/lit/ - Literature

>>22852511
*fewer

Reading Young Adult fiction/pop psychology is worse than not reading at all. I'd chalk this up as a W for dudes.

I've read some books that gained popularity on tiktok and enjoyed some of them
>amazing
Aurora Cycle series
Vow of Thieves
Sky in the Deep
Master of Iron
Tweet Cute
Blade of Secrets
>great
Today, Tonight, Tomorrow
Namesake
Daughter of the Siren Queen
When in Rome
Six of Crows
Daughter of the Pirate King
Warrior of the Wild
>good
Dance of Thieves
Fable
Under One Room
Better Than the Movies
Saint
Stuck With You
The Love Hypothesis
>okay
Defy the Night
The Last Legacy
The Girl the Sea Gave Back
Love on the Brain
>bad
Defend the Dawn
Sorcery of Thorns
>garbage
The Hating Game
Normal People
Anything by Collen Hoover

>women
Buying new hardback copies of books shilled to them on tiktok
>men
Buying secondhand paperback copies of Mein Kampf from ebay or reading the epub on their phone.

>>22852511
I thought people hated Donna Tartt for not having enough colored characters.

>>22852511
When men read, they read classics. Men aren't interested in whatever stupid trendy YA shit is on "booktok."

>>22852511
Men aren't paying for books, for starters, and the publishing industry has been catering more and more exclusively to women for 30 years now, which tanked any interest in contemporary lit long before the mass exodus of male readers. Fantasy was the bellwether. The publishing industry did it when trying to recover from an all time low readership in the 90s and instead lost half their readership entirely.

>>22852511
They don't find the need to decorate their shelf with books they don't read just to make a video to wank how well read they are to other men.

men moved on to comic books decades ago, today it's vidya

>>22852536
Realistically, I suspect this is the reality of the thing. I believe women are mostly buying YA novels, cheap fiction, and the ubiquitous classics shilled to them via Tiktok. I suspect many of these purchases are made for shallow purposes. I also suspect men are more inclined to read serious literature and that they probably often just download free epubs, though I don't think most men are reading serious literature either.

>>22852511
Because the overwhelming majority of books that women buy are retarded YA novels, and as a result that's what sells the most these days.

They're no better off watching some corny Netflix series. They both pretty much hold more or less the same intellectual value.

>>22852511
Men don't buy books because for women, books are basically disposable fashion. Books, like clothing, are expensive but have extremely low resale value.

When a man buys clothing, he buys it because it has use and will use it until it wears out. Women buy clothing because it looks nice. The same with books.

When a man buys a book, he buys it because it wants it long-term, and like clothing he buys it less because he doesn't view it as a fashion item.

>>22852511
Men are dumb, pathetic weaklings.

>>22852511
could you have posted a shittier screenshot

>>22852511
lol those aren’t real books

>>22852664
This nigga buys his clothes at Walmart kekekek

>>22852529
You're in the wrong place femoid

>>22852511
this is the biggest problem with literature today and by extension the reason for this board's decline. men just don't fucking read.

>>22852511
Women use books as decorations, men read them then pass them on. So either they use libraries or they get secondhand copies.
Unless you need to reference it there's not much point in keeping a book. And there's no reason to get a first hand copy unless it's a new release and you really just can't wait.

>>22852511
Because philosophy ended and we invented the greatest form of art possible (the video game).

Or maybe you can just buy used books.

>all agents and publishers are women
>they all push young adult, feminist, LGBTQ crap
>they're still hunting for "the next Harry Potter." A series only women care about.
>there are zero white male authors under the age of 40
>any white male with a book proposal is told "there's no market for that"
>because they intentionally destroyed the market!
>all awards and nominations go to LGBTQs, jews, and feminists
>any author or book remotely "problematic," containing a whisper of the word "nigger," or is just "too white," gets canceled, blacklisted, censored, or erased from history: Shakespeare, Homer, Flannery O'Connor, whoever.
Yeah, I wonder why boys dont buy as many books. It's almost like they've been systemically excluded from literature. Oh wait!

>>22852511
Because it doesn't cater to them in the first place. If we had more books praising Hitler on the New York times bestseller list that would change overnight

When are people going to realize this isn't at all unique to publishing/books but is a overall consumerism trend where everything being sold is being targeted towards women because they are by far the biggest consumers and the gap is only widening? Why is there zero discussion of well researched statistics that place women at over 60% of consumer purchases?

