Welcome to Books for Men

EPISODE SUMMARY:

In this trailer episode of the Books for Men podcast, Douglas Vigliotti introduces his new show and explains his passion for inspiring more men to read. He discusses how reading can provide insight into a person's interests and values, and expresses his sadness that many of his male friends do not read. Vigliotti emphasizes that his show is not a review show, but rather a platform to share books that he enjoys and believes others should read. He addresses concerns about the show being exclusionary or having a social agenda, stating that his only goal is to inspire more men to read. Vigliotti acknowledges that fewer men are reading fiction and expresses concern about the widening gap in male-to-female readership. He believes that reading builds empathy and a more well-rounded society. Vigliotti also highlights the importance of reading books for nuance and long-form thinking, as opposed to relying on articles or social media for information. He shares that the podcast will feature one book per week, with a short monologue about each book, and promises variation in genres and topics. Vigliotti encourages listeners to subscribe to the podcast or sign up for the Books for Men Newsletter to stay updated on book recommendations and potential author interviews. He concludes by inviting both men and women to support the show and join the cause of inspiring more men to read.

Listen to the episode:

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Read the Transcript:

All righty. Who's ready for the new podcast? Welcome to Books for Men. You might have recognized that I kept the audio intro the same, and that's primarily because I like it. You probably have seen the new branding with my shining face on it and new title. I'm excited, really, really excited about this new show and this new podcast mostly because it kind of gets at something that is much bigger than me in a way, and that is inspiring more men to read and also bringing together men who do read. That is something that I'm very, very passionate about as someone who is a big reader. I mean, I think it's so funny. Most Sundays, my family will get together, and when I say my family, it's my folks, my brother, kids. The question that I always ask everybody, and they know that it's coming eventually during dinner is, "What are you reading?"

You get a good sense of who people are by what they read. You get a good sense of what they enjoy. All the above, really. It's just interesting. It's a good conversation to have with people. It's one that I don't get to have as much as I would like to. Why? Because I have a lot of male friends and I would say 99% of them don't read. To me, that's super sad. And so, I read enough where this show should be beneficial to both newbie readers and also reading vets. The former obviously, and the latter hopefully the goal is to open somebody up to something new or something interesting.

I think one of the big things that I wanted to answer in this trailer is why this show. One of the scariest things about doing a show like this for me was the chance of it being misconstrued. One is a creator, and that's why I'm insistent that this is not a review show, and every book that I feature on the show is one that I enjoy despite what I say about it, because I will sometimes be very nuanced with some of the things that I describe about a book. I want it to not be forgotten that I enjoy the book, and I think you should read the book, and that's why the book is on the podcast.

Second, I didn't want it to be misconstrued as some kind of male behavior apologist show. I know that this sounds a little weird. It could easily be misconstrued as an exclusionary podcast that's, I don't know, that has some kind of social agenda with it. In reality, I'm just a man who likes to read, who wants to inspire more men to do so, and that's it. I might get passionate about some of the stuff on the show, and that's only because I care about books and men reading more, and this is my platform to do so. And so, I may make some generalizations and some assumptions throughout the show, but you have to understand what my intent actually is. For me, that's like a general through line of life for me is understanding intent is more important than the actual thing that's happening. Because sometimes words could be misconstrued, but my goal is really, really, really to just inspire more men to read. This is my attempt to do so.

Despite contrary belief, there is an objective reality right now, and the numbers are pretty clear. Fewer men are reading than ever before, and it's pretty sad and pretty pathetic. As men, we use time as a crutch. We use family as a crutch. We use every excuse imaginable to say why we're not reading. We used to read, I'm just not a reader, because I could do other things with my time. I get it. You do a plethora of other things with your time. And so, that's why I know you have some time to read. But I'm not here to convince you, although I will try my best. I would rather hope that men who enjoy reading find this podcast and then tell other men about the podcast. That to me is my only hope, really.

It's true, more men read nonfiction than they do fiction. And so, I will do my best to vary as I value variation in my own reading, but I will tell you that not every book will be a business, big idea, or self-improvement book. Whether you like it or not, fellas, or want to admit it or not, those are your favorite genres. And so, I want you to expand a little bit off of that. For the pure fiction readers, I'd hope you will find something to bridge you, or maybe at least a new novel or two you might not have read otherwise. The goal is really just to hopefully have men find new interesting things to read.

