If there’s one thing for which serious male readers don’t get enough credit, it’s the perpetuation of the species. Sad but true. Here were are, just following our fancy from page to page, and it turns out women go completely gooey over it. I would like to report that when my Megan sees me reading Steinbeck, she goes mad like Gomez Addams when Morticia speaks French.
Alas, it’s not that straightforward. But the numbers, such as they are, back me up.
Readers Need Only Apply
Date Psychology surveyed 800 women and men, asking them to indicate the sex appeal of various male pastimes. Intellectually and physically demanding hobbies—such as playing an instrument, foreign languages, cooking, painting, woodworking, gardening, swimming, and hiking—topped the list.
And at the uppermost rung, soaring aloft in the stratospherically thin air of ultimate desire? Reading. Ninety-eight percent of women confessed being drawn to a man with a book in his hands. “Books are in fact my love language,” says writer Sydney Gore.
While the results of the survey are far from scientific, there’s reason to think they’re directionally accurate. In another survey, 95 percent of Gen Z and Millennial women said reading was a “green flag” in a potential relationship. The feeling is more or less mutual; nine in ten men also like a woman who reads, according to the same survey.
What about red flags? Not surprisingly, women in the Date Psychology survey tended to find cosplay, boozing, wearing makeup, porn, arguing online, and gambling unattractive. Dead last? Manosphere enthusiasm. This tracks too. Andy Tate loathes books; it seems reasonable that women would return the favor. In the second survey, women said a man listening to Joe Rogan is a turnoff.
Along with these numbers, I’ve seen several mostly dated stats that show men who flag themselves as readers get better swipes on the apps. You can look it up later if you don’t have a book to read, and I know you do.
Having laid an admittedly shaky statistical foundation, let’s now leap into the world of wild and reckless speculation.
In the Real World
Women—as I surmise from the data and several decades of whatever passes for personal experience—prize relationships with men willing and able to engage in the real world; travel and blacksmithing are, after all, on the list of attractive hobbies. Not surprisingly, all of the topmost alluring pastimes point to men up to their elbows in life.
But wait, you object: Isn’t reading escapist? Heck, no!
Reading indicates a willingness to grapple with reality—unlike, say, sinking into a sofa while Netflix tickles the retinas. That might be most obvious when thinking of nonfiction, and some men are daft enough to think only nonfiction counts. But that’s utterly mistaken. History, philosophy, psychology, biography, and all the rest are excellent and contribute to a well rounded view of the world, others, even ourselves. But fiction does so as well—and does so in ways nonfiction can’t manage.
A good novel tutors the heart as well as the mind. A person will know themselves and those around them better for having read fiction. Don’t get me wrong: We read because we’re entertained, not because we’re improved. And when an ass picks up a book, it’s rare that an angel sets it down. But improvement can happen—especially when someone engages with fiction over many years. The best self-help books ever written? Probably the novels of Jane Austen. And the underrated upside is that it looks attractive to the opposite sex when we nose our way through them.
A man reading Northanger Abbey? “It was one of the most erotic things I ever heard,” confessed New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. “A man I know said he was reading all the novels of Jane Austen in one summer.” And says Ceci Browning,
You don’t have to tell me twice that reading is sexy. If the man sitting opposite me on the train is so engrossed in his Hemingway that he hardly looks up to check whether we’ve reached his stop, sign me up. Arriving at someone’s house for the first time and seeing that instead of a PS4 they have a bookshelf full of classics? Exciting. Quoting Joan Didion in conversation? You get the idea.
Lest you think I’m disparaging nonfiction, perish the thought. Reading any serious literature signals intelligence, sensitivity, and self-possession. Given the low marks ascribed to cosplay, a man is far better served reading any book about the Renaissance than attending the local Ren Faire.
Ah, but the minute the game is known, the game can be rigged.
Strike a Pose?
Given the sex appeal of reading, some women are growing concerned about “performative males” only reading to catch the wandering eye of an attractive potential partner.
Lydia Spencer-Elliott interviewed a woman who says she can easily spot a poseur. “Her go-to tells are if they’re sitting in a ‘prominent seat’ in a coffee shop and haven’t made it through their first chapter,” she says. “Her examples are borderline cartoonish; one bloke was walking around with a Truman Capote text sticking out of his back pocket to ensure the title was on show.”
Men actually do this? I have my doubts. But perhaps it’s so. If true, it at least shows that men are clever and adaptable: less loud convos about crypto and more about The Count of Monte Cristo! Still, I can’t believe this is any more than noise at the margins of real experience. Otherwise, your date asks you about the latest Sally Rooney that you appear to be reading, and you’ve got nothing to interesting to say.
And that is, after all, the basic appeal: A man who reads is a man who’s interesting. (I’m 100 percent sure this is why Megan married me; my rugged good looks and gentle way with children were merely coincidental extras.) That assumption drives a new dating model cropping up in various cities: “read dating.” Think speed dating, but you show up to a bookshop with your favorite book, drink some wine, chat, and see who resonates.
“It makes sense,” says Ceci Browning, “that a bookshop is a good place to look for the love of your life . . . not only because the clientele have an attention span that lasts longer than the average TikTok video, but because potential ice-breakers are always only a few feet away. Have you read much Tolstoy? What did you think of last year’s Booker winner?” Fakers wouldn’t survive the first five minutes.
Still, perils persist. The woman Spencer-Elliott interviewed said she now avoids men “who’ve made books their personality.” There is, she says, a fine line between a serious reader and a mansplainer. “They’re like, ‘You’ve probably not heard of this,’ and it’s something like James Clear’s Atomic Habits,” she says. “It’s insufferable.”
And that brings us back to the question of what a man reads. If manosphere enthusiasm is a red flag for some women, so are some books. If you want to flirt with depression, you can read entire Reddit threads about the books a woman should be alarmed to see on a man’s shelves: Ayn Rand, Jordan Peterson, Hunter S. Thompson, Kerouac, Steinbeck, Salinger—the list of “problematic” authors is long. Apparently, you can judge a man by the cover too.
But this goes too far. The idea someone knows all they need to about another person based on what books they own or read is not only sad, it’s silly.
Of course, that’s probably true for this whole topic. Sometimes a man just wants to read Jane Austen without Maureen Dowd hitting on him.
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My late husband was a reader of many genres but his favorite was naval fiction from Napoleon’s time. I always bought new ones for Christmas.
I met my husband through the Mythopoeic Society, a book discussion group. We read aloud to each other (and our children) throughout our marriage. The first book he read aloud to me was Boswell's life of Johnson.