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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
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Martin Robinson

OPINION - Men don't read any more — what happened?

Lewis Hamilton Sir Alex Ferguson United States Canada United Kingdom

Why don’t men read? Oh, I know dear male Standard readers do, those urbane, literary, poised and secretly perverted doyens of good taste. But those other men, they are not reading fiction. Oh sure, they read Sir Alex Ferguson’s book, Lewis Hamilton’s book, books about cage fighters and career criminals, but nice books that win literary prizes? Nope. The book buying public in the UK, US and Canada is 80 per cent women.

Is this why no-one wants my woe? Why my breathtaking work of utterly miserable fiction has been rejected by every literary agent in London, including a few I didn’t even send it to. Despite pouring my little spiteful heart and ugly soul into 350 pages of unrelenting male despair, everyone is chipping in with how much they hate it, how little it would sell, how much of my life I wasted on it. And those are just the gentle let-downs.

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