to start a coup d’etat to restore the Japanese monarchy.
The written word is barely consumed in general, fiction not-withstanding. Readers are a gallant few due to the imagination required to convert the written word into a visceral sensory experience. And, more to the point; outstanding fiction isn’t defined by the length, or complexity of the read. Just because a writer is an institution doesn’t make them interesting or entertaining to read. Hemingway, Dostoevsky, and Kafka are all writers I can personally go without.
If fiction is declining, it is most likely due to the venerable condition of “artistic madness” being discouraged in modern society. The best writers, musicians, and artists have the spark of madness that gives their work the unique quality we consider inspiration. The difference between men’s fiction versus women’s fiction is that women have mundane inspiration. Aside from Mary Shelley, the best they can muster is the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen. From a literary perspective Twilight isn’t fundamentally different than Pride and Prejudice. 200 years ago women were still sluts that wanted to snag a wealthy bad boy who gave them the tingles.
I completely agree that men should be reading more fiction novels. Personally, I get a calm high when I’m deep in a story and later I feel relaxed, wiser and inspired after a good reading session. Movies and TV-shows don’t do it for me anymore.
Just bought and almost finished a book: The Last Temptation by Nikos Kazantzakis.
Saw the movie, but the novel is better. I would consider it a “red-pill” read.
Men’s fiction: I have a lot to say. But I’ll cut to chase, you should check out Junot Diaz. I recommend him to all my friends that don’t read. He doesn’t literary at all, he writes coloquially, has a great voice, and he sounds like a bro. Just read the first paragraph– you will want to read more. Here’s a short story of his:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/23/miss-lora
Maybe I don’t read the New Yorker so much, but that seems much more, shall we say, vivid, than what I would think they’d publish. Still, kudos for him. That’s impressive.
Bukowski was absolutely The Man.
I find it amusing that all you guys are saying you have no time to read, yet you are READING this website every day, and writing on it quite a bit as well. In fact, I come here more to read the comments than the articles.
Good comment. This site does involve self improvement….many men are learning here.
You can always find time for something you really enjoy, though.
Reading non fiction doesn’t stimulate your imagination and creative as well as introspective thinking as fiction reading does. It is food for the soul, or the higher mind if you prefer.
Like myself. If anything, ROK boasts one of my favorite comments sections on all blogs and sites
There are some decent (or at least diverting) male fiction writers even today. Off-hand, I enjoy Michael Connelly, Johnny Shaw, B.V. Larson, Jim Butcher. Reach back a bit and you have the masters like Heinlein (~80 full novels in his career) who were fairly red-pill.
The “quality” of that fiction isn’t up to a Hemingway or even Chandler, but you could read for years and have fiction that isn’t too feminized.
Connelly is pretty good. Occasionally you get a little taste of random LA-centric politics, but he’s pretty plot driven.
I find myself reading less books by Kurt Vonnegut and more books about “the life of Rockefeller”.
Spot on article.
For older stuff in German (though just been published in English by your’s truly), I recommend Georg Engel as very red pill – Des Nächsten Weib (translated as “Thy Neighbour’s Wife” http://www.amazon.com/Neighbours-Georg-Julius-Leopold-Engel/dp/0473281805/) is all about honour and how women undercut a man’s attempt to regain his (plus the protagonist is VERY red pill aware).
Also Hermann Stehr – in his speech at Stehr’s 50th birthday Walther Rathenau made the telling comment that Stehr did not “write for women” or the powers that be. He is a bit brutal though – his early works usually end in the protagonist’s suicide. His portrayal of women’s motivations is pretty accurate though.
From Spanish literature in translation, I hugely recommend Roberto Bolaño – especially “The Savage Detectives”.
Modern fiction is total junk. This is why women read it almost exclusively. If you look at their magazines (OK, Hello and other bullshit) its not surprising they read the fecal matter that is passed off as literature. If a fiction book is a bestseller or made into a movie (or written to be a movie) you can be confident it will make you want to vomit.
Even Science Fiction and Fantasy, previously male driven genres have been co-opted by feminist propaganda, where you have women taking on male roles and really stretching your belief and stomach. Robert Jordan and Steven Erickson are particularly guilty here. And I am not surprised, Steven Erickson is a particularly effeminate looking guy.
Of course it is worse on TV where you have women playing the tough hero, with a male sidekick watching on as the lady batters grown men (The Blacklist, Relic Hunter).
So I find my solace in non-fiction, particularly economics, science and politics. In reality based writing, there is no place for feminism. And women don’t read this stuff. They let men read it and then tell them what to do. This is how the world works.
