Real men don't read

[william.scherk]

I'm a Library Hound. I like going on university campuses and heading for the stacks. I love a backpack full of books coming home from the local.

The local library branches are fearsomely busy sites of devotion, kid zones, reading activities, reading camps, reading clubs, kid rooms. Yes, some of the readings are done from screens, but half the shelves in the local joint are Kidzone. I kid you not. Fully half of the sober and silent scholars at the the tables are under voting age

Maybe Canadians per se are big library hounds young and old. It could do with the old system of private endowments. Libraries expect to be lavishly-funded, over-patronized, and feel happiest when they are burgeoning multi-media centres for literacy.

I don't know how I would test my general impressions or the degree of hounditude in the age of Amazon, e-books, inter-library loans, book festivals, children's lit festivals, and so on. Although my houndosity has made me visit every metropolitan library I have been near to, in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and suburbs, and overseas, and my Canadian samples seem infested with youth ... where do we get comparative statistics?.

My visit to the Seattle Library made me think that they have just as many mad young hounds for reading as any other local I've seen up here.

My total impression of "fiction" reading is of course missing. I don't go in and look over every shoulder.

 

It's still kind of sad that Wolf feels isolated from a Man's Man cohort of readers.  They are there and he is there and it is shitty that they don't meet. For all of his poor-me whinging, he has a great facility for words. He is driven.  He pokes out the volumes. How to hook him up with the kind of hounds I see wherever I go in the reading subculture?

Edited June 29, 2018 by william.scherk

[caroljane]

8 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

I'm a Library Hound. I like going on university campuses and heading for the stacks. I love a backpack full of books coming home from the local.

The local library branches are fearsomely busy sites of devotion, kid zones, reading activities, reading camps, reading clubs, kid rooms. Yes, some of the readings are done from screens, but half the shelves in the local joint are Kidzone. I kid you not. Fully half of the sober and silent scholars at the the tables are under voting age

Maybe Canadians per se are big library hounds young and old. It could do with the old system of private endowments. Libraries expect to be lavishly-funded, over-patronized, and feel happiest when they are burgeoning multi-media centres for literacy.

I don't know how I would test my general impressions or the degree of hounditude in the age of Amazon, e-books, inter-library loans, book festivals, children's lit festivals, and so on. Although my houndosity has made me visit every metropolitan library I have been near to, in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and suburbs, and overseas, and my Canadian samples seem infested with youth ... where do we get comparative statistics?.

My visit to the Seattle Library made me think that they have just as many mad young hounds for reading as any other local I've seen up here.

My total impression of "fiction" reading is of course missing. I don't go in and look over every shoulder.

 

It's still kind of sad that Wolf feels isolated from a Man's Man cohort of readers.  They are there and he is there and it is shitty that they don't meet. For all of his poor-me whinging, he has a great facility for words. He is driven.  He pokes out the volumes. How to hook him up with the kind of hounds I see wherever I go in the reading subculture?

Do not get me started! Did you visit the Toronto Reference Library, with the best second-hand bookstore of offloaded volumes in the world, and a Disneyland of tangible reads?

[william.scherk]

I never got to the TO Reference Library. Looking at pictures of its renovation reminded me of Star Wars, I don't know why.

 

Vancouver's pitiful imitation, designed by Moshe Safdie. Maybe it's the pizza and coffee that attracts the young hip book hounds ...

[caroljane]

1 hour ago, dldelancey said:

Comments like this on this forum really baffle me.  I have to wonder what, if any, young people you folks are hanging out with.  My 13-year-old and his cohort are voracious readers.  And they read actual books, with real paper pages which even I rarely do anymore.  It isn't a rare phenomenon, either.  My son's friends read The Outsiders this school year and were practically obsessed by it.  I bought my son a t-shirt with the slogan Stay Gold Ponyboy.  He wears it everywhere, and kids from all over react to it.  Kids read.  They even like it.

