Special Edition | Part 2: 10 Reasons to Read (Fiction)

episode SUMMARY:

In this Special Edition episode of the Books for Men podcast, host Douglas Vigliotti discusses the 10 reasons why men should read fiction. He acknowledges that the publishing industry and writers do not cater to male readers due to a lack of an economic incentive, leading to an ever-widening gap of men not reading fiction. Vigliotti introduces his value proposition theory on why most men prefer nonfiction, but insists the real value of fiction is unseen—similar to soft skills, the more important but less developed skills for many people. He believes reading fiction promotes empathy for people different from oneself, teaches how to be alone with one's thoughts, encourages critical thinking and individuality, and strengthens the imagination muscle. He also argues that the form (reading) allows for easier engagement with difficult ideas and differing opinions, something people should be doing more of, and promotes delayed gratification in a society that wires people for short-term thinking and attention, improving focus. Vigliotti concludes by urging listeners to share the episode and support the podcast's mission of inspiring more men to read.

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So this week's episode is a continuation of last week's episode, which was a special edition around the question, do women really read more than men? You don't need to listen to it to understand this episode. With that being said, this episode will land a little bit better and be contextually more appropriate if you go back and listen to that episode just because I set the stage to discuss why men don't read fiction and why they should be reading fiction. So that is the big thing that I'm going to be answering today as the title of this episode promises 10 Reasons to Read Fiction. Last week, I left off part one of this special edition by answering the question or discussing the question of why men are not reading in general, because I do think that that in itself is an issue.

(01:16)

And while I'm not going to rehash that, it has been widely documented and supported by publishing industry data that men read more nonfiction than they do fiction. But I had to start this off with the notion that or the acceptance of a truth that as I already indicated in part one, there is a little bit of nature and a little bit of nurture with this problem that we face with men not reading as much. But one of the big things that we are seeing today is that the industry does not cater to the male reader and neither do writers really because of the lack of an economic incentive to do so. And so this is a compounding thing that due to just straight market mechanics, you'll continue to see the gap widen because there's no incentive for publishers to take on books that are specifically geared towards male readers.

(02:20)

And there's also not a demand to have writers write directly to male-centric topics of interest because the market just isn't there. And so this becomes a really big issue because even if you're not consciously avoiding male-centric topics, you are doing so subconsciously because the demand isn't there from the market. Now, I do understand that for a long time as I documented in part one, it was a very heavily male or men-centric industry just as a lot of things were unfortunately, and we've seen this meteoric rise in women in publishing and in the book market in a case you didn't tune into part one. This phenomenon is an extremely unique one to the book industry and publishing as a whole. It does not include other creative markets like the film industry or the music industry. And again, just in case you missed it for the record, I was very clear in part one, and I want to be very clear in part two.

(03:29)

This is something that I largely support and I think of it as a testament to progress and our ability to grow and move forward as a society. Therefore, I am extremely happy for and encouraged by all of the women who have the opportunity to be heard and share their voice in a society where they perhaps didn't, or at least not in the same way that they do today inside of publishing. I'm just saying I wish there were more books and authors who catered to young male readers, and I don't think that that is too big of an ask or too crazy of an ask. I know from my own experience, and for better or worse, all of the authors that really got me into reading and writing were ones again, for better or worse, I felt like I had something in common with, and although I don't always like to admit it, it's the truth.

(04:34)

And I think that that's probably a truth for a lot of people, and I'm much more advanced in my reading now than I was then. So I read a lot of female authors and authors of all kinds at this point, but the gateway was definitely through similarity. And I think that that is the big push for the inclusion of diversity and underrepresented voices and ethnicities of all kinds that we're seeing today in publishing. And I definitely support that because my own experience would indicate that that is super important. So in an effort to not beat a dead horse here, I don't want to continue on this point any longer. In addition to all of the other things that I mentioned in part one, sports and video games and social media and the biology of men, the industry not catering to male readers strictly from a lack of a market incentive or economic incentive to do so.

(05:41)

All of that, even if it's an unconscious trade-off, I think that they are additive to the situation and the problem of men not reading fiction, but if they're not reading fiction, but they are reading, presumably they're reading nonfiction. And so this brings me to a whole nother thing of why men read nonfiction but not fiction. And so I used to have this theory when I did sales consulting work and in my first book actually called the Value Framework. In the Value Framework, it proposes the idea that there are four innate drivers for human value, and that's what creates the value proposition of any solution or product or anything. And I still believe this to this day, and it was something that I've utilized throughout my entire 20-year sales career, selling shit for a living. So when I sat down to think about why men read nonfiction but not fiction, I said, let me look at a nonfiction book and a fiction book as a product because that's what they are and what is the value proposition of each of these.

