From "Anthony Jeselnik: Men Should Think of Reading as 'Lifting Weights for Your Brain'/But the comedian isn’t naïve when he makes selections for his popular book club: 'Most importantly, they’re short'" (NYT gift link).
Asked "What’s a supposedly funny book that you just don’t find funny?," Jeselnik answers, "I have zero tolerance for David Sedaris."
I wonder what David Sedaris would say about the notion that "Reading should be sold to men like lifting weights for your brain."
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64 comments:
"I think a lot of men view reading fiction as a frivolous waste of time."
Guilty.
I already have enough things that I should do, but don't wanna.
This is like a vegan telling a carnivore that kale is worth it.
What a surprise.
And this man is a comedian, you say. How odd.
I love reading fiction. Fiction has been part of society for men throughout the ages. Sadly like so many things fiction for men seems at a low ebb. But there are classics abounding. Aubrey/Maturin series is peak. When I was a teen I read through most of Jack London and Michener, which are hearty. Twain's short stories were wonderful finds too.
The truth though is that very few men have been readers in history so we have a lot more literate men now but likely the same amount of literary.
I also dont find Sedaris funny. Clever yes. Applaud level not laugh out loud. Found Douglas Adams in my 20s and he is hilarious. I like his Dirk Gently books best. Currently rradimg through, again, the Discworld series. Which is also more clever but some books are quite profound. He is surprisingly quite conservative in current estimation of things.
Reading fiction is my way of relaxing so I like more midbroq stuff. I read deeply for work and other tasks
"Anthony Jeselnik: Men Should Think of Reading as 'Lifting Weights for Your Brain'".
I read a LOT. Just not fiction. Physics and math, primarily. I think my brain lifts enough weights.
I have so much waiting to be read, sometimes my fore-brain assigns some of it my aft-brain, just to get through it all.
This is a complete misunderstanding about the relationship between men and modern books. I like to read and most men I know like to read. The problem is that the books being published today do not appeal to most men. You put a good Stephen King or Heinlein book in a room alone with a guy and he's start to read it. And he will enjoy it.
If you want to write books that men will read, then you have to write books that men want to read.
Priorities.
It's funny. There are times during the year when I'll read a book a week for a month or so, and then ... nothing for a long stretch. Also like re-reading books from 20+ years ago.
I do really enjoy reading fiction whenever I do it, but getting started is the obstacle. A non-fiction title pulls me right in as I imagine getting more informed the whole way through and then coming out the other side understanding something about the world or its history. It's worth the effort, and especially with history, you can get the same emotional payoff from real-life stories. The exception for me is science fiction, since you just can't get those stories in non-fiction form. Although I may enjoy the reading experience of fiction and the memories it leaves, it's less total return, like food that tastes great but has little nutritional value. It might be enjoyable, but life has a limited number of bites.
I read a lot — alternating between fiction and non-fiction.
Just finished Amor Towles — The Lincoln Highway
Next is Frank Dikötter — The Cultural Revolution
Perfect book for High School English to get boys reading. Richard Bradford — Red Sky at Morning. Outstanding book somehow made into one of the worst insults to the cinematic arts.
I'm going to Maui next week. Maybe I'll take a book of fiction. Probably science fiction, though. I mean, I am a guy.
I used to love reading fiction. But novels published in the past fifteen years or so are written for “modern audiences” and are woke as fuck. For example, I recently read an anthology of the best science fiction stories of 2025. Three of the stories featured characters who went by they/them pronouns - beyond being woke it was awkward as fuck to read when in some cases they referred properly to a group of characters and in other cases they referred to the they/them character. I also read a nonfiction book on how to regain attention in the smartphone era. The book references Trump and politics multiple times - essentially the author was traumatized by Trump’s election. But what the fuck does Trump trauma have to do with improving your attention span and focus?
I think I share with most men the need to "get" something positive from reading, including fiction, even if that positive thing in just an entertaining diversion from whatever might be weighing upon one's mind. One thing that really bothers me is reading something that is not worth the time. If a book is dull or foolish or just plain stupid, my irritation with it outweighs any possible diversion. So I tend to read (or reread) authors I trust. I am not sure that (most) women feel the same way. The typical offerings on my Kindle or in the airport bookstores suggest that there are a lot of people who really don't mind having their reading time and effort wasted.
For years the ersatz umlaut in words like naive was a pretentious New Yorker solecism even that publication regretted (google ‘The Curse of the Diaeresis’). Now the New York Times adopts it for reasons I’m certain it does not understand.
