What I Learned About American Men in My All-Male Book Club

It’s a Tuesday night and after work I’m meeting up with six other guys at a nearby British pub for a couple of pints and some fish and chips. But we aren’t gathering to watch Premiere League football, or even to attend the weekly quiz night. No, we’ll be discussing Salvagia, by Tim Chawaga, a sci-fi mystery novel set off the coast of a dystopian Miami. It will be the tenth gathering of our men’s book club since we started it last year.

The guys are friends and neighbors, other dads I’ve met in these suburban years. All are very involved fathers, who spend most weeknights and weekends coaching kids’ sports, running to and from junior dance classes, attending middle school orchestra concerts, and supervising playdates at the nearby park. They all work high-stress jobs; many commute daily on MetroNorth, some as early as 5am. They are in banking, sales, communications, stock trading. One guy served in Afghanistan, another is originally from England, another is a former Division 1 college basketball player. And in the little free time they have, they all enjoy reading fiction.

This past year we’ve read thousands of pages together: Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword, Jonathan Rosen’s The Best Minds (our only nonfiction), Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, Michael Crichton’s Pirate Latitudes, Mick Herron’s Slow Horses, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, RF Kuang’s Babel, Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted, and a collection of Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales edited by Phillip Pullman.

We started out with just three guys and are currently hovering at seven—any more guys and we’d need a bigger table at the pub.

It’s never explicitly been a rule that only men are allowed in the group, and none of us get a thrill out of being exclusionary. But we wanted to create a place where we could be included in the reading world. It’s not easy to find other guys who love to read.

Sadly, male readership of novels and short stories is at a historic low. In 2025, the NEA published a study showing that the percentage of men who read even one book of fiction in the year was 27.7 percent, down about seven points from a decade ago. Meanwhile, among women, 46.9 percent read at least one book-length work of fiction.

This finding rapidly set off a string of articles in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, and beyond: “Why Did the Novel-Reading Man Disappear?” and “Why Don’t Straight Men Read Novels?” and “Why Have Men Stopped Reading Fiction?”

These offer many theories and explanations: that men are driven towards practical nonfiction books they think will be concretely “useful”—unlike novels; that the big TV celebrity book clubs are built by women (Jenna, Reese, Zibby, going back even to Oprah) and primarily target women readers; that traditionally masculine themes of fatherhood, sex, and violence are considered inherently toxic and reading “male” books is now canceled; that the publishing industry has been somehow “feminized,” or that the act of reading itself has become feminized, or “frivolous” (or both).

If we do want men to read more often (and I don’t see why we shouldn’t, even if it may not be the solution to all our national woes) then I’d suggest that male book clubs may be a helpful part of the solution.

Meanwhile the decline of male readership has been linked to all other kinds of societal ills: social media addiction, the rise of the Manosphere, the end of democracy. You’d get the impression that if only more men would read books—or if only someone would just make “books for men” again—then all our other problems would be solved.

May I just say that I find all of these hot-takes to be completely absurd.

At least my own experiences this year with my book club haven’t borne a single one of them out.

I’ve never heard any of my guys lament the impracticality of fiction; no one struggles to find interesting books without Reese Witherspoon’s seal of approval; no one decries a lack of sufficiently “macho” material at the local Barnes & Noble.

What they enjoy reading is also surprisingly varied, ranging from genre fiction to classics to contemporary literary novels, as likely to be plucked off a New York Times list as recommended by a Reddit thread. At our most recent reading, one guy had so many books he was excited to select on his turn, that he devised a complicated game for us to play, which involved throwing darts at a map of America and winning and losing veto cards as we considered titles of books written by authors in each of the fifty US states.

Point is, there’s plenty of good stuff out there for men who want to read something—so how do we get more men to want to read something more often? Why are only 27.7 percent of men picking up (just one!) work of fiction in a year?

The good news there is that the NEA data may be a little misleading. Constance Grady has a great piece in Vox where she digs into the numbers more expertly than I can. I also recommend Jason Diamond’s piece in GQ, “We’re Doing Men Don’t Read Discourse Again” and Lit Hub’s own “Men Have Bigger Problems Than Not Reading Novels” by James Folta.

The take-away here is that “Men are slightly less likely to read than women are, and they’re probably also slightly less likely to read fiction, although the margin is not the yawning gap it’s usually presented as” (Vox). What the data in the NEA study actually shows is that the gender gap in readership has remained fairly steady for at least the last decade—the drop among men is actually due to a broader decline in reading by Americans overall. If this is correct then men specifically aren’t reading so much less than before—everyone is.

Still the gap is real. Why should men read so much less than women, now or in the past?

If we do want men to read more often (and I don’t see why we shouldn’t, even if it may not be the solution to all our national woes) then I’d suggest that male book clubs may be a helpful part of the solution.

BookBrowse.com estimates that around 13 million adults in the US are in some kind of a book club—around 1 in 25 Americans. But Publisher’s Weekly estimates that of those, 88 percent of private-book clubs have exclusively women members. The popular BookClubs app likewise shares that among its users, 90 percent report to be women.