(06:57)

And so when I look at the value framework, it hits on four main drivers of human value, and those are time, ease, status, and money. So money being, can you make me money? Can you save me money? Time being, can you save me time or speed up delivery? Ease being, how easy is this to say yes to? Or how easy is this to utilize and status being, who do I want to look good in front of or who does that person want to look good in front of and how can I make them look good in front of that person? And to me, when you look at value proposition on an innate human level, these are the four big drivers for most people on why they do most things. And so when I look at books, the value proposition of a nonfiction book for most men is significantly higher than a novel.

(07:58)

And I get it, this gets into utilitarian thinking perhaps, or practical thinking or things that maybe are not isolated to the male experience versus the female experience. But to me, it's undoubtedly true that a nonfiction book has the potential to make you money, has the potential to save you money, right? Also when I'm looking at time, it has the ability to save me time and it definitely has the ability to make my life easier or potentially make something easier to do for me. And if I know all that stuff, then who could I look good in front of? Where is any of that when you're reading a novel? And the hardcore reality is it doesn't exist. And as I mentioned in the previous episode, most of the book groups and reading clubs and all of that stuff are, it doesn't even have the advantage of if I've read this book, it's going to look good to these people.

(09:01)

So it doesn't even hit on the status because most men aren't even talking about the novels that they're reading with each other. And I think that that leads into a whole nother reason why men don't read fiction as much is that the barrier of entry is just much higher when you're reading fiction to participate in the conversation. So to talk about the good stuff of any novel, you have to dig deep, you have to be a little bit more deliberate. Most people, when you ask 'em how a novel was, they just say like, oh, I enjoyed it. It was good. I get it. And I'm not saying that you have to get uncomfortable, but I assure you that in most female reading groups, let's say, they're not just talking about, oh, I liked it. It was good. It entertained me. They're digging deep into the thematic elements of the book and the subtext of it and what these characters mean and what these situations mean and what they could mean to your life and all of that stuff.

(09:59)

I just in my own experience, have not seen that to the degree that I would like to for men. So I just think that because of the way men are, which by the way, the data would support that men get more lonely as they get older, and it's harder for them to create adult friends than it is for females to do. A lot of that could be biological, could be the same thing that prevents a lot of men from discussing novels in depth with other men. Again, this is just a theory, but I do think that there is a little bit of a higher barrier of entry than say for nonfiction where it's easy to talk about the bullet points, listen to the podcast, and hear some guy talk about, or women talk about the highlights and benefits of the thing that they're talking about.

(10:49)

It's very practical and tactical and surface-level in a way. Now, it might make you think about a lot of things in your life and help you make sense of certain things. And I'm a huge believer in reading nonfiction as I read a ton of it. But even when you listen to a novelist talk about their work, it's kind of fruitless a little bit because you have to read it to experience it. Everything that needs to be said is written there. And almost hearing somebody talk about the work has the potential to spoil it unless you've already read it, you can't get the information from listening to the author talk about their novel. You have to actually read the novel. And if the value proposition is lower for fiction than nonfiction, I see this as a really big challenge for men to want to pick up a novel and read it right, because all of the value in reading a novel, the true value in reading a novel is unseen value.

(11:55)

I equate it to the soft skills versus the hard skills. And this is a perfect lead-in for what I wanted to share with you today, which is the 10 reasons to read fiction. So obviously I just laid out a dire situation of the value proposition is much less for fiction than nonfiction, but just as with soft skills versus hard skills, communication being, let's say the primary soft skill that I'm talking about, it is probably the most important thing to your success in anything that you're doing, just as the reasons, although they are a little bit below the surface and not seen on say, the value framework, which are the immediate reasons why people do what they do, time, e, status, and money. The reasons that I'm going to share with you now are the more impactful things probably to your life. And the reason why I'm such a big proponent of reading fiction, whether you're a man or a woman, but as I've already indicated numerous times, it's a bigger problem with men.

(13:06)

But before I even get into reason number one, I did just want to make mention that the two biggest reasons why people would read fiction or any book in general is education and entertainment. It's the two reasons why people create anything. It's a spectrum. Some things are more designed for education, some things are designed for more entertainment, and whatever you're consuming falls somewhere on that spectrum. Something that I talk about in my book, The Gap. However, none of those reasons are going to be in these 10 reasons. And the reason for that being is because I think that they are the least important reasons for you reading fiction. There are plenty of ways that you could educate yourself and entertain yourself that are not reading novels. In fact, one could probably make the case that novels, if that was the thing you were trying to do, would rank very, very low on the list of possible forms of education and entertainment that exist in today's marketplace.

