What are you reading now?

[smittims]

Your post does indeed confirm my suspicion that we are at cross-purposes. My original post was simply my opinion, my view, posted on a message board . You seem to be taking it as some sort of decision-making parliament or court of law where I must satisfy your questions , prove my point or walk the walk of shame. I wasn't asking you to respond to a case. I'm not expecting you to do anything. I'm simply saying that I have found that there is such a genre of fiction and I disapprove of it for the reasons I gave. I mentioned several writers you are free to read if you wish. I also stressed that they don't typify female novelists in that there are others who write more fairly. Deborah Moggach for instance is unquestionably a feminist but not a biased or untruthful one.

To produce the evidence you demand would involve quite a bit of work, I'd have to find the books (and I don't know where they are now) and re-read them making notes as I went, not a task I relish.

If you disagree with what I say I'd be interested to see your reasons for believing that those writers are truly impartial , e.g what proportion of strong male characters and deceitful weak female characters they prortray, if any. I didn't find any.

[french frank]

So I think we've come to the end of the road in terms of discussion on this topic. My bad (as they say). It's just my natural temperament to query any opinion which I find questionable. I thought that was at the very heart of any discussion forum.

If you disagree with what I say I'd be interested to see your reasons for believing that those writers are truly impartial , e.g what proportion of strong male characters and deceitful weak female characters they prortray, if any. I didn't find any.

How many novels and which ones do I have to read? I wouldn't know where to start. Again, you expressed an opinion which I queried. Of course, you are not bound to respond or answer the query at all but this seems to me to be the natural sequence: assertion - query/challenge - explanation/evidence/proof - thank you, satisfaction, ah, I see your point, yes I agree with you. But we can let this topic rest now.

[smittims]

How many you read is up to you but I did list some novelists in my message above (3685) which would be a start. There are, I regret to say, many more. Clearly this type of book sells.

[french frank]

How many you read is up to you but I did list some novelists in my message above (3685) which would be a start. There are, I regret to say, many more. Clearly this type of book sells.

You must publish your thesis on the subject, since clearly you have undertaken to read all this unsuitable literature for some academic reason. Why else would a man want to read so many novels clearly not targeted on him? I would rather listen to teenage pop music so that I could declare it musically without value and a pernicious social influence on the young.

[Ian Thumwood]

This is an interesting debate but I feel too generalised. It intrigues me who books are written for or indeed how long it is intended to remain in the market. As a teenager I loved Wilbur Smiths books and my Mum would often read them afterwards. I am sure he would have been a writer with more appeal to men than women and this would be more the case now.

I do not think that generalising about who the books are written for matters. Smiths books are of their time and I am not sure if anyone reads him now. They were good stories yet I think the strong female characters are there for male titillation and I was always surprised just how many women I knew liked his books. They are sexist and the violence, sex scenes and general tone of the novels would tend to suggest they were written for a male audience. Given that some of the books feature stuff that would appeal.to younger adults, you would have thought that no woman would want to read Smith but I think women made up alot of his audience. I am not convinced that you can always split the market for books quite so easily. I therefore feel that the market is more ambiguous.

I have never read any chic lit. The closest I have come is 'The girl in the train ' which was enjoyable but a bit shallow. With marketing more prominent nowadays, I feel that books have been more polarised in who they are aimed at but there are still plenty of books that I feel are ambiguous. Are the likes of William Boyd, ian McEwan , Hilary Mantel or Kate Atkinson not writing for men and women.

As a bloke, I think it is fascinating to read female writers. I would recommend Claudia Pineiro s .' Betty boo' as a brilliant example of how a book by a foriegn woman can write something that appeals to men. The dialogue is demonstrably from a female perspective and the dialogue seems very accurate. It is just a well written story. In my opinion, this is a book i would recommend to blokes even though it is t
written largely from the point of view of a woman.

[french frank]

This is an interesting debate but I feel too generalised.

I agree with the sentiment. The problem is that generalisations are imprecise but they are very easy to make. According to one website, the nine most violent novels of 'literary fiction' are all by men. Do they appeal only to men? I don't know. Do women write novels of violence? No idea. I suspect that most 'best seller' novelists are doing it for the money, writing for the hordes of snappers-up of unconsidered trifles.

[Petrushka]

I would hazard a guess that women writers make up a sizeable portion of those who were, and perhaps still are, prominent in detective and crime fiction. Think especially of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh in the early days. I devoured their books in the late 60s. Helen McInnes wrote some decent thrillers at around the same time, The Salzburg Connection perhaps being the best known. Wilbur Smith, Alistair MacLean and Desmond Bagley were my other big favourites in those days.

Authorship has definitely become more male/female polarised in recent years but I don't think that the readership has so much. There are women I know who read and enjoy the SAS violence of the Andy McNab books and the complex spy novels of John le Carre so it's not a black and white situation.

