when did guys stop reading books?
It occurred to me the other day that very few of my guy friends read books.
Has it always been like this? Is there some kind of literary drought going on?
There have been many worrying articles in the newspaper of late bemoaning the lack of innovation in the book industry, with dire predictions of where its going. I remember working as a label boy in a local bookstore chain when I was 19 and discovering the depressing truth of the industry; that book-reading is dominated by females over 50.
Now I don’t have anything against women over 50, but what worries me is that the dominance has probably increased over the years since. I can’t remember the last time I was able to have a discussion about a book with a male friend – the Top Gear episode guide doesn’t count.
Have we males given up? Perhaps reading is now considered too feminine. Or are we so inundated with books intended for older readers that many young males feel left out? I’m not sure of the answer. I just know that there is a large time gap between 20 and 45 – if that isn’t filled by literature, it concerns me what might be filling out male identity in the new millennium.
I know a large percentage of males carry around angst – most of my friends stuck in jobs they despise. There are not many males I know who don’t include Fight Club in their list of favourite movies. So why aren’t we turning the angst ridden pages of books like The Outsider, Catcher in the Rye or A Clockwork Orange to quench our thirst?
Maybe this is just another dull turn in the Australian cultural cringe, one more creative outlet to squash in favour of acting out the corporate dream.
I would love to talk books with my friends. And not talk books in a high brow literary way. I mean talk books in the The Death of Bunny Munro kind of way. When did books fall off the mainstream male “list of things to do”?
Or maybe this is just more of that angst I was talking about earlier. There seems no shortage of male authors, so where are the readers?