Read this quote from “The Sun Also Rises”: “In the morning, it was bright, and they were sprinkling the streets of the town, and we all had a nice breakfast in a cafe. Bayonne is a nice town. it is like a very clean Spanish town and it is on a big river. Already, so early in the morning, it was very hot on the bridge across the river. We walked out on the bridge and then took a walk through the town.” WTF. That sounds like it was written by a 6th grader or an ESL student from a Communist country where they can’t afford adjectives. Hemingway came from the Jazz era, and in the same way that you are supposed to appreciate jazz by the notes they don’t play, you’re supposed to be impressed by Hemingway’s minimalism and restraint-by the words he didn’t write. Whatever. I think that theory sounds arsty-fartsy and fruity as hell. I’ll stick to Jack London, John Buchan and Joseph Conrad.
Zombie Apocalypse and Survival fiction is male oriented. The dominant roles are always alpha males. The best role of a woman is being supportive of the strong men in the group.
As is a lot of fantasy and science fiction. Someone who claims that there is no fiction that “manly” men can allow themselves to appreciate in order to look good to their “manly” peers has obviously never heard of the likes of Joe Abercrombie or Richard K. Morgan. The latter writes self-aware alpha males like no other.
It’s starting to make sense so i’ll give my 2 cents here :
1 cent – the article makes an excelent point, glad to see we’re looking everywhere for answers; I know for a fact that written fiction by generations was turned into movies, and movies programmed the way people act, think, dress etc. So we can conclude that who ever writes fiction, writes the future.
2 cent – things are starting to corelate, when i first found out about the world beeing fucked ( slut video, slut music, depraved celebrities – programming – ) i thought ,,naah, this shit will never stick to society, we’re not that stupid” well to my surprise, taking the red pill and learning how incredibly stupid, cognivite-less the great majority of women are ( which in fact are the majority of any society and the major gender as world population ) it’s starting to make sense. That’s it ! How do you fuck up a tribe, you take divide the strong ( men ) you take the weak ( women ) and empower them ( feminism ) and uphold laws that will legally eviscerate anyone who stand in their way. This is the answer my friends. Who are the most degenerate people akin to drugs, sex, night clubs ? Which of us is the most gullible of all ? This fucking shocked me.
Looking forward to identify all the problems we currently face as a society because then, we can finally concentrate on the solutions.
Men in actual fact do consume a lot of fiction, just not literature. Whilst women are reading Fifty Shades of Grey or whatever Oprah recommends men are consuming cartoons like Family Guy, professional wrestling, films, TV series, porn and of course video games in large quantities. Of course women consume this too but that’s not the point, the point is that by and large it’s mindless rubbish. The fact is that the WWE is in the same mental category as Fifty Shades of Grey. Obviously I’m not atacking all forms of popular fiction, just pointing out that men who don’t read bad female literature are probably consuming another form of bad fiction. For that reason I have to disagree with the general idea that men don’t read literature because they are too busy reading philosophy, studying mathematics or some other highly rational pursuit. That is for the small minority, most men are masturbating or watching family guy whilst their fat girlfriends (if they have one) might be reading fifty shades of grey or watching whatever new terrible sitcom is out on their laptop.
If that 20% statistic includes eBooks, it’s terrifying indeed. However, the indie writers’ movement, which is almost exclusively ePublished, offers quite a lot to please the masculine reader. Those who haven’t looked into it might want to give it a try.
Seconded. And all men of fine taste are also reading Mr. Porretto’s blog: http://bastionofliberty.blogspot.co.uk/
Very good to see you here, sir.
“Who is to blame? We are”
We sure as fuck are. It all began first when we granted hormonal driven animals the right to vote. Slowly and surely over time, we ended up with the train wreck we live in today
“The Theory of the Leissure Class” written by T.B. Veblen.
This book EVERY true man SHOULD READ, not some bullshit fiction stories. It perfectly explains most of the basic human insticts. It is the most complete RED PILL book I ever read.
http://www.thevenusproject.com/downloads/ebooks/theory-leisure-class.pdf
“The Theory of the Leissure Class” written by T.B. Veblen.
This book EVERY true man SHOULD READ, not some bullshit fiction stories. It perfectly explains most of the basic human insticts. It is the most complete RED PILL book ever written.
Here is the link:
http://www.thevenusproject.com/downloads/ebooks/theory-leisure-class.pdf
Just to add one more thing. Writting and reading fictional stories is the form of so called CONSPICIOUS LEISSURE.
It is nothing more then unproductive waste of time. Why and how it works is descriebed in the chapter three of said book (in case you don’t want to read the entire Veblen’s work).
For real?
All fiction is a waste of time? Homer? Shakespeare?
What utopia are you pushing?
As I said, READ the book and understand what’s the author is writing about. It is good to read Shakespeare if you are, say a millionare because, for instance, it makes your spiritual life richer. BUT, in 99% of cases people read such a stuff because they want to impress the other people.
