He Reads, She Reads: Do Choices Speak Volumes?

When author Jonathan Franzen balked at being one of talk show host Oprah Winfrey’s book club picks last month, it raised some hackles and some questions:

What’s so bad about being read by thousands of women? And if being on Oprah’s list makes a book a “woman’s book,” just what does that mean?

“To deem a book a ‘woman’s book’ is kind of a backhanded way of disparaging a book,” says Linda Bubon, co-owner of Women & Children First, a Chicago bookstore founded in 1979 to give women authors their due.

“It’s really insulting to call a book a ‘woman’s book,”’ said e-novelist Emily McCormack, 79, of Willowbrook, Ill. “What it means is it’s silly and sentimental and there’s no meat in it.”

But are those stereotypes fact or fiction in this day and age?

Bubon, whose clientele is 80% female, said that there is “incredible diversity” in both the writing of female authors and the readers themselves, which defies those notions.

Still, some of the impressions of what women like to read are backed up by sales figures.

According to Ipsos BookTrends, a research survey conducted for the publishing industry, the top genre purchased for women is romance, followed by general fiction.

For some, the popularity of those categories among female readers and female writers feeds the idea that women’s books are something less than high-minded literature--and it implies that men won’t read them. That seemed to be part of the reasoning behind Franzen’s initial snubbing of Oprah’s Book Club logo on the cover of his book “The Corrections.”

In a radio interview, Franzen said that “more than one [male] reader” at book signings had told him: “If I hadn’t heard of you, I would’ve been put off by the fact that it is an Oprah pick. I figure those books are for women, and I never touch [them].”

The book deals with family dynamics, which traditionally have been considered women’s domain. But that common wisdom may need updating, said Brad Hooper, adult books editor for Booklist, a review journal published by the American Library Assn.

“If [the subject matter] suggests that it is a woman’s novel, that’s too bad,” Hooper says. “We operate on the premise that readers are readers.”

Besides, he said, plenty of men wrote about family relationships, including D.H. Lawrence and William Faulkner.

Ipsos BookTrends divides men’s and women’s purchase data into roughly 60 genres. It reports that part of the romance category’s popularity among women could simply be affordability--many books in that class tend to cost less.

And although the top category for men is nonfiction religion--which includes Bibles, Korans, philosophy, Eastern religions and Christian living books, for example--that class accounts for less than 10% of all books bought for men.

Ann Russo, acting director of the women’s studies program at DePaul University, believes marketing, such as the way books are advertised and their cover art, creates gender differences and perpetuates them.

“I don’t think there is anything inherent in women or in men that would orient them toward different topics, styles and concerns,” she said.

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Roberta Rubin, owner of the Book Stall at Chestnut Court in Winnetka, says some gender-based distinctions may have validity.

“I don’t like to think of literature as being sexist, but I suppose there are certain books, like Danielle Steel’s, that I don’t think many men would read,” Rubin said. “Men might prefer David Baldacci, although I know women read [his thrillers] too.”

But if there are some gender-based leanings, women cross over more easily than men, Rubin says.

That may have something to do with the sheer volume of books purchased and read by women compared with men. Ipsos BookTrends reports that a whopping 81% of books are purchased for women but cautions that this figure may be somewhat skewed because the household diaries it uses to gather data tend to be filled out by women.

But that finding jibes with Rubin’s observations. “Men, in our store, at least, are not the majority of shoppers,” Rubin says.

Clearly, for every generalization, there are exceptions. Choice of reading materials can be enormously individual.

“There truly is the idea that something is a woman’s book, just like they call certain movies ‘chick flicks,’ but I don’t think all women fit into that category when it comes to their choice in reading,” said avid reader Liz Nicholson, 34, director of scheduling for the Illinois Secretary of State’s office. “I don’t necessarily read books that could be pigeonholed as ‘chick books’ or whatever.

“For maybe a year and a half I was on a big kick of reading true-crime books, things of a nature that would turn some women’s stomachs. Over the summer, I was into more frivolous reading--autobiographies of Esther Williams and Eddie Fisher,” said Nicholson, of Chicago. “Those are books a lot of men wouldn’t particularly pick, but I wasn’t reading them because I’m a woman. I was reading them because it took my mind off of other things and let me delve into the world of old movie stars.”

Eleanor Edmondson, founder of the Atlanta-based book catalog Bas Bleu (which is French for bluestocking, a term referring to an educated or literary woman), believes there are certain types of books that women are drawn to.

“The fiction that sells well for us is either written by a woman, which isn’t surprising since if you’re a woman you have more in common with the life of another woman than with a life of a man, or books written by men that are sagas.