Emphatically agree, this is international too; my grandsons age 9 and 6 each read two books a week at home plus whatever at school. and often beg for more reading time, Flashlights under the blankets have been detected.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I don't know about a drop in reading among young adults.

I bopped around the trades and sales literature to get a feel. The situation for the Young Adult market is strong. There are variations over the year, but from year to year, the sales trends seem to be going up.

Here's an example from Publisher's Weekly in May:

Trade Segments Post Solid First Quarter Gains

From the article:

Quote

In the children's/YA segment, an increase of 8.4% in hardcover sales, and a 4.8% rise in paperback sales, were the two drivers on the quarterly gain in segment sales over 2017. Board books and e-book sales fell 10.4% and 7.1%, respectively, in the quarter.

That, to me, looks like a healthy YA book market.

Ebooks are down, but, from what I have seen in my bopping around, audiobooks are skyrocketing. Like really really skyrocketing. So I imagine this impacts ebooks a bit--more often than not, both are consumed on the same device and sold at the same place. I'm not sure this is the case, but knowing my own habits, it feels right.

Now, the next question is, have American kids suddenly developed the habit of buying more books than ever, but no longer reading what they buy?

 

Michael

[KorbenDallas]

YA market is strong, but that includes both boys and girls.  Most of the YA market is girl readership, though.  Boys make up a much smaller portion of it.  I researched this just a few short years ago and the results influenced me to change plot lines and the main character in the YA book that I was writing that was targeted to boys.  I wanted to sell the book so I changed it for a more broad appeal.

Edit:  It actually became a better book...

[caroljane]

4 hours ago, dldelancey said:

Comments like this on this forum really baffle me.  I have to wonder what, if any, young people you folks are hanging out with.  My 13-year-old and his cohort are voracious readers.  And they read actual books, with real paper pages which even I rarely do anymore.  It isn't a rare phenomenon, either.  My son's friends read The Outsiders this school year and were practically obsessed by it.  I bought my son a t-shirt with the slogan Stay Gold Ponyboy.  He wears it everywhere, and kids from all over react to it.  Kids read.  They even like it.

Your heartfelt  comment deserves a fuller answer. Consider the source - an old , bloody-but-unbowed writer who like most talented writers has not been able to make a living from what he does best.  And being an Objectivist writer, he has a scornful response, to anyone's questions for him,  whether friendly or hostile.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, KorbenDallas said:

Most of the YA market is girl readership, though.

Korben,

Harlequin, anyone?  

From what I've seen, though, most fiction in general is consumed by females.

This is one of the reasons the new "The Girl..." thrillers are so successful. I first became aware of this from the following book: The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel by Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers.

I still don't see how this means male YA readership has declined from before, though, especially since sales of YA books are up.

Michael

[KorbenDallas]

47 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Korben,

Harlequin, anyone?  

From what I've seen, though, most fiction in general is consumed by females.

This is one of the reasons the new "The Girl..." thrillers are so successful. I first became aware of this from the following book: The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel by Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers.

I still don't see how this means male YA readership has declined from before, though, especially since sales of YA books are up.

Michael

It's less of a percentage of total young males read, it started with the Millennial generation.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 minutes ago, KorbenDallas said:

It's less of a percentage of total young males read, it started with the Millennial generation.

Korben,

Do you have any research on this or is it just anecdotal?

(btw - I find nothing wrong with anecdotal. We see what we see.)

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

23 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Oh, good. I have published a special book, just for you. I earn 2 cents per copy sold, planning a fun trip to Elko with the proceeds.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/wolf-devoon/authors-exist-to-please-and-flatter-readers/paperback/product-23701079.html

Well, bring it on!

--Brant

secret of Rand's success

[KorbenDallas]

4 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Korben,

Do you have any research on this or is it just anecdotal?

(btw - I find nothing wrong with anecdotal. We see what we see.)

