What Do Men Enjoy Reading?

Recently on the ACFW e-mail list for member writers, the following question was posed:

Generalizations are always dangerous things and obviously don’t apply 100% across the board, so I would like your input (whether you are male or female).

I have the general impression, from observing and listening to comments by male readers (who happen to be writers, since it is writers I most often interact with) that, generally speaking, men lean towards reading science fiction or fantasy genres (maybe some spec too).

Is that your impression as well, and why do they lean toward those genres? Or maybe you’ve posted a blog about this subject or written an article. Please do point me to it.

I enjoy reading sci-fi the most rather than fantasy since there’s a part of me that wants to learn and discover what I don’t know, especially the science behind the technology written about, but I enjoy it all within an adventurous story.  Some stories have minor elements of sci-fi, though, and are more, generally-speaking, speculative.  Some CBA authors whose works in that realm I’ve enjoyed are Walley, Dekker, Higley, Moser, Marzulli, Tyers, Hirt, Olsen, Hunt, Hancock, Lee.  It’s also hard to pass up a good Star Trek novel.

On the other hand, I’ve enjoyed reading a number of books that would be classified more as chick-lit than romance (within CBA, Billerbeck, Perry, Mitchell, Gutteridge) as well as a few books that would be classified as lad-lit (Blackston), the male-perspective form of chick-lit.  When I dated a Polish girl, I read a number of books that were low-adventure antiquing-type stories by T. Davis Bunn (I bought them on my own without prodding) involving eastern European settings shortly after the fall of Communism, and it was very interesting to learn about that part of the world I’d never given much thought before.

Generally speaking, I enjoy a book that is a good read but also gives me a chance to learn something new or better or to at least stretch my imagination.  Many books related to my field of paying work (software development) and extracurricular interests can be very dry, but if there’s something from them added to a story, my ears perk up, although I do sometimes have to suspend belief with some stories to just enjoy them (e.g., semi-current-technology-based computer viruses or super-hacking). When I see those, though, my imagination considers a more believable backdrop and I begin thinking about what story I would write based on similar assumptions.

If you want to consider where such interests may have developed, my father read westerns (e.g., Louis L’Amour), my oldest sister read sci-fi, mysteries, and comics (e.g., Hitchcock, and old-era Wonder Woman), and my mother read romance (e.g., Harlequin).

From all my talks with male friends, I would say, though, that I am very atypical.  Very few are readers at all.