(14:10)

So with that being said, what gives here? What's the poll? So number one is the most obvious reason why you should be reading fiction, and it's the one that you'll mostly hear people talk about a lot, and that is empathy for people not like you. Are there other forms of entertainment that can do this for you? Sure. Are there ones that could do it quite like reading? Absolutely not even in the first episode, I think of this podcast ever. I shared one of my favorite novels, which is Miles From Nowhere by Nami Mun. In that novel, the protagonist is a 13-year-old homeless Korean girl who's trying to navigate the streets of New York City in the 1980s. Where in the world am I going to live in those shoes? Could I do it in a movie? Maybe, but because of another reason that I will share with you momentarily, it's just not the same at all.

(15:03)

And why is it so important to have empathy for people not like you? Because of communication and because we live in a society where people are not like you, and everybody is different. So having more empathy and being more empathetic to people's experiences and opinions is a super skill. It's very critical to live in the world today. And in my estimation, nothing does it better than reading fiction. Number two, fiction teaches you how to be alone with your thoughts. Now, I know that this is a really scary thing for a lot of people, and we will go to great lengths to not be alone with our thoughts. And this is something that I think you have to acquaint yourself with at some point in your life. Otherwise, life becomes significantly harder to deal with and handle. Number three, reading fiction enables you to think more freely and critically in a world of copies, herd mentality, and doing everything that everybody else is doing, reading promotes individuality.

(16:15)

And that is something that I think again is super important. But the question really is, why does reading teach you how to be alone with yourself? Why does reading provide empathy for people not like you better than anything else? Why does it enable you to think more freely? So reasons 1, 2, 3, and that leads me to reason number four, and that has to do with the form. So reading fiction is less reactive and more intimate, so ideas can land differently. The form is different than any other form. It's not audio, it's not visual. The sensory experience is different when you are reading versus listening or watching. Now, the audiobook has become extremely popular, and I'm not deterring people from listening to audiobooks, but I have to say the audio form is not the written form. Sure, you can learn stuff from it, but it's entirely more passive.

(17:19)

This is the very reason why we've seen the rise of podcasts and audiobooks because you can do them while you're doing other things. You can't read a book and drive a car. You can't read a book and cook dinner, but you can listen to stuff and do all those things. You are obtaining the knowledge, but you're doing it passively. The form reading, you're involved with the book. This is the foundation for everything that I said previously and the reasons that I will say next. So number five is that it strengthens the imagination muscle. So what is the imagination muscle? It's the thing that you utilize to be creative. If you don't use it, you lose it. And nothing strengthens your imagination. Quite like reading. Why? Because of the form. The filmmaker shows you the scene, the musician plays you, the song you create, and the scene in your head when you're reading an author's work.

(18:29)

No two people view that scene the same way. There's the author's intent, but the way that you see it is probably going to be a little bit different because you're experiencing it, it's coming from your mind. It's very collaborative in that sense. I mean, so is all art, but at the same time, nothing demands more from your imagination than reading does. And that has, as I've already mentioned, cascading effects in other aspects of your life, but specifically in the realm of creativity. And I know you might not think of yourself as an artist or a writer or a filmmaker or a musician, but creativity is an essential skill for whatever you're doing because the act of creation is baked into humanity, into life. You are either creating or you are consuming another spectrum on which I see the world. At any given moment, you're either consuming something or you're creating something.

(19:26)

You don't have to be creating a human, you don't have to be creating a work of art, but you could be creating an experience or I don't know, a slew of things, or you could be consuming experiences consuming things. This is the basis of my novel Tom Collins, which I featured on this podcast. Now, the sixth reason why you should be reading fiction, it forces you to delay gratification. Man, this is so important. Now, I struggle with it just like everybody struggles with it. But in a world that seems to be providing maximum value through the value framework in making it easier to engage with things, saving me time, all things that I had mentioned before, the ability to delay gratification to me is something that seems to be going out of fashion, but it's something that is an essential soft skill for your life because in reality, things don't happen as soon as you want them to happen.