This sounds like a load of hooey. I'm a man. An old man. I've been a reader all my life. As a kid I'd read everything I could get my hands on during the summer vacation. As a retired old geezer I go through two or three novels a week. Sometimes a lot less if I tackle something weighty. I read The Count of Monte Cristo recently. That took a couple of weeks. I'm planning on reading The Odyssey. Having seen the movie earlier this week I'm intrigued. I thought I'd read it in college but after seeing the movie I believ it may have been the Iliad or maybe just exerpts from the Odyssey we read in a college Humanities course. In any case, I found hte movie to be one of those stories that stay with you for a few days. I want to know more.
Weightlifting? naw. I've always been a fan of a good workout but I've never thought of reading as anything more than entertainment. My Kindle probably has 600 titles on it. I've taken to trying to find Kindle versions in the city library. It saves some money. I also joined KIndle unlimited. I get thousands of titles to choose from for a flat rate of $11.99 a month. For the price of one book I can read all I can handle.
"Describe your ideal reading experience.
I’m sitting on an airplane in the dark with a Kindle lit up in my hands. I’ve got earplugs in and I’m tearing through a novel while everyone around me is asleep. A flight attendant comes by once in a while to fill my water glass."
He just described me. On an airplane I put in the foam earplugs then I put on my Bose noise cancelling headphones and turn on the Kindle. I can't read if there's any noise, even the quiet sound of other passenger's movie screens is too much.
One fiction I like is historical fiction. I really enjoyed Gore Vidal's "Creation", but that novel was at least based on real history with real ancient historical figures, and a lot of it could have happened, even if it didn't.
The problem I have with fiction is like how it feels to watch A.I. video. It can be awesome to experience, but knowing it's fake subtracts a huge amount of the value for me.
From The Catcher in the Rye:
The part that got me was, there was a lady sitting next to me that cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried. You’d have thought she did it because she was kindhearted as hell, but I was sitting right next to her, and she wasn’t. She had this little kid with her that was bored as hell and had to go to the bathroom, but she wouldn’t take him. She kept telling him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they’re mean bastards at heart.
I think this applies to fiction as much as cinema.
Jeselnik is an hilarious comedian. (is it 'an' hilarious or 'a' hilarious? Grok tells me that in Modern English using 'a' is proper. Using 'an' is an older English form. But to me 'an' sounds correct. Anyway...
Jeselnik is darkly hilarious, but I enjoy him immensely...in small doses. You can only take so much of his schtick. That said, I recently saw a YouTube video of his where he went through his top ten books of- I think it was 2025. I bought a couple of them based on his review and...they're sitting in my Kindle like about 100 others these days.
I read a lot but spend way too much time on things like this blog and others. Reading Substacks, listening to podcasts. All of it has taken chunks out of both my brain and my time.
But I typically do like 'Hey Skipper' said at 11:35. I bounce from fiction to non-fiction. Mainly because there is still so much I want to learn. I will say that after slogging through a meaty non-fiction book, like "Jerusalem", by Simon Sebag Montefiore, any fiction I pick up next is very easy and entertaining.
I have a hard time getting through a lot of modern non-fiction too; things like political or social science. The author has a point to make and could do it in one chapter, but stretches it out with endless examples and anecdotes to wade through. It reminds me of someone doing a term paper with a minimum word requirement, which I suppose it is.
" (is it 'an' hilarious or 'a' hilarious? Grok tells me that in Modern English using 'a' is proper. Using 'an' is an older English form. But to me 'an' sounds correct."
In the modern non-fiction market, that question could be an entire book.
If you read halfway through a book and then neglect to pick it up for a long time, are you relieved or disappointed?
Reading should not be "sold to men", dump the brain-lifting approach and stop the empathy conditioning. Men aren't stupid.
Good on Jeselnik for starting a book club, but most guys aren't going to read "Glamorama". Publishing is dominated by women, and progressive themes predominate. Men are not interested.
Reaching men is always thought to be a marketing problem, when it's a content problem.
Men like history, so write alt-history with plenty of Nazi killing. Men like science fiction, but put more emphasize on men being heroic, and less emphasize on gender-dynamic aliens.
Men see "The Message" being crammed into movies, TV shows and video games. Write masculine books, and guys would be happy to find a diversion that isn't trying to teach a lesson about empathy.
There are many articles out there about reading as calisthenics for the brain or the emotions. Here's one that presents the other side:
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/literature-not-about-you
Can't you get the same exercise from reading non-fiction? Doesn't history provide opportunities for empathy and exercise for the emotions? Of course, there is also the recent "collapse" of non-fiction reading (attributed to men reading less).
