Let's Fix 'Em

How to Make Classic Books More Exciting to Men

Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash

I’m not gonna write this.

I’m not gonna write this.

I’m not gonna write this.

I’m not gonna write this.

I’m totally not gonna write this.

I’m not gonna write this at all, anyhow, no way.

So, anyway…

Yeah.

I’ve read a couple of things today and they’re making me batty so, while I’m totally not writing this, I’m writing it anyway. Because

A.) I’m a writer, no matter how annoying that fact is

and

B.) I have no impulse control. Just ask my waistline if you doubt me.

Life is rough. I’ll get a helmet. I promise.

But for today…

I’ve had enough. I have totally had enough from “lich-rich-yooah” snobs who think that men don’t read because they won’t read a bunch of boring old crap that wasn’t even good when it was published. But, in an effort to reach out across the gap and open a dialogue, I’m here to help the arrogant types out. I have, by myself and with assistance only from caffeine and pizza rolls, come up with a list of old books that suck and how to make them interesting to a modern, male audience. Buckle up, it’s going to be a crazy ride.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Real Plot: Some woman sleeps with some dude she shouldn’t and then make her wear a red A for adulterer. Her life sucks. She hates everything. Any man reading this book hopes it ends before he voluntarily rips his eyes out of their sockets and throws them into a vat of acid so that he can’t be tortured by being forced to read any more of this crap.

The Improved Plot: Same woman sleeps with same dude. She still gets caught and forced to wear the A. After a couple days of suffering due to this crap, she stumbles out of town crying and comes across an abandoned campsite with a hatchet and a large knife still laying around. She takes them home, sharpens them and proceeds to slaughter the town that has wronged her. At the end of the book she successfully stalks the guy who sentenced her(all while wearing an old-timey long dress to add authenticity) into his home where she slays him with her axe, then stabs the blade of her knife through the A and embeds it in his chest. After that, she takes off on the best horse she can find, to head to another town and claim to be the sole survivor of a cholera epidemic. There she gets her Happily Ever After.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Real Plot: A couple of kids with a crazy neighbor attempt to save a black man from being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. The dude that actually did the crime attempts to kill them. I think. I was asleep by then.

The Improved Plot: A black man is accused of a crime he didn’t commit. His lawyer doesn’t think he can do much, because black man, time period, etc. After months of careful observation, Black man finds a way to trick the white dude into admitting that they whitey did it in front of the entire town. The white girl jumps up, gets in her fathers face and forces him to realize that he just confessed to beating an innocent woman. Black man and smoking hot white girl ride off somewhere and get married and never mind what the neighbors think.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

The Real Plot: The king is murdered. His son finds out about it. The son’s mom tries to have him killed. There is a play that looks like the king’s murder. The bad guy freaks out and confirms Hamlet’s suspicions. There is a big sword fight. Everyone dies.

The Improved Plot: I mean, this one works as it is plot wise. You could probably tweak the ending a bit and have Hamlet survive, but the story is fine up until that point. The problem with Shakespeare’s work is the language. If you want the modern man to enjoy Hamlet translate it into modern English. Nobody knows what forsooth means anymore. Seriously. If we can translate the Bible and the Koran we can translate freaking Shakespeare.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Real Plot: There’s a guy. He is a political prisoner in the Gulag. His life sucks. He has to work in the cold and doesn’t get enough to eat. Then he has a good day, and gets some extra soup and a couple of extra pieces of bread that he can save to eat later.

The Improved Plot: There is a guy. He is a prisoner in the Gulag. He has to work in the cold and doesn’t get enough to eat. Then one day, he decides he’s had enough. He confers with a couple of the guys on his work detail and they conspire to steal enough crappy bread to last a couple of days, take their guard out from behind and run off into the cold to freedom. Upon their successful escape to another country, they manage to found a business building houses and strike it rich. Something, something, Ivan marries a hot chick.

I could go on, but there’s no point in doing so, really, The bottom line is that men like books where people accomplish things. Men like books with lots of action. Men like books where the main character overcomes obstacles and makes life better for himself and those around him. Men don’t like to read about suffering (ala The Scarlet Letter) and they don’t like to suffer while reading (like by trying to translate Shakespeare into something understandable by a twenty-first century English speaker). If you want men to read more, or if you want men to show up to your book club, give them something to read that resonates with them. Because the emotional, relationship based, stuff that women read is not what men enjoy.

And no, that’s not a problem with men. We’re different than women. That’s it. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether God or evolution made us that way, but we are not the same. There are differences in brain chemistry and hormonal balances that make us different. We don’t think the same way. We don’t feel the same way. We don’t act the same way. And we don’t read the same things. That’s just life.

So if you want men to read more, or if you want to sell more books to men, or if you want men to show up for your book club, provide them with a product they’ll enjoy.

And if you want to learn more about the types of books me enjoy, you can subscribe here and/or go back through my archive because I’m a man and I review the things that men like.