Why don't boys read much?

Given the PC/Wokester “toxic masculinity,” “compulsive rapist oppressors," "white, heterosexual males are BAD" browbeating endemic throughout modern lit, why on earth would they want to?

Why boys don't read very much: They want manly courage -- not teen angst
Boys read a lot less than girls, because assigned reading is oriented toward girls' tastes, writes Tom Sarrouf on the Institute for Family Studies. Boys are "more interested in war, comedy, sports, and science fiction, and more excited about informational texts," while girls prefer narratives and romances. "Boys are also far less likely to read books by female authors or with female protagonist, but girls were willing to read books written by men and with male protagonists."

Boys get enough exposure to nonfiction, writes Katya Sedgewick on American Mind. They need to read classic literature with male heroes. (According to the 2024 What Kids Are Reading report, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is on reading lists from elementary to high school, she writes. Not good enough.)

Sedgewick grew up in the Soviet Union reading Twain, Dumas and Tolstoy. She makes a case for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a "rebel child living by wits and daring." (I loved Tom Sawyer as a kid.) "I find it strange that teachers don’t see it as their job to connect the next generation of Americans to their heritage, preferring to submerge students into the sea of forgettable contemporary titles rather than explaining complicated language and showing their students how to love historic writing."

As a high school English teacher and father of young readers, Auguste Meyrat thinks boys need more books with "action, conflict and even violence" and fewer books focused on "feelings and relationships."

He suggests teachers read this overview of classic adventure novels to create boy-friendly reading lists that celebrate masculinity rather than condemn it as "toxic." (I've read every book mentioned.)

Another worthy alternative for young males is Robert Heinlein’s YA novels and short stories, usually referred to amongst the Heinlein-enthusiast set as “the Heinlein juveniles.” I read them when I was in my mid-thirties, well into what normal people would call my “adulthood” (HA!) and loved ‘em all to pieces; I still go back and reread some of them from time to time, and still enjoy them very much. In fact, I believe several of those books to be among his very best work: “Red Planet,” “Rocket Ship Galileo,” “The Rolling Stones,” and “Starship Troopers” rank high on my personal-recommendation list of Heinlein must-reads.

The line Lux Interior sings in the Cramps’ “Garbage Man” applies quite nicely to Heinlein as well: “If you can’t dig me, you can’t dig nothin’!” There’s a heckuva lot in the “Heinlein juveniles” series for a boy to like, to find entertaining, interesting, even inspiring. The curriculum skillfully proselytized in the juveniles represent a practical syllabus of the ideals Heinlein himself most cherishes: liberty; strong intellectual curiosity; individualism, uncompromising individualism and self-determination; freedom of thought, et al. Of course, it wouldn’t be Heinlein without a hefty shot of knowledge of higher mathematics stirred (not shaken) in—particularly Great Enthusiasm For, Theory Of, and Total Comfort With.

For my money, nobody presents actual, nuts-and-bolts SCIENCE better than Robert Anson Heinlein does—from building a working rocket-ship, to designing, creating, and maintaining a functional spacesuit from scratch, to the facts of life in hard vacuum and null gravity. Yes, some day-to-day details of his speculative fiction miss the mark fairly widely: the persistent relevance of land-line telephones; hard-copy printouts done with ink, on paper made from trees; computers which, quaintly, still require punch-cards, wired microphones and headsets, and mechanical input in order to function (SLOOOOOWLY), etc.

Likewise, various cultural and personal traditions, relationships, and habits live on unchanged in early delineations of Heinlein’s speculative future-world(s), a good few of which had become outmoded and therefore either updated or simply discarded well before the great visionary's death in 1988. For an example of this, please see SEXUAL, MARITAL, and CONJUGAL ARRANGEMENTS, THEN and NOW.

Admittedly, Heinlein was sort of an odd duck himself, particularly regarding said sexual/marital arrangements. I know this from things my late mother-in-law told me about Robert and Virginia, the Heinleins having been closest of friends with her own father, as well as frequent visitors to and guests at the Ley family’s NYC apartment and their Fire Island house. Xenia called Heinlein “Uncle Bob” from childhood until his passing, and kept in touch with him and Virginia right up until his passing. She said she'd had occasion over years of friendship to learn things about them that she’d rather not have, and knowing the Heinleins' penchant for casual nudity, partner-swapping, and full-blown orgies, I feel her pain.

That said, a present-day Young Person Of Penis could nevertheless do a lot worse than to get his hands on the Heinlein juveniles and immerse himself fully in the life-lessons, philosophy, and practical wisdom awaiting him therein. And if left to the less-than-tender mercies of demented government-school Teacherbots who despise him, passionately hate him, and are dedicated to seeing him and his fellows neutered, broken, and “fundamentally transformed” into biddable Manwoman-Otherkindred which will forever be neither healthy nor happy, he certainly will.