“Naguib Mahfouz’s books, set in Egypt, mid-20th century, have sold amazingly well for us, and that’s not the sort of thing I thought would necessarily appeal to our clientele, but they’re sagas about the development of a family, the interactions and all of that.

“There’s a whole category of books I reject out of hand [for the catalog and for her own reading, about] spunky women making their way, the ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ kind of thing.”

For her own reading, Edmondson, 54, says she prefers introspective books that talk about relationships among people. (She especially enjoys the English authors Muriel Spark and Rose Macaulay.)

“When my daughter was in high school, somebody said, ‘Your mom reads a lot; what does she read?’ And my daughter said, ‘My mother reads books where nothing happens but you feel bad at the end anyway.’ That’s kind of it for me,” Edmondson says. “Nothing really happens, but there have been lots of emotions explored.”

Annie Laven, 34, of Oak Park, a social worker, says she reads a lot of biographies, autobiographies and memoirs, not only those written by women. “But obviously, women’s biographies would speak to me more,” she said. “I find I can sometimes relate my own life to it. I get a lot more out of a biography or memoir than from a book from one of those inspirational writers. ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul,’ I hate that stuff.”

McCormack, whose e-novel “Never a Teardrop” was about Irish immigrants in early 20th century Chicago, said she’s an equal opportunity reader and never chooses a book based on the author’s gender.

“One of the greatest books I ever read was by a woman, ‘I Heard the Owl Call My Name,’ by Margaret Craven. It’s a simple story about a priest who is dying,” she says.

For light reading, McCormack, a former legal and corporate secretary who teaches business writing, chooses mysteries. Some favorite authors are Agatha Christie and P.D. James.

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Roberta Johnson, reader services manager at the Des Plaines Public Library, believes that men’s and women’s tastes in books are “coming closer together. There used to be more clear divisions by genre. Men never read romances, and women never read military fiction. But now you’ll see as many women that like Tom Clancy and Patrick O’Brian--military stories and thrillers.”

Romances, though, remain the province of women. A survey commissioned by the Romance Writers Assn. in 1999 showed that one in every three women had read a romance in the past year, compared with one in 30 men.

The association defines a romance strictly. It has to be a novel in which the primary focus is a love story, and it has to have an “emotionally satisfying ending,” meaning that the man and woman get together and the good guys win.

Under that definition, novels by, say, Barbara Taylor Bradford or Belva Plain would not qualify because usually they include several characters who go through a series of relationships, not only with men but also mothers, sisters and others, said Charis Calhoon, communications manager for the association.

Roberta Johnson, however, defines romance as “women’s fiction in general, everything from Danielle Steel to Barbara Delinsky.”

Though he is “not into romance novels,” Kevin Jackson, 34, a Chicago marketing manager, said gender doesn’t play a part in what he chooses to read. Toni Morrison is one of his favorite writers, and he also has enjoyed Maya Angelou’s autobiographical works.

The books stacked on his desk for future reading include: “Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones,” Huston Smith’s “The World’s Religions,” the novel “White Teeth” by Zadie Smith and “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” a nonfiction book about omissions and distortions in American history.

For light reading while riding the train, he dips into essays by David Sedaris and “The Portable Dorothy Parker.”

Johnson, of the Des Plaines Public Library, still observes some gender differences among middle schoolers and teenagers: The boys read more nonfiction and science fiction than girls do.

“Boys tend to like things that are a little bit grosser,” she said, “and girls like things that are maybe a little warmer and fuzzier. But for every generality I could probably give you a notable exception.”

Many women now in their 20s and early 30s look back fondly on their childhood reading, and it’s surprisingly similar to that of older baby boomer women: “Little Women,” Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mysteries, “A Girl of the Limberlost,” “Anne of Green Gables,” “The Wizard of Oz” and the “Little House on the Prairie” series.

“They all feature a strong female character, an independent thinker,” said Anna Wight, 27, an assistant to one of the deans at the University of Illinois-Chicago. “They were appealing for that reason.”

Jennifer Crusie, author and a former university writing instructor in Ohio who progressed from writing romances to what she calls “women’s fiction” (including “Fast Women”), observed that “back in the ‘50s, girls read Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, but boys would never touch Nancy Drew. It might make them look like sissies. And a lot of that goes across culture today.”

Indeed, author J.K. Rowling went along with her publisher’s request to use her initials rather than Joanne, for fear that boys would spurn her Harry Potter books if they knew her gender.

While this may seem like a sign women haven’t shaken stereotypes, men also are dealing with conventional notions about gender.

“Women have a lot more freedom than men do,” Crusie said. “We are not worried about somebody thinking that we may not be a real woman.”

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Connie Lauerman is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune Co. newspaper.