>>22853264
>Why is there zero discussion of well researched statistics that place women, blacks, yuppies, wiggers, and fags at over 60% of consumer purchases?
FTFY

>>22852511
Tartt's okay. Stephen King's the real horror show, at least Michael Crichton is dead.

>>22852511
If women only read the books men read there'd be a lot less female readers. I.e. they read trash mostly. So do most men, but not as much as most women.

I pirate my books and use the funds in cryptocurrencies

>>22852511
I try to limit my purchases of physical books to those I wish to make permanent additions to my library. The majority of books added to my library are added, for free, to my Kindle, from Gutenberg.org - a marvelous website.

>>22852536
I've printed and DIY hardcover bound Kaczinsky, Hitler, Milton, Gaddafi and various other hard to get works. The versions you CAN buy tend to be garbage or get you on a tracking list.

Honestly, unless you really enjoy e-reading, I recommend learning basic book binding. Costs almost nothing and you end up with a pretty good product in the end.

>>22853264
Bingo. They’re starting to do this with video games too. Almost every online game that comes out nowdays has the cute skins/cosmetics for women because guys just won’t spend money on worthless shit quite like a woman will. Women be shopping bro

>>22852527
Delusionalllllllll

>>22852511
>>22852527
>>22852536
>>22852623
>>22852544
>>22852554
>>22852583
>>22852663
>>22852664
>>22852799


Every man in this thread pretending like women don't read across all genres more than men today, including classics.

Video games. That is literally your answer. Men play video games.

>>22853489
Most of the engineers I know do not read at all, they just play games. In fact, out of all the men I know who went to university, there are not many that read. Again, games or some shitty TV show. Of course, this is excluding any autists I know.

>>22852511
Too busy ready hmofa stories on ao3 to read physical books. Only reason i would get one nowadays would be if assignment risk or something like that got a physical release.

>>22852511
None of the books men want to read are allowed to be sold in "free countries"

>>22852664
Partially this, I mostly read at my city's library (at which I got a free membership because I donate blood regularly), and if I fall in love with a book, I'll buy it.
On the other hand most of my female friends who call themselves "avid readers"(kek) just buy another slop every other week and it's always something clearly designed to sit upon a shelf - cover is some tiktok illustration or some such, always some YA-stuff or pop-psych. Moderns female's obsession with pop psych 101 is especially funny as those same womemes react to Jung like vampires to a cross.

However the other part has to be the general state of modern man, and that is a beast in captivity. As such, he will prefer numbing himself in porn and videogames to actual engagement with the world - and if you don't engage with literature, whatever you read turns to slop.

>>22852675
We actually have to work for our money and aren’t simped for or given make work jobs that won’t exist once the economy crashes. When the big collapse happens women will be screaming about sexism as they are laid off in much greater proportion due to their jobs being worthless.

>>22852511
Men buy non-fiction overwhelmingly and usually don't read fast-fiction books which you would buy but rather read online ie royalroad, light novels etc. So one of the biggest markets of books for men don't exist physically. Nobody will buy a Japanese light novel or Chinese Xianxia because they are read almost purely online for a Western audience. Most men aren't reading Classics, neither are women. It's just the medium which men and women read from are very different.

Let's take a look at the best sellers of 2023
>feminist gender-bent Eragon ripoff
>"marginalized voices" book about jews and african americans being oppressed
>boomer thriller crap
>feminist reality tv girls in STEM romantic nonsense
>Liz Cheney memoir
>Britney Spears memoir
>Barbra Streisand memoir
>Matthew Perry memoir
oh look, there's one book about a shipwreck maybe boys will like that.

>>22853632
The kind of men who would read online asian slop instead of classics are closer to women mentally and probably even below average physically.

>>22852511
I read politics and history on my kindle in bed at night, Im never moving to a bookstore to buy a 20$ book that I can read comfortably with 1 hand in the dark

>>22853489
There is plenty or market data that says you are wrong.

Seriously I challenge you to pull up any data that supports your argument.

>>22852511
I blame vidya. Men bullying girl gamers for 2 decades did women a huge service when it comes to general intelligence. This trend can also be seen in higher education.