Michael

I'm 40, and when I was growing up hardly guys read fiction in school.  Then I went to college and not many guys read, I three grammar/literature classes that were required for the Associates Degree.  Then I recently went back to college and was around a generation younger than me, and hardly any of them read.  And from what I have been told from elders, my generation didn't read as much as their generation did.  So there is a sample size here that doesn't indicate anecdotal to me.

When I started planning my YA book I thought boys read as much as girls, then for due diligence I researched the market and found that it just wasn't true.  The research took me one week.  It's nice people have reported they have young boys that read or have seen young people reading.  Yet my nephew is 9 years old and has absolutely no interest in recreational reading at all.    But neither indicates a market.  From my research I found young males are reading less, they had other distractions.  eReaders were helping.  But for anyone reading this I advise you perform your own market research and make your own marketing decisions.

[caroljane]

14 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Well, bring it on!

--Brant

secret of Rand's success

Sorry Wolf, I would have bought this one but as I have vowed to stop buying any USA products, I will not buy any American published or authored books. I will just carry on stealing them from the library like usual.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Parenthetically, how embarrassing that writing involves crying. I'm working on 'Partners' deep in the third act. Going one paragraph at a time, I always finish each scene that I start (usually a page or two, sometimes more). As is my custom, each newly completed scene is saved, then exported to pdf for a critical read and to look at punctuation and line spacing.

What happens next, of course, is that I launch the pdf, sometimes backspace many pages to read a longer sequence. There's amazing warmth in certain scenes that I haven't seen in a long time. My whole heart burst into tears when Kyle and Karen did something that soared in celebration of thoughtful newlyweds and lasting love.

What a sap.

You know what else forces me into involuntary tears of compassion, every damn time? Mary Poppins. Two kids at a window, watching her descend by aid of an opened umbrella. "It's her! It's the person!" Jane exclaims to her younger brother Michael.

Terrible. I cried on the set of The Marionette. The crew worried that I had lost my mind, but the performances were wonderful. Happened more than once. Writing a novel is far worse than directing, because I'm staging it and performing it with the power of literary art. Sometimes I think that writing should be a licensed profession, stop me from putting my heart through the wringer like this. I dread the next chapter because Jimmy must die.

 

[dldelancey]

What is it With Boys and Reading?

That article is an interesting read, pun intended.

On YA readership being more heavily populated by girls, as MSK pointed out that shouldn't come as a surprise as adult readership is more heavily populated by women.  On average, women read more than men. 

Some real life experience with my son and his friends (and supported by the research in the article above):

• It's harder for them to find YA books they relate to.  Perhaps because authors are doing the same research Wolf and Korben have done and decided that boys don't read. 
• It's harder for them to find books that fit their reading skills.  Yeah, I'm being a sexist generalist here.  Boys don't read as well as girls. It's probably less interesting for authors to dumb it down.
• It's harder for them to find books that fit their reading styles.  Again, sexist generalist.  Boys read differently than girls. My son won't sit for long hours at a time with a book.  He might read 2 hours in a day, but it's in 10-15 minutes sittings.

What to do?  As a parent of a young male dyslexic:

• Give him the girl-focused YA books to read anyway.  As long as the mushy stuff is not in your face, he's all good with it.  Hunger Games and Divergent series are some of his favorites, both with prominent female leads and obviously geared towards girls.
• Go to the classics.  Catcher in the Rye, Red Badge of Courage, The Outsiders.
• Seek out new classics.  Brandon Sanderson's Reckoners series, the Hatchet series,  - kickass boys, those.
• Let him read what others may deem age inappropriate.  I consider Dan Brown, James Patterson, and Clive Cussler mediocre writers, but they tend to write in simple terms and have very short chapters, perfect for reading in small bites. 
• Don't underestimate what will fascinate him.  Clancy bores me to tears, and honestly I don't know how he slogs through it, but it's interesting enough to my boy that he will stick with it.  Also, he thinks it makes him better at the video game.  :-) 

 

[Wolf DeVoon]

8 hours ago, dldelancey said:

What to do?  As a parent of a young male dyslexic

All I can report are the books I loved, RLS Kidnapped and Treasure Island, C.S.Forester Hornblower series.

