Men are from Dune, women are from Pemberley? Leaping recklessly into the literary gender gap

August 24, 4:43 PMBook ExaminerMichelle Kerns

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Clichés about what men like to read versus what women like to read are outdated, tiresome, and so passé -- that is, until you take a closer look.

The old mantra says men like to read adventures, science fiction, thrillers, non-fiction, and hefty historical and political tomes unfettered by the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth that accompanies so many of the Ladies' Choice books -- historical novels, family saga-type dramas, tear-jerkers, and the ever-popular romance.Those literary gender distinctions are wildly overgeneralized and bear the faintest stench of chauvinism. Unfortunately, they are also more correct than incorrect.

You can lead a man to Jane Eyre, but you can't make him like it. Likewise, try to get most women to read Dune or Starship Troopers or Catch-22 and you'll see more eye-rolling than in "The Exorcist".

As many of you know, I collect the book lists of fellow book fiends with the fervor of a philatelist searching for a Penny Black. (If you'd like to contribute your list, by all means, email away: michellekerns@surewest.net) It is unendingly amusing to me to see the difference between the lists sent to me by women compared to the lists sent to me by men. I can, with about 98% accuracy, predict whether the sender is male or female solely by reading through the first five books on any given list. The similarities -- and differences -- are striking.

Why male and female reading tastes are different isn't a surprise, nor is it something I expect anyone to ever get to the bottom of. Like the Bermuda triangle or the lost colony of Roanoke or the popularity of "Jon and Kate Plus 8," it's a mystery for the ages.

What I find interesting is pondering why some books manage to effortlessly bridge the yawning literary gender gap, while others try and try again and fail dismally. What's the secret? And what is it that causes some male readers to read and like books mostly beloved by women and some female readers to gravitate towards distinctly guy-ish books? It's the literary equivalent of the nature versus nurture question: do you learn to like the books you like because you were born that way? Or because your surroundings -- your education, the people that infected you with the reading bug -- influenced you to do so?

Before we dissect the corpse of male/female reading habits, let's take a gander at what sorts of tomes men and women gravitate towards. Gentlemen, you first. This list of 75 books every man should read was originally published in the venerable Esquire, a magazine I like to snarkily refer to as Playboy for the thinking gentleman.

 

75 books every man should read

1. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver

2. Collected Stories of John Cheever

3. Deliverance - James Dickey

4. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

5. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

6. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Doestoevsky

7. The Known World - Edward P. Jones

8. The Good War - Studs Terkel

9. American Pastoral - Philip Roth

10. A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories - Flannery O'Connor

11. The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien

12. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter

13. The Call of the Wild - Jack London

14. Time's Arrow - Martin Amis

15. A Sense of Where You Are - John McPhee

16. Hell's Angels - Hunter S. Thompson

 

17. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

18. Dubliners - James Joyce

19. Rabbit, Run - John Updike

20. The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M. Cain

21. Dog Soldiers - Robert Stone

22. Winter's Bone - Daniel Woodrell

23. Legends of the Fall - Jim Harrison

24. Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry

25. The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer

26. The Professional - W.C. Heinz

27. For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway

28. Dispatches - Michael Herr

29. Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller

30. Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates

31. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

32. The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara

33. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

34. All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren

35. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

36. Sophie's Choice - William Styron

37. A Fan's Notes - Frederick Exley

38. Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis

39. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami

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40. Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian

41. PlainSong - Kent Haruf

42. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

43. Affliction - Russell Banks

44. This Boy's Life - Tobias Wolff

45. Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin

46. The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow

47. Women - Charles Bukowski

48. Going Native - Stephen Wright

49. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

50. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold - John le Carre

51. The Crack-Up - F. Scott Fitzgerald

52. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline - George Saunders

53. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

54. The Shining - Stephen King

55. Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson

56. Moby Dick - Herman Melville

57. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

58. Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges

59. The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe

60. The Sports Writer - Richard Ford

61. American Tabloid - James Ellroy

62. The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Haley

63. What it Takes Richard Ben Cramer

64. The Continental Op - Dashiell Hammett

 

65. The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene

66. So Long, See You Tomorrow - William Maxwell

67. Native Son - Richard Wright

68. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - James Agee and Walker Evans

69. Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner

70. The Great Bridge - David McCullough

71. The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac

72. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurty

73. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

74. Underworld - Don DeLillo

75. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

While this list has some puzzling omissions -- no Death of a Salesman? Catch-22? All Quiet on the Western Front? -- as a recommended reading list for gents, it looks pretty solid to me.

So, what about the ladies? What do you think should make an appearance on a "75 books every woman should read" list? Take a look at the results: Men are from Dune, women are from Pemberley? Part 2: 75 books every woman should read.

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