On Gender and Reading

A couple of items in a recent edition of Salon magazine caught my eye. One was a story on how underrepresented women are in literary publishing (both books by women and women writing about books). The other was about a blogger whose therapist suggested that the blogger's daily online journal was an attempt to recreate the [childhood] experience of being unheard. The therapist, a woman, thinks the blogger is "retraumatizing" his or her self. My guess is that the blogger is female. I doubt if Tucker Max's therapist raises this question in their sessions. If you haven't heard of Tucker Max, he's a self-proclaimed sot whose sexual escapades and other inebriated encounters have made him a best-selling author. Chelsea Handler is probably the female equivalent of Max. Handler sells a lot of books too, but apparently, she'd sell more if she were a guy.

The data collected in the article about women in publishing reinforced conventional wisdom that men prefer to read books written by men about men. Whereas, generally speaking, women read books written by and about both sexes. If I look back on the required reading of my grade school days, I can think of only two female authors represented: Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harper Lee. If little boys were required to read Margaret Atwood and Joan Didion along with Melville and Hawthorne, perhaps they'd grow up to be similarly inclined in their reading choices. It's somewhat reassuring that my sons' language arts classes introduced them to Zora Neale Hurston and Maya Angelou. But the vast majority of writers on their reading lists were white men.

My husband is a classic example of "gender-based" reading. He loves formulaic thrillers by Clive Cussler, Robert Ludlum and Daniel Silva. He would never read an Oprah Selection book. He'll likely go to his grave without unlocking the secrets of Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary. Fortunately, his "sexist" reading habits don't extend to our marital status quo or shared parenting. But it wouldn't hurt him to spend a weekend locked in a library with Willa Cather, Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters.

When I first started going to writers workshops it was accepted gospel that 80% of the reading public is female. Who's reading all that Nora Roberts and Mary Higgins Clark anyway? Not men. So it stands to reason that so-called "women's novels," which deal with female issues, would sell the most books. Nowadays it seems you can scarcely get published without a vampire in your story. Thus, we have at least one woman racking up big numbers--Stephanie Meyers, the Mormon mother of three who created the "Twilight" books. Regardless of our natural inclinations when it comes to reading, one should strive to expand one's repertoire; in short, read outside the box.