High and low quality books

I am inclined to agree with you because my own observations fully support your hypothesis. (It seems that the higher the quality of the book, the higher probability that there will be much larger percentage of males than females among its readers.) However, this hypothesis or opinion is not "politically correct", so I guess that even if people observed the same thing as you in their social circles, they would not admit it or they would try to find some counterexamples at any costs just in order to avoid sounding politically incorrect.

Here is the way I see it. More women "read" than men. Either gender tends equally towards bad literature so more women read bad literature than men (because more read). The minority of people read good literature but - statistically - this also means more women in total read "bad" literature than men who read "good" literature.

It may appear as if the majority of women are making bad reading choices when compared to the tiny majority of men who make good choices but the actuality is that they are a larger group and, as such, more women are reading "good" literature than men are. It's just skewed by being a bigger sample.

I don't think there's a huge disparity and I think men and women are reasonably equal in this but I think the fact that men eschew reading makes it looks like men who read good books are some kind of minority and that this is a reason to assume the majority of women read books with no merit.

Forget quantitation and look at ratios. I bet there isn't a lot of difference. If there is a difference, my feeling is that it doesn't come down on the side of men.

Ugh yes. My fat, lazy, non-exercising housewife neighbor reads those god awful Harlequin romance things and eats all day while her husband works. So disgusting. Women like her make me embarrassed to be female.

Well, the majority of shiterature (The Twilight Saga, The 50 Shades series etc.) is directly marketed at female people. There isn't really anything like that marketed at male people at the moment, from what I can see.

That said, 50 Shades is more intellectually engaging than most porn out there, and that's what 50 Shades is: literally reading for pleasure. Saying more women read bad books because of examples like 50 Shades is the same as saying more men watch bad films because of the example of porn.

But I take your point. Women are also probably more likely to read celebrity auto-biographies than men, because they've got a lot of human interest. That doesn't necessarily mean auto-biographies aren't intellectually engaging, but celebrity ones almost never are. And auto-biographies are just one example.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/22/women-reading-books-study This article is biased against men in it's language, but the stats are interesting and suggest that women do read a lot more generally. So, by way of echoing dappled's point (as I so often do; big welcome back, by the way) women do read more generally, so it's going to be expected that they'd read a higher concentration of crap.

Interestingly, the stats in that article suggest that the percentage of men and women who are avid readers (as defined by those who read more than one book at a time; an imperfect definition but a reasonable enough one) is the same - 12% for each - which would make me think that the proportion of men and women who read "real literature" is probably about the same.

First of all, there's no real basis to what constitutes as a "high quality book". Statistically, women read more than men, fictionional books are more geared towards women, males prefer books with war and/or adventure in them, and women prefer books that deal more with relationships and/or what characters are thinking.

Also statistically, men have a better aptitude for math and science (which may or may not explain why they read books with "scientific value").

In my experience, I have no idea what kind of books anybody (male or female) read.

Actually none of my male freiends (except one) read so I can't say anything because only me and my female friends read books while they think it's lame...

Hmm, I'm not sure. I'm female and I've always thought that most of the books I read are really good, although perhaps not:P. I wonder whether you're right or not, I'd be interested in finding out, although I can't see that happening.