I am still a voracious reader. My preference is fiction labeled as such rather than fiction labeled as non-fiction.
Screw empathy.
"If you want to write books that men will read, then you have to write books that men want to read."
Fortunately, once human lifetime might not be enough to get through everthing writtend in the 20th Century and earlier. I think that the real competition is gaming, and while I don't game, I can see that it would be a workout for your brain, they say that people who play tennis as a sport live the longest, and gaming probably works many of the same areas of the brain. Unless you a playing Pong, then its tennis hands down.
Life is too short to read all those current literary novels. A deep dive into contemporary literary fiction is more likely to fuel misanthropy than empathy.
I am sure, though, that if I had had a drink with Bret Easton Ellis, one of his books would be my favorite too, no matter how bad it is.
I can recommend SparrowHawk series for historical fiction preRevolution
It's funny how he mentions empathy. You can read Lolita and develop empathy for a pedophile, you can read Death in Venice and develop empathy for a pederast, and Das Boot might make you have empathy for German U-Boat officers, but I heard a story about somebody watching the movie, and there were a lot of servicemen in the theater, and when the American bombers hit the German submarine pen, they all stood up and cheered.
I think my problem with modern fiction is my low estrogen. It's not you; it's me.
If we are just talking about reading volume, then I read about 20X what I did pre-internet.
I’ve been a voracious reader since I was 8 years-old. Perhaps oddly, I read a lot of the “classics” before the age of 25 and almost none of them since. Adulthood and the digital age (Amazon, let’s face it) have made it possible to indulge eclectically and widely in modern fiction. But, unlike the teenager who would buy a stack of paperbacks from the thrift store and read every one of them regardless of merit, I no longer finish the ones that aren’t great. That isn’t a matter of attention span, but of the wealth of choices.
From what I’ve seen, young men do read fiction for pleasure. That is, the same kind of young men who read for pleasure 50 years ago. And, notably, young men read better fiction than their female counterparts of the same education and class.
I like Jack London. Do many women read that kind of stuff?
Do they need to? No.
Do I wish they would? Yes.
And, thinking about that last sentence some more, I think that’s because young men simply have more selective buzz. Blood Meridian versus A Handmaid’s Tale. It isn’t even close.
Not everyone wants to read romances.
Grew up reading. Still an avaricious reader. Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Jack London, Louis L'Amour, Zane Gray, all the Perry Mason and Rex Stout books. All the Golden Age of Science Fiction books, LotR, Narnia, and when I ran out one summer before I could drive, all the Emily Loring, Barbara Cartland, Georgette Heyer, Meyer?, Angelique books, whlatever my Mom and sisters had handy. The next year, still with no license, I read the World Book Encyclopedia pretty much cover to cover x 26. Along the way I read through the Bookmobile, Algood School Library, Junior High School Library, Senior High School Library, Clara Cox Epperson Library, and the Putnam County Library. I have a couple of thousand books I own in my little library. And I am working my way through Kindle Unlimitled and Gutenburg. The only thing slowing me down is after my heart surgery, I dropped from 1000 wpm to 500 wpm when reading for pleasure.
Weightlifting? I just read "Starting Strength" by Rippetoe. But somehow I didn't get stronger. Must be my form....
NYT comment, " “I have zero tolerance for David Sedaris”
Finally someone said it out loud."
I'm reading "The Acolyte" by Rick Dooling; Creighton Prep alum.
Funny.
One of his novels was made into a movie starring Helen Mirren.
A study showed brain improvement, due solely to weightlifting, to the brain area expressing or reacting empathically. The area improved was the posterior cingulate cortex. The video on the study by gerontologist Maria Fiatarone Singh is on Youtube titled “Building Muscle in Your 80s and 90s.” Resistance training helps bring more brain improvement than does sedentary reading. Engage in fruitful labor. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq70vOkb0mo&ra=m
The key segment on that Youtube video on brain improvement starts 50 minutes in.
The internet informs me that "Book reports are still used in some schools, but their frequency and form have changed significantly in recent years. . . . Teachers and administrators cite shorter attention spans, the pressure to prepare for standardized tests, and a shift toward skills-based, standards-aligned curricula."
We just finished the latest season of “Reacher” based on the fiction novels by Lee Child. Lots of movies made related to “Lord of the Rings”. Several movie franchises based on “graphical novels” or comics, such as Marvel and DC. I’ll admit the recent discussion of WEB Griffin novels involve historical fiction, which some may not think of as pure fiction for men. Maybe if they made more Heinlein movies the NYT would complain about fiction novels written for men.