>>22852512
Because men dont read.
They proofread.

Do you understand?

>>22852529
kys

>>22852511
In the average bookstore, there might be 5 books I'm interested in, and 3 of those are probably typo-ridden toilet paper reprints of classics I've already read, with the last 2 being a new Houellebecq or nobel poet or something hidden on a bottom shelf in the corner. My local library does not carry Homer, but does have a section for children, a section for immigrants, and a section for shitty movies. In school, our options for reading were restricted to gossipy middle school love dramas or "tough" stories about soccer players. When we were taught about Shakespeare, we did so through childrens' film adaptations. We spent a whole year on the Hunger Games, stretching across three classes.

How is a man even to get into literature these days? If he looks, he sees nothing there for him. During our whole adolescence it is over and over hammered into us that literature is sappy, silly, tedious girls' stuff. I maintain that the establishment of reading as being mainly for women is what causes more women to read, and not the other way around. The moment I found my way to actual literature, through Kingsnorth's The Wake and then Moby Dick, I was forever trapped, but I had no realistic chance of exposure to these things outside online subculture.

>>22852529
Why are you on tiktok?

>>22853959
Fuck off trip faggot (and you can't even trip correctly) you don't speak for men.

>>22852511
They read less than women .... so they buy less books

>>22853489
no proof?

>>22853575
>I mostly read at my city's library (at which I got a free membership because I donate blood regularly)
i cannot tell if this is satire

>>22852511
Only effeminate men read. When was the las time you saw a chad hold a book? The only popular muscle guy on /lit/ is a japanese midget who literally sucked cock

Men are dropping out of this civilization in general. They work and socialize only reluctantly. They are basically sucked into pornography and video games for most of their leisure time.

Reading has never been popular fwiw. It has always been a minority that was reading a lot and was cultured. But nowadays, that minority has largely disappeared. Nobody is interested in literature. I don’t blame them. Literature can be downright depressing. Try reading Parsifal and the Nibelungenlied or the Count of Monte Cristo and The Great Gatsby or Moby Dick and Lord of the Rings and then go think about the world that informed that book relative to your world.

>>22854167
It's common in Europe. I heard that mutts sell their blood, it's illegal where I live, some people here donate blood to hospitals for free. It probably gets sold for huge money to some jews anyway and all you get for 0.5L of your blood is a bar of chocolate and a day of paid leave, but whatever, maybe some of it will genuinely go to a kid with leukemia or something.

If you donate a specific amount like 5-16L total you get certain benefits, like not having to wait at the doctors office, free or heavily discounted public transport, etc.

>>22854199
You live in a hermetically sealed bubble

>>22854202
Christ. You're a citizen, you shouldn't have to literally offer your blood to get access to the services you, a taxpayer, directly pay for and even staff. The institution exists to serve you. This is disgusting, really, I feel repulsed that a government, as corrupt as I know they are, would consider this. Christ. BTW, your blood is likely going to a gang member.

t. eurocuck

>tiktok is bad because... it just is ok!!

>>22852511
Wheres the 4chan chart???

>>22854236
Slag detected

>>22853525

Thats the answer

Men don't read book because they havent gotten into as kids and played videogames and still play it because getting into reading when you're 25+ is harder.

>>22854236
Dumb zoomer

>>22854236
Watch Moon's videos on the subject, it's literally brain rot.

>>22852511
Buying books is for suckers.

>>22853661
This gives me so much hope.

>>22854248
>>22854252
>>22854260
Giga boomers
The only good video content being made is on tik tok now. Have fun with your dying YouTube channels and bitchute tranny videos

>>22853956
>Men bullying girl gamers
Lmao men simp for girl gamers, men pretend to be girl gamers just for special treatment

>>22853489
>Every man in this thread pretending like women don't read across all genres more than men today, including classics.
That just hasn't really been my experience. I know and have met few women who read, even fewer who read classics and nonfiction, but most of my male friends read.

>le women don't read books they just pretend
>why don't I have a gf??!???!!!! >:(

>canceled, blacklisted, censored, or erased from history: Shakespeare, Homer, Flannery O'Connor
?