(20:29)

Patience is important, and no other form of entertainment creates patience quite like the novel does because you have to read all the way to the end to get to the sweet spot, to the payoff, right? It forces you to delay gratification. Number seven, the length of a novel, even if it's a shorter novel, call it 200 pages or even a novella under 40,000 words, let's say, which is, I don't know, 150 pages, 140 pages, all the way up to the 600-page behemoth novels, the epics right? Length provides the context that is necessary for true comprehension. And this is true even with nonfiction. So in a bite-sized world that we live in an anecdotal world, it's much easier to take things out of context and not have true comprehension of them. It's less likely that that happens when you are reading the book and reading the idea inside the appropriate context, which leads me perfectly to reason number eight.

(21:37)

Fiction allows you to go deep with your emotions because it is an art and it is feeling-based at the end of the day. It enables you to explore how you feel about what you are reading. To me, this promotes better awareness and better emotional health. It does a lot of different things that a movie or a TV show can't do, not because they're not allowing you to feel your feelings, but because it's not nudging you to digest those feelings in the same way. So you're not sitting with those feelings. It's much more momentary when you talk about TV or movies or anything of that nature. A novel, again, because of the form, really allows for you to go significantly deeper into the way you feel about certain things and relating all the way back to reason number one. This is why you could have more empathy for people who are not like you because you're really feeling for these people in a way that you're perhaps not with other forms of entertainment.

(22:49)

And we're almost at the end here. Reason number nine is it's easier to engage with difficult ideas. So reading fiction could be very gruesome at times. It could be very disturbing at times. A lot of it deals with very heavy topics, even in the page-turning genre fiction-style books. A lot of times they still deal with very heavy stuff, certainly more so in the literary realm, but it's easier to engage with these difficult ideas in reading because as I already mentioned, it's less reactive, it's more intimate. So you're not reading a tweet, you're not. It's a much more drawn-out process that, again, because of the length, it makes it easier to comprehend, but it also makes it easier to engage with tough stuff. And in the nonfiction realm, you should be engaging with people who disagree with you more than you are engaging with people who do agree with you, because that's where all the growth occurs.

(23:55)

Reading uns silos you and allows you to engage with those ideas in a less intrusive way, not intrusive in the sense that they're not going to get into your mind, but they don't have the same polarizing oomph to them because of the form. So you're allowed to digest them in a certain way. And this is, again, something that I think is really important as you go through life, is the ability to engage with opinions, ideas, and philosophies that are other than your own. You may have strong opinions or strong ideas, but that is different than saying, I can't engage with people who have differing opinions and differing ideas. And to me, that is where the good stuff is in life because that's where your opportunity is to learn. That's where your opportunity is to be challenged. That's everything to me, really. And so fiction is a great way to do that.

(24:54)

Reason number 10, your brain is being wired for short-term thinking. I talked a little bit about this in a reason just before when I talked about delayed gratification. But even more than that, the hard wiring in your brain is being programmed to short-term attention. And everything that comes out today is designed to give you what you want as soon as you want it. It's designed to entertain you instantaneously. It's one-click shopping. It's the point of the video is the subtitle of the video, and it's the first lens because they can't risk you scrolling by it. Even the novel form has to start faster than it ever did because of this. But even saying that reading fiction or reading, in general, improves your focus and places the emphasis on long-term thinking. And more importantly, it hedges against this inevitable wiring that we are doing on a societal level right now.

(25:59)

An unconscious trade-off in my estimation, that we are making for the future or a bet that we are making on the future without knowing. We don't know how this experiment is going to play out, but one thing that we do know is that it's undoubted. We are training our brains to be short-term thinkers and have very short attention spans. Nothing widens that quite like reading does. And reading fiction is just an extension of reading in general. And as you know, I share both fiction and nonfiction on this podcast. I can live with you reading anything, but I will encourage you to start reading more fiction. And there you have it. Those were the 10 reasons to read fiction or read in general. I got to kind of play with this a little bit. I think there were 10 reasons. I'll clean this up a little bit more as I continue to talk about it.

(26:51)

But this episode will definitely serve as a landmark to point people back to. And I hope that you will do the same. This is when I remind you that if you have friends or family members or anybody who you think might enjoy this episode, then please do share it with them, because word of mouth is everything. And with this podcast specifically, we are trying to inspire more men to read, and I need your help to do that. And you could double down on that support by taking 30 seconds to rate, like, follow, and subscribe on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on because in doing that, you help more people find the show. You can always connect with me on Instagram @douglasvigliotti. It's the only social media that I have. And lastly, for more information, visit BooksforMen.org where you can get full transcripts for all of the episodes, as well as sign up for the newsletter, which is a monthly roundup of every episode, complete with full book and author information, all the best quotes and newsletter only book recommendations. Again, all you have to do is head over to BooksforMen.org.