[KorbenDallas]

9 hours ago, dldelancey said:

What is it With Boys and Reading?

That article is an interesting read, pun intended.

On YA readership being more heavily populated by girls, as MSK pointed out that shouldn't come as a surprise as adult readership is more heavily populated by women.  On average, women read more than men. 

Some real life experience with my son and his friends (and supported by the research in the article above):

• It's harder for them to find YA books they relate to.  Perhaps because authors are doing the same research Wolf and Korben have done and decided that boys don't read. 
• It's harder for them to find books that fit their reading skills.  Yeah, I'm being a sexist generalist here.  Boys don't read as well as girls. It's probably less interesting for authors to dumb it down.
• It's harder for them to find books that fit their reading styles.  Again, sexist generalist.  Boys read differently than girls. My son won't sit for long hours at a time with a book.  He might read 2 hours in a day, but it's in 10-15 minutes sittings.

What to do?  As a parent of a young male dyslexic:

• Give him the girl-focused YA books to read anyway.  As long as the mushy stuff is not in your face, he's all good with it.  Hunger Games and Divergent series are some of his favorites, both with prominent female leads and obviously geared towards girls.
• Go to the classics.  Catcher in the Rye, Red Badge of Courage, The Outsiders.
• Seek out new classics.  Brandon Sanderson's Reckoners series, the Hatchet series,  - kickass boys, those.
• Let him read what others may deem age inappropriate.  I consider Dan Brown, James Patterson, and Clive Cussler mediocre writers, but they tend to write in simple terms and have very short chapters, perfect for reading in small bites. 
• Don't underestimate what will fascinate him.  Clancy bores me to tears, and honestly I don't know how he slogs through it, but it's interesting enough to my boy that he will stick with it.  Also, he thinks it makes him better at the video game. 

 

I remember reading Hatchet with fond memories, Indian in the Cupboard, too.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Believe it or not, I remember reading James Bond books in paperback as a kid. Almost all of them. I didn't read all of them because my mother thought they were dirty and I kinda had to hide them.   For some reason I was enchanted with the Pellucidar series of Edgar Rice Burroughs around the same time. 

This was waaaaaaaay before I ever heard of Ayn Rand.

I also used to love science fiction. (Believe me, alien planets beat the hell out of the trailer park with the swamp behind it.  ) Lots of unknown authors. But some famous names still stick in my memory like Piers Anthony, Robert Heinlein, Brian Aldiss, Isaac Asimov, etc..

Of course I devoured digest size pulp magazines. You normally got a novella and several stories each one. I grew up poor so I used to love getting these. I can't remember the titles anymore, but I used to buy them down at the drugstore.

There was a weird kind of double feature digest size pulp novel, and sometimes it was a normal paperback, where they would have one novel taking up half the book and another taking up the other half. To read the first, you read it as normal, but to read the second, you had to flip the book upside down and start with the back cover. That way it would look like the normal cover and read like a regular book. God knows how many of those I read.

I devoured comic books, too. Lots and lots and lots of comic books.

And don't get me started on board games...  

Man am I taking a jog down Memory Lane...

 

Michael

[Jonathan]

17 hours ago, dldelancey said:

What is it With Boys and Reading?

That article is an interesting read, pun intended.

On YA readership being more heavily populated by girls, as MSK pointed out that shouldn't come as a surprise as adult readership is more heavily populated by women.  On average, women read more than men. 

