# Why do men not like fiction books as much? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 22, 2012, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768 "2012-05-22T23:14:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/81 "2012-05-25T20:29:32Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Of course they’re not. Any contest of skill is, by definition, non-fictional. It really is as simple as that. So you’re equating “fictional” with “staged entertainment”? Is a rock concert fictional? ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/82 "2012-05-25T20:43:29Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > So you’re equating “fictional” with “staged entertainment”? > > Is a rock concert fictional? A rock concert is a separate realm. From a strict fiction/non-fiction point of view, sports and music are both “non-fiction,” full stop. Plays are considered non-fiction, technically. But in the real world that’s not how these things work. A rock concert is a performance A sporting event is a contest of skill A play is a performance A dance recital is a performance A dance competition is a contest of skill The contests of skill are clearly “non-fiction” in the librarian sense of the word. But they are not “staged” in the real world sense of that word. Whereas performances are also “non-fiction” (to a librarian), but they are also “staged.” ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/83 "2012-05-25T20:59:04Z")
I think you’re confusing “staged” with “scripted”. A play or dance recital is **scripted** in the sense that everything that happens in it is (supposed to be) pre-determined. Whereas in a competition or sports game, it is not (supposed to be) pre-determined exactly what happens or how it ends. However, any type of show, including a competition or contest as well as a play or recital, may be **staged** in the sense of “presented for audience entertainment in a pre-arranged time and venue”. There’s another sense of “staged” meaning “faked” or “pretending to be spontaneous when it was actually scripted”, but that’s not the sense in which I’m using the word. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/84 "2012-05-25T21:10:39Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > There’s another sense of “staged” meaning “faked” or “pretending to be spontaneous when it was actually scripted”, but that’s not the sense in which I’m using the word. Then you need to choose a new word. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/85 "2012-05-25T23:25:12Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I think you’re confusing “staged” with “scripted”. You’re confused about sports in general. The games would be played **even without an audience** , and in fact this has happened at a major level reasonably recently when fans were barred from a soccer match for fear of violence. Sports are more **non-fiction** than other staged entertainment by virtue of being actual, honest-to-goodness competition. That’s why rock concert “results” (whatever that would mean) aren’t shown on the news. Here’s a simple litmus test: If you can bet real, actual money on something, then it’s real. > [@Kimstu](#): > > Well, that’s another example of the societal gender bias through which things that primarily interest males are automatically assumed to be more “real” or “important” than things that primarily interest females. Geez, bitter much? Women’s fluff is represented on the news too. It’s called entertainment reporting. > [@Kimstu](#): > > Again, though, this ultimately addresses the question of why men and women tend to favor **different themes** in fiction, not why men like a certain fictional **format** (i.e., printed text) less than women do. Why did we disallow the explanation that men are visual, women are verbal? ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/86 "2012-05-25T23:58:35Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Exapno isn’t the world’s greatest debater. He’s right until he grudgingly accepts that he might be wrong (at no time are you right). But as a public librarian, I think I have to side with him here. Over the last decade, girl protagonists have definitely reached parity with their male counterparts. Perhaps not in exact quantities, but the “phenomenon” books feature girls… > > The Hunger Games trilogy > The Twilight saga > The Harry Potter series (fun fact, Harry Potter actually has three stars: Harry, Ron, and Hermione) Is that actually siding with him, though? Because this doesn’t seem to support what **Exapno** was saying, and is actually pretty consistent with what I was saying earlier in the thread. As I indicated back in [post #12](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15091539&postcount=12), I would expect that the success of the _Twilight_ and _Hunger Games_ books has led to more YA books with female protagonists being published. While I have no idea what the current YA protagonist gender ratio is (I did some searching but couldn’t find any stats on this), it wouldn’t surprise me if in recent years it had become more or less evenly balanced. But this: > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Girls will read books with boy heroes; boys won’t read books with girl heroes: that gives girls twice as many books to read. These are giant glib generalizations and there’s a good chance they won’t survive because culture