NOTE FROM Doug:

Welcome to Books for Men. Thanks for stopping by. Here on the website, you’ll find the newsletter, more about the podcast, and of course, all the episodes. The pod is available on all major distro platforms—Apple, Spotify, etc. I’m deeply passionate about the mission of Books for Men: to inspire (more) men to read. So I’m always playing around with new episode formats that I think you might enjoy or will be impactful. But to me, unless you’re testing, maintainability is the most important thing (most of the time.) Why? Compounding. It’s a theory, I could be wrong but it’s one I believe in. For you, it just means weekly episodes. Right now, every Monday. As of this writing, we’re at almost 200. Come check it out.

If you enjoy the podcast, please share it with other men and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Sharing and subscribing are the best ways to help new listeners find the show and inspire (more) men to read. (Rating the pod, which takes two seconds, literally, is a close third. Just saying.)

Now that I got that out of the way, let me answer a few big questions.

• Why am I doing this? Two reasons: one, to inspire some guy somewhere to read a book he otherwise wouldn’t have, and two, for fun. Not money, not attention, nothing. I love reading. That’s it. If I had an outlet to talk about books regularly, I probably would have never started the show.

• Wait, why just men? Look, it’s no secret: most men don’t read. Am I being assumptive? Maybe. But probably not. Poll your friends. Then, subdivide between nonfiction and fiction. You’ll be surprised. Or maybe you won’t. It’s more of a problem with fiction than nonfiction but I can live with you reading anything. On the pod, I share both. There’s some big data to support this claim, but I often think street logic is more than adequate for most things most of the time. (If you want the data, then listen to this episode titled: Do Women ‘Really’ Read More Than Men?)

• Why should you read books? There’s nothing that can replace reading books. Not online articles, not audiobooks, not podcasts, not ChatGPT, not Twitter, not TikTok, not Netflix, not YouTube, nothing. Sure, you can get information from all those places but learning is only one reason to read a book and it’s not even the best one. Of course, there’s also entertainment, but I can probably suggest better forms of pure entertainment.

  However, as a form, reading books differentiates itself from other forms of entertainment in two key ways. One, length, and two, it’s less reactive yet very intimate. This means things land differently. It helps to develop “super” soft skills. Sure, hard skills pay the bills, but soft skills make you better at whatever you do. Now imagine what super ones can do for you.

  • Super Soft Skill #1: Reading books builds empathy for people not like you. This is the most cited reason to read books, and for good reason.

  • Super Soft Skill #2: Reading books increases your ability to entertain differing ideas and opinions or difficult concepts and stories—my favorite reason and something we all should be doing more.

  • Super Soft Skill #3: Reading books allows you to be alone with your thoughts. If you’re courageous enough, this gives you the time and space to think critically and freely.

  • Super Soft Skill #4: Reading books makes you more creative. It strengthens the all-important imagination muscle. Use it or lose it.

  • Super Soft Skill #5: Reading books makes you more patient. It helps you to delay gratification because books delay gratification.

  • Super Soft Skill #6: Reading books increases your ability to focus. It builds long-term attention spans and hedges against the current cultural experiment of rewiring our brains for short-term attention. (See every other form of entertainment.)

  • Super Soft Skill #7: Reading books forces you to slow down. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Not only that, but length provides the necessary context for true comprehension.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got, for now. I’d love to hear from you. If you have any questions or feedback, just email me or reply to the monthly newsletter. For that, though, you’d have to be a subscriber. (Hint, hint.)

Enjoy the pod and stay reading!

Doug

*Last updated 5/13/24