Certainly, there's still a good amount of men reading nonfiction, specifically the categories that I had already mentioned. The bigger concern is in the world of fiction where the gap is widening pretty heavily in male to female readership. I totally understand that for a long time, the industry was male-dominated and a lot of it was unjust. There's sort of a rebalancing happening where women now have the strength to share their voice in a way that they maybe didn't for a lot of years, or it was much, much harder to do so, and I'm a huge supporter of that. But for me, this isn't about looking at the past, it's more about looking at the future.

And so, my question always is, do we really want a world where there are less men reading fiction? Maybe you can make the case that that's okay. A lot of people will point to this problem and they'll say, "Well, there's still plenty of men being published." I would say, yes, that is true. Again, I'm speaking specifically in the fiction sense, but if you look very carefully, a lot of it is legacy authors. When you look at new authors, new voices, it's less and less men. And so, this becomes a problem for young men to find actual readers that they enjoy, because when you look at it just from a very logical standpoint, you'll see that men read men and women read women, and this shouldn't be too hard to grasp.

I mean, think about your favorite authors or think about your favorite musicians. You bond with people that you see similarity with. That's very hard to bridge a young male reader into that world because the books just aren't there. The perspective just isn't there. And so, where do young males turn? Well, they turn to video games, they turn to social media, they turn to podcasts, they turn to all these different other forms of technology to get their enjoyment, and less and less are turning to fiction. I don't want to belabor this or spend too much time on it because that's not really the point of the podcast. It's more so to inspire men to read more and to bring together the men who do, because reading matters, reading builds empathy, builds patience, builds a more well-rounded society.

I'm not going to back away from this idea. Often men will tell me, "Well, I read articles, I read the news, or I get my stuff from Twitter." The idea that you're going to get the same level of nuance in an article that you would get in a book is absurd to me. Articles are ephemeral. The way our media works today is very, very short-term, is very, very misleading in many ways. Certainly, there's a lot of good journalism out there, so this is not a bash against journalism. But what I will say is that when you read a book, even if you're reading something you disagree with because of the pace, because of what you're actually doing, sitting down and reading something long form, you don't have the same reactionary thoughts or same reactionary behaviors that you would have if you were reading an article online or a journal entry.

Also, you have more time to think about what you're actually reading and process it and understand potentially the creator's point of view, even if you disagree with it, which to me is absolutely essential in being able to build open-mindedness and seeing the world through somebody else's perspective, or being open to seeing the world through somebody else's perspective. There's nothing that compares to it really, aside from actually getting out and exploring and being exposed to a plethora of different people, which is hard to do.

And so, that's why I always fall back on the quote by George R.R. Martin, "The man who reads lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." That's why reading is really, really important and really, really powerful. But if you're a man who reads, you already know this, so I'm not going to continue to belabor the point I've already been going on entirely too long.

I want to now just share with you quickly before I wrap up what you can expect on the podcast. That's quite simply one book per week released every Monday. I will do a short little tidbit, a short little monologue, sort of like you hear here. It'll probably range anywhere from five to 15 minutes as about as long as it takes to say what I have to say. I will try to avoid spoilers, because I don't want to ruin the books for you. The one thing that you could definitely expect, and I've already alluded to this, is variation. Because I don't necessarily look at books as good or bad, unless they actually are of course, just different. And so, from literary to genre, self-help to memoir, they're all useful and entertaining in the right context.

If you don't like something that you hear on the show or on the podcast, just wait a week, because it's going to be a different book and it might be one that grabs you, or you could just head over to booksformen.org and subscribe to the Books for Men Newsletter, which is going to round up all of the books, fiction, nonfiction, and authors, because I do plan to do some author interviews in the future, or potentially just do a featured author segment in the newsletter, which will be a little kicker for anyone who signs up for the newsletter. It will round up all of the books and you could just kind of select as you go through there. "Oh, I like this one. And so, I'll listen to that episode." Or, "I think this one might interest me so I'll listen to that episode." Again, you could sign up for that at booksformen.org.

That's all I've got, and I hope you enjoy the show, and I hope you can support the show most obviously through subscribing or following on your favorite podcast provider or going and signing up for the newsletter, or even better, just telling a family member or a friend who reads about books for men. Of course, females, you're always welcome. The more the merrier to get behind a worthy cause in inspiring more men to read and bringing together men who do.