Some real life experience with my son and his friends (and supported by the research in the article above):

• It's harder for them to find YA books they relate to.  Perhaps because authors are doing the same research Wolf and Korben have done and decided that boys don't read. 
• It's harder for them to find books that fit their reading skills.  Yeah, I'm being a sexist generalist here.  Boys don't read as well as girls. It's probably less interesting for authors to dumb it down.
• It's harder for them to find books that fit their reading styles.  Again, sexist generalist.  Boys read differently than girls. My son won't sit for long hours at a time with a book.  He might read 2 hours in a day, but it's in 10-15 minutes sittings.

What to do?  As a parent of a young male dyslexic:

• Give him the girl-focused YA books to read anyway.  As long as the mushy stuff is not in your face, he's all good with it.  Hunger Games and Divergent series are some of his favorites, both with prominent female leads and obviously geared towards girls.
• Go to the classics.  Catcher in the Rye, Red Badge of Courage, The Outsiders.
• Seek out new classics.  Brandon Sanderson's Reckoners series, the Hatchet series,  - kickass boys, those.
• Let him read what others may deem age inappropriate.  I consider Dan Brown, James Patterson, and Clive Cussler mediocre writers, but they tend to write in simple terms and have very short chapters, perfect for reading in small bites. 
• Don't underestimate what will fascinate him.  Clancy bores me to tears, and honestly I don't know how he slogs through it, but it's interesting enough to my boy that he will stick with it.  Also, he thinks it makes him better at the video game. 

 

Boys are also often discouraged from reading by comments from adults about their reading choices. Even enlightened, woke parents and teachers will throw in a little jab now and then, or maybe just a touch of disapproval or worry, usually without realizing it, that a boy is reading a book for girls, or one that's meant for younger readers, or one about a topic that is a surprising choice to the adults. Boys are sensitive, and pick up on such cues.

J

[caroljane]

7 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Boys are also often discouraged from reading by comments from adults about their reading choices. Even enlightened, woke parents and teachers will throw in a little jab now and then, or maybe just a touch of disapproval or worry, usually without realizing it, that a boy is reading a book for girls, or one that's meant for younger readers, or one about a topic that is a surprising choice to the adults. Boys are sensitive, and pick up on such cues.

J

Excellent observations all round. One addition as the mother of 2 boys: they were brought with us to the library every week and saw us choose our own books (sometimes the same one, if there was only one copy) and let loose in the Kidspace to choose their own (possibly too soon; there were unintended negative consequences. when Andy age 2 saw the possibility of a book as a bludgeoning tool, and Stu age seven, who had been set to watch him, initiated force which was most unusual for his peaceable nature.)

Fast forward, Stu has always been a reader, Andy would rather hear stories than read them, especially custom-made stories about Catland (where our cats went at night, and my poor husband who only  wanted one , wished they would stay.) , and Skunkland, under the front porch, don't ask. I even wondered if he actually could read, though he pored over the  Sun sports pages enough and passed English easily, unlike other subjects which required mental stamina and resolve to master.

You are both right. Boys are sensitive, often in ways girls and women might not understand, and so are girls vice versa. 

But readers are readers and like/love /need to read or don't.  The proof is in the individual adult the child becomes, and the perennial abundance of good fiction which young adults can get lost in, whether classics or newly-minted contemporary, is a great sign. 

The book is a powerful imaginative weapon,  which can't be battered out of existence yet, though some (naming no names) have tried.

[Jonathan]

6 minutes ago, caroljane said:

When Andy age 2 saw the possibility of a book as a bludgeoning tool, and Stu age seven, who had been set to watch him, initiated force which was most unusual for his peacable nature.)

Fast forward, Stu has always been a reader, Andy would rather hear stories than read them, especially custom-made stories about Catland (where our cats went at night, and my poor husband who only  wanted one , wished they would stay.) , and Skunkland, under the front porch, don't ask. I even wondered if he actually could read, though he pored over the  Sun sports pages enough and passed English easily, unlike other subjects which required mental stamina and resolve to master.