>>22853489
most women I have met who are "readers" read modern fiction, and modern feminists philosophy. I have certainly never met a modern woman who reads the classics, unless you consider Little Women a classic. But even that they interprept theough a far left feminist lens and miss most of the point.

>>22853525
most of my engineering friends read sci-fi

>>22854323
I have a gf who reads, though not as much as I do.

>>22852511
>Why are men buying less books
*Fewer

>>22854349
Same. Which is why I'm confused why so many people are claiming women pretend to read as a fashion statement. It's like their only "interaction" with women is following insta models and e-whores.

>>22854323
>>22854337
>>22854368
Fuck off, go back

>>22854393
Newfaggot

>>22854401
Try harder to fit in, retard. Christmas fucking sucks here

>>22854393
You incels are the newfag children here, go the fuck back to rddit where you came from.

>>22854440
Only incels are human, sex havers have all been corrupted

>>22852583
But we do that here but the time. What does that say about us?

>>22854474
You have to genuinely be such a full blown retard to be unable to have sex in the current era. Like serious troubling autism.
Your opinions are of the least value, sped.

>>22854440
Your little reverse trick doesn't work on me you cunt. Stop shitting up our board and go make a tiktok

>>22854368
I'm actually one of the people saying women often usually only read as a fashion statement. My girlfriend would probably reluctantly agree with me after a brief rebuke. It's just been my experience that women generally don't read much. I don't think men or women in general read as much as they probably should, but it has been my experience that men read more and they tend to read more serious literature than women in general.

The publishing industry is almost 100% women selling to women, but somehow this doesn't stop them from complaining about men any chance they get.

>>22854495
>doesn't even know the board history of incels coming to 4chan after r/incels got shutdown
Go back, kid

>>22854493
>has to lie to himself against statistical data but thinks his opinions are worthwhile
Typical worthless corrupted sex haver, women have rendered you inert

>>22854518
>references an r/ page
>uses incel unironically
You've outed yourself faggot

post purchasing statistics broken down by genre first

>>22853991
>We spent a whole year on the Hunger Games, stretching across three classes.
how in the fuck does that trash merit it?

>>22852511
>you need to buy my b-ACK!
I haven't paid for a book in 5 years. I keep everything on a 13 inch tablet. Choosing to read on paper in 2023 is a wholly aesthetic choice.

>>22854520
>autism
>>22854521
You are the incel that doesn't belong

>>22854612
Like I said, try harder to fit in because it's not working right now kek keep replying faggot

Men read less. Its a middle-class, feminine past time.

>>22852511
Men are smart enough to pirate.

>>22853264
This. The primary reason women and blacks are shilled to is because they're almost perfect consumer cattle. They will buy garbage if it is marketed towards them.

>>22852511
As others have said, men don't read that much. Out of my friends, there is only a couple I know that read regularly (and one has stopped reading alot due to work).

I read fairly often, yet my wife reads more books than I do. I tend to get older books, particularly from ebay, half price books, goodwill, etc. If I get a new copy it's because the price is comparable to a used book. Regardless it's always something that's a reprint of an older book.

My wife tends to get new books. And I don't just mean new copies of old books, I mean new/semi new releases. Not that it matters. She can read new books, I'll read old. There's plenty of stuff to read that interests me where I don't have to get a book written in the last 3 years. I don't need an author to write a book for me

>>22854260
Moon is actual brain rot. If you watch him, your opinion is automatically invalid. SCHIZO

>>22854485
We aren't men.

>>22854681
>watch two or three tiktoks
there, that's all you need to know it's brain rot
if you can't tell immediately then you were stupid in the first place. No jewtuber or analysis required

>>22853661
>Liz Cheney
says everything about how astroturfed the ''''market'''' is. Nobody on any side of the political spectrum cares what Liz Cheney of all people has to say, certainly not enough to make her crap a bestseller.

>>22853661
Now do the books that won awards in Canada in the last couple years...

>>22853469
never heard of tf2 and csgo? or fortnite and whatever shooter kids play these days?

I am a man who reads daily but the publishing industry doesn't know about me because I get all my books from thrift stores, ebay, or zlibrary.

>>22854622
Turbo newfag

>>22852664
>Books are fashion for women
This is the answer. They do it for attention and buy whatever is trendy, no matter what that is. Just like clothing, music, jewelry, bfs etc.
Whatever is shilled to them, whatever is front and center marketed to them (which is always disgusting slop).
I am a buyer of books, but not for the aforementioned reasons.