Only after finding out that I write fiction and teach writing for a living, did some of the guys begin to talk about books they loved growing up, and what they liked to read now.

Meanwhile, public book clubs, often run by local libraries, report in the same surveys that about half the clubs have at least some male members. (I’ll note that the data here isn’t as reliable as the other studies mentioned before, but I suspect they’re not totally off-base either.)

What all this suggests to me is that the vast majority of the men who do read, don’t have any kind of organized group to do it with.

Men read alone.

Is that such a problem? Perhaps not. Reading is one of those things we really all do alone, at least initially. You can attend a concert with a friend or wander around in an art museum on a date or sit down to watch a play or a TV show or a film with your family. Most other art forms can be social activities if you want them to be. But a book is experienced one-on-one. Just you and the page. That may even be the pleasure of reading for many of us—no matter what gender we identify as. Reading is a chance to be on our own, lost in some other place for a while. Call it an escape, call it some “me time,” call it whatever you like.

But being in a book club doesn’t negate any of that. It just allows the book to take on a second life. A book is still read privately, but if it is later shared in a group, we can see how it may have impacted others differently, and this may deepen our experience and understanding. Book clubs can also motivate us all to read more, and push us to try books we wouldn’t on our own. They encourage us to make reading a habit and create a social context in which people can talk, not just about books themselves, but about the deeper ideas and themes that the books contain.

All of these things would be of great benefit to anyone. So why do so few men join book clubs?

One issue may be that most of the ones that already exist are exclusively female. I’m friends with all of the women in my wife’s book clubs, and if I dropped in to discuss the latest book on their list with them, I don’t imagine they’d throw me out. But I’d still feel like I was encroaching—and of course, I would be. Their book club is a chance to talk amongst themselves, to open up about personal things they may not want to share in mixed company.

Certainly, explicitly co-ed groups could and should also exist, but if there’s a separate value to be found in a gendered group, and I think there is, then why shouldn’t men simply form their own? What makes it so difficult?

One challenge may be finding other men who enjoy reading. When I first looked around in my own community, I didn’t see them—not at first. When I bonded with these other dads at playgrounds and birthday parties, we’d talk about news, about politics, maybe television. None ever asked me if I liked to read, or if I’d read anything good recently. I’d never asked any of them either.

But because I’m a writer and a creative writing professor, the topic of books often arose in our “so where do you work?” conversations. Only after finding out that I write fiction and teach writing for a living, did some of the guys begin to talk about books they loved growing up, and what they liked to read now.

It turned out a lot of them read all the time, and not at all what I expected. They burn through Star Trek novelizations, rockstar biographies, the Game of Thrones books, Robert Galbraith mysteries… a neighbor told me he started reading Don Quixote last year; I had to admit I’d never gotten past the fifth chapter. Another told me he’d picked up Another Country by James Baldwin, randomly, at a used bookstore while he was on vacation. Another rereads A Confederacy of Dunces every year; he thinks it’s the funniest book ever written. They listen to audiobooks; they read on Kindles; they carry paperbacks onto the train. They read everything, everywhere, all the time—they just don’t talk much about it.

My only gender-specific observation so far is that the guys tend to gravitate towards books about the things we wanted to be when we were growing up: pirates, magicians, astronauts, spies, knights…

They don’t bring it up at the playground or at a barbecue because it is something they do privately. When they did chat with me about books they seemed to light up and even make eager recommendations.

This is what led me to ask my friend, Michael, if he’d want to start our own book club, last year. I’ll confess, for weeks after I thought of it, I stalled, embarrassed and nervous, fearing that he might think it was weird.

I worried he’d say he was too busy. I knew I was suggesting something that was a little unprecedented—and it felt like a risk.

I thought maybe just the two of us, to start, would meet up to discuss whatever we were already reading. But a week later, I mentioned it to another neighbor, Jake, who I knew was also a big reader. He said it sounded fun. Because I knew they both liked fantasy novels, I picked Lev Grossman’s new Arthurian novel, The Bright Sword, and we set a date to meet at the pub and discuss it over pints.

I expected that we’d probably talk about the book for a few minutes and then awkwardly wander off into other subjects. But to my surprise, Michael arrived with pages of notes. Jake was ready to pick apart the book, section by section. We talked about the way Grossman had modernized the classic characters, and blended multiple versions of the Arthurian legend. We talked for over an hour; eventually we picked our next book. Michael gave us a few options he’d found on his TBR list, we voted, and suddenly we were off to the races.

Pretty quickly, word got out about the group. Before long we had new members joining every month, all already avid readers in private, all eager to come talk about books with other guys. I’ve also had a few guys turn me down, either convinced that they don’t have the time or unsure if they’d enjoy sharing their thoughts with a group. That’s fine as well—this doesn’t have to be the right answer for every guy who reads out there.