I would imagine that you, as a dedicated socialist, applied socialist justice theory to the problem: You punished and hobbled Stu, since allowing him to be a passionate reader while Andy wasn't would've been unfair and inhumane; protecting Andy and making everything equal by taking away any advantages, enjoyment or happiness that Stu had was your solution, right?

 

15 minutes ago, caroljane said:

You are both right. Boys are sensitive, often in ways girls and women might not understand, and so are girls vice versa.

Right. People in general tend to impose all sorts of roles, norms or ridiculous social expectations onto others. It's unfortunate. But sometimes it also can have the effect of awakening individuality and a fighting spirit. It's inspiring to see a kid adopt the attitude of "I don't care what you think, I like this type of book and I'm going to continue to like it."

 

31 minutes ago, caroljane said:

The book is a powerful imaginative weapon,  which can't be battered out of existence yet, though some (naming no names) have tried.

Recent history has seen the burning of classics like To Kill a Mockingbird, and the removal of Laura Ingalls Wilder's name from an award. Wilder's work presents differing and evolving viewpoints within a very complex context, so I can understand someone being, at most, hesitant about books presenting mindsets on the prairie, but To Kill a Mockingbird? Seriously? How dumb and ideologically self-cannibalistic must people be to attach Mockingbird for being racially offensive?!!!

[caroljane]

5 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

I would imagine that you, as a dedicated socialist, applied socialist justice theory to the problem: You punished and hobbled Stu, since allowing him to be a passionate reader while Andy wasn't would've been unfair and inhumane; protecting Andy and making everything equal by taking away any advantages, enjoyment or happiness that Stu had was your solution, right?

 

Right. People in general tend to impose all sorts of roles, norms or ridiculous social expectations onto others. It's unfortunate. But sometimes it also can have the effect of awakening individuality and a fighting spirit. It's inspiring to see a kid adopt the attitude of "I don't care what you think, I like this type of book and I'm going to continue to like it."

 

Recent history has seen the burning of classics like To Kill a Mockingbird, and the removal of Laura Ingalls Wilder's name from an award. Wilder's work presents differing and evolving viewpoints within a very complex context, so I can understand someone being, at most, hesitant about books presenting mindsets on the prairie, but To Kill a Mockingbird? Seriously? How dumb and ideologically self-cannibalistic must people be to attach Mockingbird for being racially offensive?!!!

1.  I guess, if you say so.  I better  let them ponder this and answer for themselves. They are pretty self-sufficient emotionally as well as financially but I will try to get a sense of how they feel.

Do you have siblings? Did you feel that there was never equality whatever your parents did?  I didn't, my husband did, and I tended to take his advice therefore.

2.Totally right.

3.Totally right.

In good faith,

Carol

[Jonathan]

16 minutes ago, caroljane said:

Do you have siblings? Did you feel that there was never equality whatever your parents did?  I didn't, my husband did, and I tended to take his advice therefore.

 

I don't remember any jealously or bad feelings about equality/inequality. I remember my brothers having different interests, and therefore receiving special things involving those interests, which I didn't receive, but I also recall my receiving things related to my interests, which they didn't get to have. I don't remember ever feeling resentment that a brother had something that I didn't, and I don't remember ever being resented for what I had.

 

[caroljane]

4 hours ago, Jonathan said:

I don't remember any jealously or bad feelings about equality/inequality. I remember my brothers having different interests, and therefore receiving special things involving those interests, which I didn't receive, but I also recall my receiving things related to my interests, which they didn't get to have. I don't remember ever feeling resentment that a brother had something that I didn't, and I don't remember ever being resented for what I had.

 

that  is  what pretty much what my sons said, but I have not enquired  further, since they are now grown up and quite close , despite some incomprehensible estrangements along the way.

Being the sons of a Glaswegian, they describe things in more colourful language.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Partners completed, 68K, available on Amazon in a week or two. If you'd like a pdf for review, email wolfdevoon@gmail.com