[Petrushka]

I agree with the sentiment. The problem is that generalisations are imprecise but they are very easy to make. According to one website, the nine most violent novels of 'literary fiction' are all by men. Do they appeal only to men? I don't know. Do women write novels of violence? No idea. I suspect that most 'best seller' novelists are doing it for the money, writing for the hordes of snappers-up of unconsidered trifles.

Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwell have written books so gory that even my sister, a big crime book addict, couldn't stand them any longer and that's saying something, I can tell you!

[Ian Thumwood]

I agree about crime writers being largely female. This was an oeuvre I used to dismiss until
I read a few Reginald Hill books which changed my opinion. I also have.enjoyed Ian Rankin and Philip.Kerr. My perception of female crime writers I had assumed them.to.be quite pulpy until I picked up one of the Kate Atkinson books which have incredible and witty dialogue. Have to say that I felt that Ann Cleeves seemed to be dreadful....the Shetland TV series being a massive improvement on the books.

[Petrushka]

I agree about crime writers being largely female. This was an oeuvre I used to dismiss until
I read a few Reginald Hill books which changed my opinion. I also have.enjoyed Ian Rankin and Philip.Kerr. My perception of female crime writers I had assumed them.to.be quite pulpy until I picked up one of the Kate Atkinson books which have incredible and witty dialogue. Have to say that I felt that Ann Cleeves seemed to be dreadful....the Shetland TV series being a massive improvement on the books.

I could never take to Ian Rankin (even though I once met him!) but greatly like Philip Kerr.

[Ian Thumwood]

Apparently they were friends. I think Kerr combined excellent research with cracking dialogue. His protagonist Bernie Gunther seemed to be experiencing an upturn in fortune by 'Greeks bearing gifts' and I was saddened that Kerr never lived long enough to bring the cycle to conclusion. He was a clever writer. That book riffed on Ian Fleming and another was a pastiche of Agatha Christie with a locked room murder.

Rankin is equally compelling but I feel tends to offer a commentary on contemporary society. I just love the world Rankin creates. I have the latest one ready to read.

[smittims]

Just for the record, ff, I did stress more than once that I was simply expressing an opinion based on my own experience, as many others do here on other subjects every day. There was no thesis, no academic study. If one is to criticise (or as they say these days 'call out') a misleading trend it's only fair to do some background reading in the subject.This is what I did.

[smittims]

I think you've shot yourself in the foot there, Ian. If you had read a cross-section of 'chick-lit' I think you would see how and why many books are indeed aimed specifically at women.

Since your phrase 'too generalised' was presumably a criticism, I'd be interested to know what you mean. I made it clear more than once that I was not criticising all novels written by women, and I mentioned some honourable excaptions. I also said that I was not criticisng the concept as such of books written specifically for women readers . I named several writers specifically who I find at fault in the way I desribed. What's 'too generalised' about that, please?

[richardfinegold]

I’ve read all the Phillip Kerr novels but don’t know Ian Rankin. There are quite a lot of these books. Where would one start?
I have read some novels that would probably fit the type that Smittins has described. The most recent was The Woman, by Kristin Hannah, about American Nurses in the Vietnam War. The morally correct characters are female, every important male is compromised ethically and unreliable. Is this a trend, a new genre? I’ve read 2 other books by the same author that do not have this point of view. As FF noted there are certain genres, such as action novels, that are cranked out to appeal to certain reader types and I don’t see why a genre for women who perceive the world in these terms shouldn’t exist as well.
The entertainment world is fragmented. Before cable television and the explosion of streaming services there were only a few television channels and Americans of my generations all watched the same programming. We can all remember seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, for example. Certain movies and books were iconic. I suspect the U.K. was the same. Now the market is carved up and literature is the same.
Book readership is dramatically down here. Many of the books on the best seller lists are Childrens books. I have many colleagues and friends, highly educated, that don’t read at all. Reading is a fundamentally different experience for brain processing than the screen, or listening to music. Many individuals here, such as FF, value reading so highly that they don’t wish to listen to music simultaneously. So rather than denigrate readers that read books that perhaps have certain formulas or stereotypes, I at least laud people for reading at all

[smittims]

Yes, and in reply to FF's question about where we find the time to read novels, I have to say , I don't read newspapers (also I don't watch the news ,or hardly any TV ). In the UK recently (it was started by the Blair administration) we've had 'book day' where schoolchildren are encouraged to read novels, partly as I said earlier because,although fiction,they can embody human truths, and partly, as CS Lewis said, 'we read to know that we are not alone'.

I'm re-reading 'The Sign of Four' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Sherlock Holmes stories are so well-known from radio, TV and film that one can forget how well-written they are, this and The Hound of the Baskervilles' being the best, I think. Admittedly in his later short stories he sometimes became stuck for ideas and the plots become a little contrived, while :A Study in Scarlet' and 'The Valley of Fear' always strike me as non-Sherlocks forced into the canon by adding a Holmes-and-Watson beginning and end. But overall, they retain a loyal readership.

I wonder how many women read them. Holmes is sometimes suggested to be what today would be called a misogynist.