Our ranks swelled from three to seven before the summer, and we began to organize a steady rotation. To my surprise the options offered by the guys in the group have been all over the place: The Odyssey, a Kristin Hannah novel, two John Le Carré spy thrillers, The Mothman Prophecies, a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci, Tove Jannsen’s Summer Book, The Stand by Stephen King… no one’s interests are in any singular niche; the guys are bright and curious readers, happy to try something new. I’ve been surprised to find, too, that almost everyone seems to finish the whole book, each time, even when they aren’t enjoying it—from what I gather, this isn’t typical for a lot of book clubs.

Keep it simple. We don’t keep a rigid schedule—the length of time between meetings can fluctuate based on people’s busy seasons at work, and also the size of the book we’ve picked to read.

The biggest hit of the year was Project Hail Mary, and we’re planning a group field trip next month to see the movie adaptation in theaters. No one has enjoyed every book. When we read my favorite book, The Secret History, one guy gave it his lowest possible score, and said he hoped I wouldn’t be upset—of course I wasn’t, and to be honest, he made a lot of good points about what didn’t work for him about it. Babel also didn’t connect for many of the guys—they felt it was unsubtle, blunt in making its points about colonialism, and the magical systems didn’t make sense. (We’re pausing on all further Dark Academia for the time being.) At our final meeting of 2025, Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk so thoroughly repulsed everyone that one guy literally destroyed his copy afterwards… but we had a great discussion about it anyway, and everyone was eager to meet up again in the new year.

My only gender-specific observation so far is that the guys tend to gravitate towards books about the things we wanted to be when we were growing up: pirates, magicians, astronauts, spies, knights… (and maybe just for me a student in a highly-exclusive Ancient Greek class.) There’s a spirit of adventure, of “men on a mission,” in many of the books that resonate with the group; it’s been a needed reminder for me that reading can be a way of communicating with our inner children, our early selves, our first pleasures.

If our adult lives are full of hard work and responsibilities, then why shouldn’t we devote our scant free time to a journey on the high seas, an intergalactic quest, or a trip through Camelot?

The experience of the all-guys book club has been both fun and life-changing in every way. And if you’re reading this and thinking about starting your own book club, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Pick a gathering place that won’t be loud or crowded and start by asking just a few friends if they want to read a book together and meet up to discuss. You can always bring more people in later.

Select something you think will be fun to read—we’ve found that giving four or five options and letting the group vote takes the pressure off any one person “assigning” a book to the rest.

Don’t make it feel like school. I lecture about books all day at work—and I don’t want to wade into critical theory on my day off. It’s a joy to sit down and just talk as a fellow reader.

I don’t take notes, but I’ll scribble down a few questions. What surprised us? What made us laugh? What got us choked up? What did we think of the writing? What did we think about the end? Would we want to read another book by the same writer? Did it remind us of anything else?

Books can create a pretext for deeper conversations, of course, and give men a reason to share more personal things with each other… but not every book club meeting has to be a group therapy session. Usually the book itself offers plenty to talk about.

Whether you talk for fifteen minutes or an hour, or two hours, it doesn’t matter. No one needs to lead the group, but whoever picked the book initially might say why they had it on their list.

Ensure that nobody talks over anyone else too much. Give everyone at least one chance to share their impressions of the book.

Whenever people are finally out of things to say, we like to conclude by going around and each ranking the book out of five: 5, loved it and you’d read it again yourself; 4, liked it, and you’d recommend the book to others; 3, thought it was OK, or a mixed bag, wouldn’t really read again or recommend; 2, you didn’t like it at all; 1, you totally hated it.

Then it’s on to the next guy’s turn to suggest four books.

Keep it simple. We don’t keep a rigid schedule—the length of time between meetings can fluctuate based on people’s busy seasons at work, and also the size of the book we’ve picked to read. We shoot for once a month, but sometimes we meet twice, and sometimes it takes two months.

We’ve agreed that once the date is set, if someone finds out that they can’t make it, we won’t reschedule, but they can send their thoughts via email or on the group chat. We try to avoid spoilers over text, or too much advance chatting about the books, but sometimes we can’t help it. To be honest nothing makes me happier than when the messages just begin flying in a few days beforehand—the guys unable to hold back before sounding off about whatever we’ve been reading.

I know of at least two other male reading groups out there, one run by Yahdon Israel, a senior editor at Simon & Schuster runs The Fiction Revival—and my friend’s brother has a group in Philadelphia (shout out to “The Prose Bros”!) but I’m sure there must be many more out there, and I would love to hear about them.

I’d also love for more guys to take the leap and start their own. All of the guys in my book club were already avid readers before we started, but we’ve all pushed our boundaries this year, and we’ve all read more than we would have alone. We’ve had fun, and when we gather at the pub and people see us sitting there discussing the books, I like to think we’re doing just a little something to normalize male reading in our community. At the very least I’m glad to have something else to talk about at the playground and at barbecues—I feel a lot less alone today, as a reader, and in general, than I did a year ago.

What better reason could there be, than that?