{"id":105942,"date":"2026-11-13T03:00:35","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T08:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=105942"},"modified":"2026-11-11T11:31:41","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T16:31:41","slug":"books-for-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/books-for-boys\/","title":{"rendered":"Books for boys"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I posted a meme on social media from Hopalong Ginsberg which I thought was a useful encapsulation of a long-standing problem in the publishing world — that publishers have been consciously neglecting the male reader, especially the young male reader, in favour of the female audience — and the often noted lack of interest among male students for reading assignments in school. I commented “It’s amazing to consider the power (mostly female) school teachers have to utterly destroy young males’ interest in reading anything<\/em>“:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On X, MeWe, and Gab, it got a few likes and that was it. On Substack Notes<\/em>, however, it got a lot of attention and commentary (mostly positive) and a few who took it as a personal attack or proof that there’s no anti-male bias in publishing today. It’s always eye-opening when audiences can get radically different interpretations from the same source.<\/p>\n

All that said, here’s something vittorio<\/a> posted to X which I think is also relevant:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

this is also why boys are reading so much less now that children’s publishing has become female dominated<\/p>\n

men write archetypes. women write about themselves.<\/p>\n

men write about heroes, villains, gods, monsters, extraordinary characters who embody something greater than themselves, heroes that boys can admire and aspire to become<\/p>\n

women write characters who look like them, think like them, have their problems and insecurities, characters they can identify with and project themselves onto<\/p>\n

men use writing as a vehicle for self-transcendence while women use it as a vehicle for self-recognition<\/p>\n

it’s the difference between wanting to become Batman and wanting Batman to become you<\/p>\n

it’s then obvious why boys craving the hero’s journey would rather retreat into video games than read yet another piece of autobiographical, gossip-filled, moralizing turboslop<\/p>\n

if you want boys to start reading again you need to let men write again<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I posted a meme on social media from Hopalong Ginsberg which I thought was a useful encapsulation of a long-standing problem in the publishing world — that publishers have been consciously neglecting the male reader, especially the young male reader, in favour of the female audience — and the often noted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32,66,28,53],"tags":[374,139,593,43,134],"class_list":["post-105942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-health-science","category-media","category-politics","tag-children","tag-psychology","tag-socialmedia","tag-women","tag-writing"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ryK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105942"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105996,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105942\/revisions\/105996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}