is changing to allow girls to be more active (girls are nuts about archery because of Katniss) and they are getting involved in traditionally male occupations and roles. and this: > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I’m talking about the collective experience of every child combined into a trend (not an absolute). Your experience is not a trend. No individual experience matters. There were girl hero books but you choose not to read them. Other girls did. sure don’t look like claims that “girls hero books” and “boy hero books” only became equally common within the past decade. Especially not since the “you” referred to in the second quote was **Lynn** , who’d said: > [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > That assumes an equal distribution of protagonists by sex. I don’t think this is the case. When I was a little girl, I mostly read books with boy heroes[…] While I’m not sure exactly how old **Lynn** is, I am fairly certain that when she was talking about being a little girl she was referring to a time prior to the publication of _Twilight_ (2005). Since I realize this is turning into a hijack, I want to tie this back to the OP’s question. (So the rest of this post isn’t directed at you, **Justin**.) I am skeptical about claims that men prefer non-fiction because boys don’t want to read fiction about girls and thus wind up less keen on fiction in general. If the vast majority of children’s fiction were about girls then maybe that would put boys off, but that’s not the case. There are plenty of books about boys. I also doubt that anyone inclined to enjoy reading fiction would be forever deterred by the mere existence of fiction that they personally found unappealing. No one reads _everything_. I mostly read fiction, but there are whole genres that I avoid. There are also people who stick mostly to a favorite fiction subgenre and read little else. The fact that, say, [cozy mysteries](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cozy_mystery) are only a small subset of all the novels in the world doesn’t stop fans from finding and reading the books they enjoy. If the existence of fiction about girls \*were \*enough to turn boys against fiction, why wouldn’t the existence of non-fiction about girls and traditionally feminine topics turn them against non-fiction? While I’m sure that many young boys are uninterested in “girl books” and/or would be afraid to be seen reading one, books like [this](http://www.amazon.com/Ballerina-Step---Step-Residents-America/dp/0756626684/) and this are non-fiction and obviously “girl books”. There are also “girl TV shows” and “girl movies”, but this doesn’t seem to have turned guys against those TV shows and movies that _are_ targeted at them. That said, I don’t have any brilliant alternate theory for why men tend to prefer non-fiction to fiction. I suggested some ideas earlier in the thread, but I don’t really know. It’s hard to say why anyone prefers anything. That’s not to say there aren’t reasons, just that they’re not necessarily obvious or easy to articulate. I’m a woman who prefers reading fiction, but I couldn’t say why women in general tend to prefer fiction or even why I prefer fiction. And it’s not like there aren’t _any_ men who prefer reading fiction, so there must be non gender specific reasons for such a preference. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/87 "2012-05-26T10:24:15Z")
> [@](#): > > While I’m not sure exactly how old **Lynn** is, I am fairly certain that when she was talking about being a little girl she was referring to a time prior to the publication of _Twilight_ (2005). I’m 54, and when I was growing up, I always heard that boys could be doctors, and girls could be nurses, and all that good stuff. And this was mostly reflected in the stories that I read. Not just the SF and fantasy stories, but the mundane stories as well, both kidlit AND the stuff intended for adults. I remember reading _Raising Demons_ or its sequel by Shirley Jackson, and how, when she was admitted to the hospital during childbirth, the nurses insisted on putting down that her occupation was “housewife”, rather than “writer”, as she kept telling them. At the time, I wondered why having the correct occupation put down was so important to her. Basically, women and girls in literature at that time served to be romantic interests or goals for guys, if the stuff was written for the general public. If the target audience was female, then the female main character (and let’s not call her a hero) was usually very interested in the males in the story, even if the book wasn’t a romance, there was a romantic element in it, that is, it was as though a female character wasn’t complete unless she was very interested in one or more males, even if she was studying to be a nurse or something. Compare that to the many, many stories that had only males, who apparently either had never heard of females or never thought about females. Sometimes a girlfriend or wife or mother would appear, usually to serve snacks, be threatened, or to protest tearfully that Our Hero mustn’t put himself in danger. Of course, Our Hero would jut his jaw and declare that it was his DUTY to go and fetch the national secrets or kill the bad guys or whatever, and that she shouldn’t worry her pretty little head about such things. There were a few exceptions, but VERY few. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/88 "2012-05-26T10:44:36Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > I’m 54, and when I was growing up, I always heard that boys could be doctors, and girls could be nurses, and all that good stuff. And this was mostly reflected in the stories that I read. Not just the SF and fantasy stories, but the mundane stories as well, both kidlit AND the stuff intended for adults. I remember reading _Raising Demons_ or its sequel by Shirley Jackson, and how, when she was admitted to the hospital during childbirth, the nurses insisted on putting down that her occupation was “housewife”, rather than “writer”, as she kept telling them. At the time, I wondered why having the correct occupation put down was so important to her. I think I can trace my enjoyment of female protaganists back to [Arkady Darell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkady_Darell) in Asimov’s “Second Foundation”, who I first encountered around the age of 13-14. I always thought Asimov wrote good female characters, at least in the context of the era in which he was writing. ---
**Author:** ![coolbyrne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bc79bd/32.png) [@coolbyrne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coolbyrne)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2012, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/89 "2012-05-27T05:00:29Z")
> [@Nunzio\_Tavulari](#): > > As to comic books, people over the age of 14 who read picture books about men in tights wouldn’t have been considered men when I was growing up. While I have no doubt that this was true for you… wow. At risk of hijacking the thread, I’d like to think times have changed somewhat and offer you this link: [500 Essential Graphic Novels](http://www.filmsquish.com/guts/?q=node/3727) Hopefully this will give you a different perspective regarding “picture books about men in tights” and perhaps even change your perspective about those who read them. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2012, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/90 "2012-05-27T06:02:44Z")
To be fair, it took the comic book companies _themselves_ 30+ years to realize that their product wasn’t just “kid stuff”. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2012, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/91 "2012-05-27T06:14:47Z")
Just counting the books on my iPad, I count: **11 non-fiction. 29 fiction.** Dude, here, who loves his fiction (and non-fiction) alike. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2012, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/92 "2012-05-28T02:05:57Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Man, I wish I could answer this in a sentence. And a thousand words from now so will you. A bit under 700 actually, and appreciated, thank you. > [@](#): > > Can I make it worse? Sure can. There are other marketing categories that may overlap. Technothrillers. Alternate History. Steampunk. Action-adventure. Tie-in books … > > So what is science fiction? Which of these categories and definitions do you use? It depends, it depends, it depends. Outside the industry, SF is still about spaceships. Inside, it’s a giant muddle of everything you can think of and more. Magic realism, anyone? So SF still skews strongly male… but only for certain values of “SF”? Fair enough. Probably still true then for the “spaceships” definition if that enompasses the “harder” end of SF and the military SF sub-genre, but I do take your point the demarkation lines get very blurry around the edges, (or overlap) of SF and F… and even other genres. How would one categorise a steampunk + comedy of manners + romance + vampire + werewolf series? ([Soulless](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soulless_(novel))and the rest of the Parasol Protectorate). (Thoroughly enjoyable is how I’d characterise it… but categorise it? Errm…) 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2012, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/93 "2012-05-28T15:24:54Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Then you need to choose a new word. I don’t think so. You seem to have been the only one who was confused by it. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2012, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/94 "2012-05-28T15:50:03Z")
> [@EllisDee](#): > > You’re confused about sports in general. The games would be played **even without an audience** , and in fact this has happened at a major level reasonably recently when fans were barred from a soccer match for fear of violence. No, an occasional and anomalous exception like that doesn’t really count. There are similarly bizarre circumstances (due to legal contractual obligations or whatnot) where a performance of a play may be given in the absence of an audience too, but that doesn’t mean that plays in general don’t require audiences. Likewise, professional sports also ultimately exists for the entertainment of audiences. It’s not that I don’t understand sports but rather that you don’t understand what an improvisational format in entertainment is. Just because there’s no way to know exactly what the ending of an improvisational entertainment event is going to be (and therefore you can bet on the various possible outcomes) doesn’t make the event somehow more “real” or less “artificial”. The whole structure of winning and losing, league standings, playoffs, championships, etc., is part of an artificially designed system to heighten drama and excitement for the fans. Sure, sincere competition and unscripted responses are built into this system just as they are into quiz shows, but that doesn’t make it any less in essence an artificial construct. > [@Ellis Dee](#): > > Sports are more **non-fiction** than other staged entertainment by virtue of being actual, honest-to-goodness competition. […] > > Geez, bitter much? Women’s fluff is represented on the news too. It’s called entertainment reporting. Not bitter at all. Just pointing out the simple fact that (as your own post makes very clear) sports are a form of entertainment that is generally not called entertainment. This is done in order to foster the illusion that sports are somehow more serious or important or “real” than other forms of entertainment. And in any case, if you agree with **Justin Bailey** that showing “actual, honest-to-goodness competition” makes sports more “non-fiction” than a scripted performance, then presumably you also agree with him that other “actual, honest-to-goodness competition” formats like dance competitions and quiz shows are also more “non-fiction” than a scripted performance. So if men liking to watch sports is supposed to indicate a general male preference for “reality” in their entertainment formats, then women liking to watch dance competitions must similarly indicate a female preference for such “reality” in entertainment too. > [@Ellis Dee](#): > > Why did we disallow the explanation that men are visual, women are verbal? Who’s disallowing it? ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/95 "2012-05-29T00:08:03Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > And in any case, if you agree with **Justin Bailey** that showing “actual, honest-to-goodness competition” makes sports more “non-fiction” than a scripted performance, then presumably you also agree with him that other “actual, honest-to-goodness competition” formats like dance competitions and quiz shows are also more “non-fiction” than a scripted performance. I do, absolutely, yes. > [@](#): > > So if men liking to watch sports is supposed to indicate a general male preference for “reality” in their entertainment formats, then women liking to watch dance competitions must similarly indicate a female preference for such “reality” in entertainment too. This just shows how out of touch you are when it comes to sports. If you really think that there is a comparable level of interest between men and sports and women and dance competitions, I wonder what color the sky is in your world. ---
**Author:** ![No\_Wikipedia\_Cites](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@No\_Wikipedia\_Cites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/No_Wikipedia_Cites)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/96 "2012-05-29T18:24:40Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > Hey, cool, I’ll have to look that up. Having been raised in an evangelical Christian environment, where reading fantasy was heavily discouraged on the grounds that it “promotes belief in witchcraft/monsters/false gods”, I liked the Gaiman quote because it summed up my personal feelings perfectly: fantasy stories are not claiming anything in them to be “real”, they’re using the concepts as _metaphors_ for real life. That the quote originated with a respected Christian writer is a beautiful bonus. I found the Elfand bit online, for anyone who cares: > [@](#): > > The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth. . . . But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales. If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of “Jack the Giant Killer”; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of “Cinderella,” which is the same as that of the _Magnificat—exaltavit humiles_. There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/97 "2012-05-29T19:19:23Z")
I pretty much read non-fictionup to about 9th grade. I did read some fiction, like Tom Swift, but 90%+ non-fiction. Why? Well, it was long ago…and I was CURIOUS about…things. I can even recall the rough order. 2nd grade - Bugs…nature…frogs…ponds…bugs…ants…bees…bugs…snakes…bugs. This curiousity carried over into physical exploration some of which makes me cringe to this day. I look back on myself and wonder if I was a narrowly averted serial killer…but I don’t think so as it was driven by curiosity and not hate or wanting to see suffering. I still remembering getting into an ‘argument’ with a teacher about an anthill having only one queen. I knew they had more because I had been digging them up and snagging queens for some time. he did apologise after talking to a friend of his that was a biology prof. 4th grade - SPACE! and DINOSAURS! I know all 9 planets and their moons…all 12 of Jupiters and all 9 of Saturn’s :D. Dinosaurs…man…they were COOL. read every book on them I could find. 6-9th grade and, well never really stopped - World War I and II. 10th grade - 12th - Space again…but more of a cosmology and physics slant. Big Bang, Black Holes and all that. Even took shit for reading a book entirely about Neutrinos. Also, History, particularly military but more ancient. Greek, Roman that sort of thing. Also took a shining to ancient military weaponry and would try to build them. Built a catapult (didn’t work the greatest) but my ballistae was probably really, truly dangerous. While I read fiction, It didn’t really become \>50% until late 20’s. To summarize…as a boy I was curious about the world. I wanted to know how it worked. Fiction doesn’t get you that. Books on ‘things’ do. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/98 "2012-05-29T23:43:44Z")