>>22854539
>how in the fuck does that trash merit it?
When does merit have anything to with anything anymore?

Books have just replaced porn for women
women fantasie about wealth and cuckolding instead of just sex

the kinds of books women read are exactly the same as anime/manga, the books women buy are just wish fullfilment bottom of the barrel stuff

nearly every new book printed is just porn for women that doesn't appeal to men at all

>books suck more
>men buy fewer books
>industry targets women
>books suck more

>>22854322
>>22854337

To respond anecdotally, i'm (unlike most cucks in here) a poet as my full-time job and know countless women who read classics and literary fiction.

The literary world of today is obviously full of women, and those women are actually not the weird monolith that virgins on here imagine. The men in the literary world are also no monolith, but on average they are exponentially less weird and neurotic than the average /lit/ poster seems to be. This is my first time on this site in a few years, I'm astounded at how few of you have probably ever attended a reading.

>>22852511
Catch-22. Books aren't targeted towards men because men don't read, and men don't read because books aren't targeted towards them. It's a very devious scheme, Milo would be proud.

>>22852511
>Why are men buying less books than women?
On average, men are more technically competent, which naturally means that men are more aware of how easy it is to pirate things, including books.
t. wanted to see what the deal was with Twilight, but did not buy it
However, this also applies to young people. They are less technically competent because smartphones don't teach you anything about computers or the Internet, so they are less likely to know basic facts about piracy.
This is just one reason
>though

>>22855138
This thread is more about the average reader than it is "the literary world." I don't think anyone would disagree women are overrepresented as authors these days, but that's a different discussion and there may be a multitude of factors as to why that is.

women be shoppin

>>22853661
>there's one book about a shipwreck
The Wager is a great fucking book

>>22852511
Because 99% of books are crap and men are more discerning

>>22852529
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoovFgLCgXs

From my experience, the women who read will read a lot and not take a lot of time to digest the things they've read. Men will read less but may dwell longer on a single book.

>>22853489
Normie woman read YA while normie men just play videogamies. In my experience, both sexes read proper literature if well educated

>>22855590
yeah this is the most accurate actually

>>22854708
There is a surprising amount of old white women who have been buying that memoir. Ages 50-90. They'd get pissy too if we sold out of them, so I'm assuming she's a icon to them.
t. works at a b&n

>>22854708
>this
I believe that these books are an elaborate means to launder money or pay political allies. This is similar to how the art scene is a poorly veiled money laundering operation.

>>22855613
>I believe that these books are an elaborate means to launder money
nta
but to be honest I'd recently been speculating on the use of publishing as a means to launder money.
I'd been thinking at a much smaller scale than this to be honest but now that you mention it it does make lot of sense to be used this way too.
And e-books would be something like free money printers.

My theory had just been that if you had some untaxed wealth you needed to make legal you could just pay it to yourself using purchasing of something trivial you produced. I've not really thought about this topic much before sorry if it's a little naive.

>>22852511
>buying
maybe more men are torrenting or using the public library, book stores cater very much to women

>>22855138
I knew all you spastics come back for christmas
The quality of posts always decline around this time. So many holier than thou redditor cunts shitting up the board.

>>22853455
>The versions you CAN buy tend to be garbage or get you on a tracking list.
If you're not on a list, what's the point of living?

>>22853455
You can get---decent is the wrong word---nice looking print on demand books handbound from India. Beautiful leather covers over the usual vedic toilet paper blocks.

>>22852511
Donna Tartt went viral on Tiktok? That explains why she gets posted here so much. Fucking faggots.

Bookstores have changed.

There is a really large bookstore here which had absolute GEMS when I was a kid/teenager.
Half my shelf I still have as an adult is from them.
They even regularly carried foreign language books if there was no translation, many of my early english books came from them.

Now? Terrible goyslop. New York Times bestsellers, self help books, etc.

I walked through that store 2-3 times, out of nostalgia, hoping I might discover something worth picking up, but they simply do not cater to me as an audience anymore.
I literally have to go online and get the ebook.

gender warriors are fags and belong against a wall.