Bagoh2, be sure to do the Road to Hana drive. Recommend downloading Shaka app for guided tours.
Should I read Hawaii ( Michener ) before or in Hawaii?
You should read James Michener’s Hawaii before your trip, rather than trying to finish it while you are on vacation.
Why Read It Before Your Trip
Massive Length: The book is a massive epic spanning over 900 pages. It is heavy and too cumbersome to carry around on a beach or pack light for a vacation.Slow Start: The opening chapters dive deep into geology and the slow formation of the islands, which requires dedicated reading time rather than vacation downtime.
Deeper Context: Reading it beforehand gives you a rich, foundational understanding of the history, geography, and multi-ethnic colonization of the islands. When you visit specific places, you will recognize the historical layers behind them.
Why Reading It in Hawaii is ToughDistractions: A Hawaiian vacation is full of active exploring, snorkeling, and hiking. Finding the hours required to power through Michener's dense prose is difficult.Pacing: You want to enjoy your surroundings, not spend your evenings tackling a heavy historical textbook-sized novel.
Empathy is a marketing term.
"The opening chapters dive deep into geology and the slow formation of the islands, "
So, in other words, the best part.
Rome was real and magnificent.
Perhaps a bit OT, but on a recent roadtrip listened to Sedaris’s “The Land and its People”
Outstanding.
The problem is that the books being published today do not appeal to most men.
Bingo. It's one of the most feminist industries in the world. They specifically avoid finding or awarding any white male authors. Just look at all the agents who are women. It's ridiculous the sex discrimination in that business model. Half the human race is running away from it. The industry is forced to prop up and keep using dead writers because they aren't finding new ones.
How many books have I seen with a dead writer's name in big print and the actual author in small print? Way too many.
I try to alternate fiction and non-fiction. Currently in non-fiction mode. Most of the fiction I read is action, historical, or war based. I have Michener's "Hawaii" on my Kindle, waiting to be read.
There are...or were, rather, large numbers of men reading genre fiction and were perfectly happy with it until the past ten years or so.
Whenever I feel guilty about reading fiction (which I read quite a bit of), I pick up a history book. I tend towards British history, but I am currently on a George Patton bio.
I’ve been thinking about empathy lately and I’ve come to the idea that, in general, men believe empathy is understanding what another person is thinking while woman know that empathy is understanding what other people feel.
𝘣𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘩20 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥...
𝘐 𝘥𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘦𝘯𝘫𝘰𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘐 𝘥𝘰 𝘪𝘵, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘣𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘭𝘦.
I think so. You have to sink or rise into a novel's world, and knowing that you're going to have to be there for a while makes it harder.
More and more, the novel seems to just be a way station on the way from the idea or the original factual material to the eventual film. What people used to get from novels is all around us -- history, biography, journalism, diaries, memoirs, blogs, etc. -- and people discuss what we have in the way they used to discuss literary fiction. If we want to see something dramatized, we see the movie, rather than read the novel.
"More and more, the novel seems to just be a way station on the way from the idea or the original factual material to the eventual film."
I am not sure if the reason is that authors have seen so many movies, it imprints on them as the natural form of a story, or that every writer, in his heart, hopes that his novel will be made into a movie. Say what you will about Thomas Pynchon, he never wrote his novels to be made into movies, at least not movies with a budget under ten billion dollars, or Anthony Burgess, either, though he did work with Kubrick on making A Clockwork Orange.
Jesilnek is a funny comedian imo. Had to no idea he had a book club.
I read a lot, and I try to split between fiction and non on a regular basis. I've been reading City of Thieves by David Benioff and it is fantastic.. Can't believe they haven't made it into a movie.
I also listen to a podcast that reads Sherlock Holmes novels, which I wasn't familiar with. They're pretty good!
Jeslnik's bit about finding his dad's porn is hilarious btw.
Can't post it because my work vpn is censorious.
I go to the library weekly to pick out books to read and the problem is the amount of dreck out there. I have a hard time if there's any kind of condescending tone to the author's words as well. I'll be at the library in 3 hours to pick out this week's books.
I read a fair bit but it is all non-fiction. History and business mostly. If you want to exercise the mind try wrapping it around reality.
I read a great deal. Almost all nonfiction. Why read a story that is made up (A lie) when there is so much fact (Truth) available. I will make an exception for something like "The Sorrow of War" when it embodies enough background fact not available otherwise. Little else available on Vietnam war from the North Vietnam perspective - and recommended by a guide in Vietnam.
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