The true nature of humans (especially men) is constant struggle to change their enviroment by mastering technology. It is the best expression of manliness. I realize that is the world so far unseen by you. And I understand you. Your point of world view has been formed under the influence of the predators that lead the world affairs. So you ask such “unsmart” questions.
I repeat, READ the book and if you are clever enough, I’m sure you will understand Veblen.
There is one more useful link for you:
http://real-economics.blogspot.com/2011/04/elevator-speech-6-education-what-folks.html
If you consider yourself the real man, you have to learn to use tools. And some fictional novel wont help you with that.
.I’ll re-read that one.
Second the recommendation. Veblen saw through a lot of pretense.
I’ve long loved his explanation of why some cultures preferred fat women and some preferred skinny ones. If food was tight, the big chief wanted fat wives to show that he could feed them, and feed them well. If food was plentiful, the top dogs wanted to show that their wives were too pampered to have to work and so could be weak
typo: ROK not ROT — oops.
Great post & comments. I’m another guy who reads a lot but very little of it is fiction. I copied some suggested reading — thanks guys; looking forward to finding some good stuff new to me.
I recommend short story collections by Thom Jones, such as
The Pugilist at Rest, or Cold Snap.
——————————————–
The Sun Also Rises is excellent. Since one ROK reader sneered at it, here are two other quotes from it:
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
————————————–
“Oh Jake, we could’ve had such a damned good life together.”
………….
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
——————————————–
To anyone new to Hemingway and curious to sample his best,
check out these two short stories:
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
Don’t forget “Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis.” -Hemmingway, the Sun Also Rises. A couple of semi-witty epigrams aside, it still reads like a primer. Plus, you’ve got a main character who can’t get it up because he’s been wounded in the jimmy, but he still goes around pining over the girl he can’t have. Not a great character with whom to identify.
Here’s the last work of contemporary, “serious” fiction that I’ve read, enjoyed, and respected:
http://www.amazon.com/Spartina-John-Casey/dp/0375702687/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409337311&sr=8-1&keywords=spartina
Otherwise, fiction writing has been killed as an art form, at least for men. Of course, some fun stuff comes out that a man can appreciate, like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IEM9TKI/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&psc=1
There are some good war novels being published. “Matterhorn” from a couple years back is excellent. Some good stories out of Iraq, like “The Yellow Birds,” and “Fobbit.”
Beyond that, William T. Vollmann,has some good stuff. Jonathan Franzen is worth reading, especially “Freedom.”
Jack Murphy, Peter Nealen, Henry Brown, Larry Correia and Mike Kupari. A few suggestions if you’re looking for men’s fiction.
Um… spoilers.
Are the Ian Flemming James Bond books good? I read the Jason Bourne books before the movies came out and loved them.
Yeah, some are better than others and none of them are exactly on par with Hemingway, but they’re enjoyable, fun reads that contain a lot of the mentality that attracted us here.
I read a very bad fiction the other day…
Completely incoherent .
There was first this big superhero who kept doing evil things to people, like ordering murder of babies, and despite that we were suppose to like him.
Then, his son, who was way nicer than his father, came out of nowhere, kicked some bankster’s ass out of a temple, got wacked by italian hitmen hired by the jews, and then came back to life, walking on the water like he didn’t give a fuck.
I’d love it if this site came out with recommendations like you did with non fiction. There is a heavy focus on that area with men, for some reason we just seem to gravitate towards it. However when I find a good novel I always keep it on my shelf. The process of finding them is harder though. There is not so much of a classic canon as it were, at least for the type of fiction I gravitate towards.
I’m surprised no one mentions the books by Steven Pressfield. Clearly books for men. One of them does include Amazons but it’s not a female-centered story as you’d might expect.
Martin…I’m actually reading his newest right now. It’s called The Lion’s Gate. It’s non-fiction done in a new-journalism style and is a collection of “testimonials” of Israelis who fought in or were otherwise involved w/ the Six Days War w/ Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in 1967. Really good and fascinating subject.
I can enjoy a little of everything genre-wise, but taking a quick look at my book collection, easily 90% of it is science-fiction. I’d be a very, very wealthy man if I had a nickel for every time a woman has told me they don’t read science-fiction because “it’s stupid”.
I’m going through a collection of 400 ebook short stories by Niven, Dick, and Kornbluth. They’re the perfect size for a quick read and to spike my thoughts for a day.
Men don’t read ficition because they have real jobs and have to run the world, unlike women who work in hr and read about 50 shades of grey, men actually read on how to improve company efficieny or program or something useful. Either that or they are stupid and smoke a blunt.
Not just fiction but everything: fiction, non-fiction, magazines books.
Women read far more than men do. Why is that? I don’t understand