>go to google
>type: "[book title] [author's last name] pdf"
>read the first pdf I find
Why would I buy books when I can just do this? Half the stuff I read is public domain anyway. If I'm feeling fancy, I'll go to the library for a hardcopy. If bookstores want me to patronize them, maybe they should sell more than just knickknacks, board games, and airport novels.

>>22856457
>Why would I buy books when I can just do this?

That doesn't work most of the time. You must be under the influence and meant to write libgen.

>>22852778
A sane man can buy good-looking clothing that lasts a lifetime, I don't know what is your point

>>22852511
>Buying books
Imagine

>>22852529
kys

>>22855635
Its an open secret in the industry. You should look into how much the Obama's got paid for their shitty memoirs.

>>22854309
>The only good video content being made is on tik tok now.
Like what?

>>22852527
>Reading Young Adult fiction/pop psychology is worse than not reading at all
Hot take: it’s better than reading about antiquated philosophy, anything from the meme trilogy or the history of corn.

>>22854309
Shit bait

>>22855138
> I'm astounded at how few of you have probably ever attended a reading.
Why should I pay attention to an average and remarkless female anymore?

>>22855138
Good bait, shitface

It requires intelligence and a lower time preference to find books online for free than fucking buying them

>>22854518
>unironic internet history revisionism
Just kill yourself

>>22853991
Basically same here. I started getting into literature in my mid 20s and it's due to all the self-help slop they shilled a couple of years ago. Then I somehow stumbled onto Evola and now I'm reading Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and planning to read many other classics.

Meanwhile in high school, we just read garbage. Nothing about it was attractive or interesting to me, which is why I spent too much time on video games instead.

Online I've met some femoids who are more into /lit/ stuff than I am. Nothing too autistic, but just classic lit and poetry. But yeah it's probably more rare than someone on this board losing their virginity.

>>22852511
Why buy something you can get a superior version of at the library? I'm a woman btw. But I do notice that liberal women is who the current market is aimed at.

>>22852511
You need free time for reading. Women in general have more of it.

>>22853661
That fact that anyone thinks Liz Cheney is someone to look up to or a feminist icon makes me feel disgusted. What kind of morons would read it?

>>22852511
I'm not paying $20+ per book when I can get them for free at the library

>>22852511
video games idk

>>22852527
I'd love to read fantasy or historical fantasy. But the entire genre is co opted by women writing either ya or romance with a fantasy veneer or some struggle literature.

Honestly there needs to be a place for men to actually express themselves artistically.

#1. Women are the zoloft-zombified footsoldiers of capitalism
#2. They read books that they can finish in a day
#3. They buy certain coloured books so they can fill their colour coded bookshelves from Ikea for aesthetic purposes

Don't most girls just read generic fantasy romance/smut nowadays?
And most guys just don't read at all.

I don't know if one is better than the other. I think both girls and guys are becoming more retarded.

>>22857340
How, exactly? Regardless of what you think of those books, you would at least need to use your brain slightly to parse a sentence or two, or look up antiquated vocabulary, whereas with Teenager Magic Apocalypse Fantasy Romance 9 or How To F*ck Your Life The Badass Way, you're reading at, at best, a 9th grade level with so much repetition that no cognitive ability is needed on your part since the same point will be rephrased at least half a dozen times, followed by a "humorous" anecdote that supposedly ties into the point being made.

>>22852529
All garbage for women and gay, low IQ men

>>22852529
YWABAW

Women have their romance novels which is a gateway into books. It's marketed as such and no one has a problem with that. The only way to get men to come back to books is by doing a hardcore marketing campaign around a genre of male-centric books that target young male readers. But this will never, ever happen.

Posters here are right about video games taking control of young men's minds and that's because even today video games aren't ashamed of marketing themselves towards a male audience. There are tons of male-centric gateways into video games that simply don't currently exist with books.

>>22855256
underrated. most bitches just buy to instagram them and never touch a single page

>>22857022
I don't know how to even check this sort of thing

>>22859231
The short of it it, without digging up a wall of text I hopefully deleted, Influential Asshole does shady shit and passes some bills, Influential Asshole retires. IA writes a book. Various groups that benefited from IA's legislation buy a ton of books and pay IA "speaking fees" for seminars and keynotes at their companies and whatnot. It's money laundering.