I’ve taken the opposite tack: I simply find most fiction today to be hugely deriviative (talking specifically about fantasy & sci-fi), and the last few times I’ve tried to give such a novel a go I’ve become immensely bored pretty quickly. Non-fiction by contrast (and by definition) has a much broader scope, and I can find an enjoyable non-fiction yarn if I want to (expeditions to dangerous places and such). ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2012, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/99 "2012-05-30T00:54:54Z")
As an English teacher, I have spent a lot of time thinking about this issue. The divide is not between fiction and non-fiction. It’s between _narrative_ and _non-narrative_. In my experience, some people are not at all interested in narrative. Other people are so interested in narrative that they never even see anything else. Non-Narrative people tend to, IME, avoid narrative across media: they read non-fiction and not biographies or memoirs, watch sports and documentaries, listen to instrumental music. They are, in my experience as an English teachers, somewhat more likely to be boys than girls, but not overwhelmingly so. I teach a course called AP English Language. It is supposed to focus on non-fiction and rhetoric. IME, many English teachers (who, by and large, are narrative types) end up finding all sorts of narrative non-fiction for their kids to read. It’s like the non-narrative stuff (especially if it’s book length) doesn’t register as “Literature” and isn’t deserving of serious study. The test is you ask them “What is _Walden_ about?” and if they start out with “Well, Thoreau decides to leave civilization and see . . .”, they are a narrative teacher. If they say “Man’s interaction with society . . .” they are a non-narrative type. I try really hard to be a non-narrative English teacher because I think a lot of the non-narrative types think they are intellectually lacking because they “don’t like to read” when in fact they really don’t care about _story_. They like words and ideas. As to why this is more common with boys? I think it probably goes back to the whole idea that women are socialized to think that relationships (not just romantic, but more broadly interpersonal) are the point of everything else. I think it’s more that some people need a story to give value to context than it is that other people can’t value context if it’s cluttered up by story. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2012, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/100 "2012-05-30T01:10:16Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > The divide is not between fiction and non-fiction. It’s between _narrative_ and _non-narrative_. In my experience, some people are not at all interested in narrative. Other people are so interested in narrative that they never even see anything else. > > Non-Narrative people tend to, IME, avoid narrative across media: they read non-fiction and not biographies or memoirs, watch sports and documentaries, listen to instrumental music. They are, in my experience as an English teachers, somewhat more likely to be boys than girls, but not overwhelmingly so. I think you may be right, to draw the distinction between narrative and non-narrative. > [@](#): > > I teach a course called AP English Language. It is supposed to focus on non-fiction and rhetoric. IME, many English teachers (who, by and large, are narrative types) end up finding all sorts of narrative non-fiction for their kids to read. It’s like the non-narrative stuff (especially if it’s book length) doesn’t register as “Literature” and isn’t deserving of serious study. The test is you ask them “What is _Walden_ about?” and if they start out with “Well, Thoreau decides to leave civilization and see . . .”, they are a narrative teacher. If they say “Man’s interaction with society . . .” they are a non-narrative type. > > I try really hard to be a non-narrative English teacher because I think a lot of the non-narrative types think they are intellectually lacking because they “don’t like to read” when in fact they really don’t care about _story_. They like words and ideas. Thank you for this. I myself love both narrative and non-narrative works, but I never read much, if any, non-narrative literature in any of the English classes I had (high school or college). It was only after I graduated that I discovered collections of essays, anthologies like [The Borzoi Reader](http://www.amazon.com/Borzoi-College-Reader-Charles-Muscatine/dp/0070441669/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338339503&sr=1-1-spell) and [The Norton Reader](http://www.amazon.com/The-Norton-Reader-Anthology-Nonfiction/dp/0393931730/ref=sr_1_38?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338339613&sr=1-38), and things like that and discovered how much I really enjoyed and appreciated those non-narrative sorts of literature. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768.md?page=4)