From RWA Librarian of the Year Jennifer Lohmann (can you tell I’m still giddy about that? NO? I will endeavor to be MORE SUPER EXTRA DOUBLE GIDDY) (Tomorrow. I am le tired) comes this link. It’s so fun and awesome, it’s the whole entry: Hot Guys Reading Books.
It was brought to her attention due to Jason Pinter’s post on (Huff)PoBooks about the fallacy that men don’t read. Now, the men I know absolutely do read. And I’ll be hiding around corners taking pictures of Hubby reading now. It’ll drive him nuts.
That was my birthday present, right? How did you know?! It’s exactly what I wanted!
Suddenly I’m seeing a bunch of women hanging around the local borders or B & N with their iPhones, snapping pics of guys while they read.
Nothing hotter than an intelligent man!!
Fantastic idea! Love the guy with the kitties straddling his shoulders and reading with him.
Hubby will read [sigh], but only tech manuals. No fiction [arghhh]! The first thing he does when a new product comes out of the box is snatch up the instruction manual and read it cover to cover. And I’ve come across him reading something like “HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS” and giggling. One day I’m going to try cutting the cover off of a romance novel and stuffing the guts inside the book jacket from a computer programming tome…
That’s pretty cool. Maybe I’ll submit a picture…
That might just become the favorite feed in my Google Reader Eye Candy folder. Or at least the most family friendly feed in there anyway. ;-D
*in awed voice*
Cat S, you mean you found one who reads the instructions? So it’s not another Holy Grail myth? They DO exist?
If you read Jason Pinter’s article, you’ll see that the title is misleading. It’s his rail against this commonly quoted misnomer and ends with:
Um…I’m posting this everywhere. My blog, my facebook, my twitter, everywhere!
It is true, most of us of the male persuasion don’t read a lot. I do, but I don’t think I count.
Either way, thank you for the lovely present. I think my computer screen has the outlines of my facial features imprinted forever on it. I was staring THAT hard. I was particularly enjoying the picture of the guy reading King, taken by Randall, who should have asked King guy out. Such drama, AND sexiness in a blog. :d
OMG, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! I do believe I need to submit some pics of my husband. 🙂
Cat S, I am a fan of nerdy-ness and your husband sounds wonderful. Don’t fret the lack of fiction reading, instead focus on the RAWR factor. 🙂
John J, of course you count!
Ugh, the HuffPo article rubs me the wrong way. All the generalizations—even if he is just setting them up to knock them down—are irritating, and I hate being asked to feel sorry for men because there are just no books at all in the whole world for them because Big Publishing is dominated by WOMEN!
I just took a master’s exam in French literature. My reading list was roughly 110 books, and of those, TEN were written by women. And that is after the faculty made a big effort to include women writers, I’m sure. I know the article is about the publishing industry today, and not literary history, but it’s all part of the big picture. I can’t be sorry that the publishing industry is dominated by women—which, by the way, I would like to see some real statistics on before I believe it with all my heart. And I can’t be sorry that, according to Pintner, men read less than women because there are no books available to them, due to previously mentioned shadowy woman-run publishing conspiracy, because that is a steaming pile of BS.
Many of the posters in the comments on that article agreed that literary history abounds in books with no girl-cooties on them. It’s only recent books that are contaminated.
I found the whole thing distasteful. And of course romance was roundly dissed by all.
I think I’ll just go look at some more hot guys reading…
Awww man! The site is blocked to me at work cuz it’s a “free-hosted site” Whatever. I have a secret though….. (tee hee) I know one computer with the blocks turned off. 😉
Somewhere, lost in the mists of time, is a picture of a male friend of mine reading a book called If I’m So Wonderful, Why Am I Still Single?
I must find it.
I love men who read. All my male friends read. Every single one of them. Which considering how differing they are in personalities that totally negates the article in Huffington. But I have a theory on that.
Personally I think it is a genre thing. Most of the men I know who read for enjoyment (vs tech/work related non-fiction) read NON-fiction (history or political or scientific) books. While their fictional reading tends to fall more into the science fiction, thriller, mystery, horror genre. And most of their authors cross easily over gender lines, (King, Koontz, Clancy for example.) So maybe the problem is 1. limiting the criteria to fiction, or 2. assuming that men don’t read the same books as women. ((BTW men totally read romance if they can hide it. My kid brother (now 40 with 3 kids) totally credits his success in dating to his stealing my romance novels in high school. He figured out, “okay women like to be talked to, and a man who shares feelings without being whimpy about it…got it” Yeah he used them as a dating primer!)