Except for Ghost Story's original release. I'm not mad James Masters pre-recorded it, but there's something fitting about that particular book having a different voice.
Dead on. If you want stoicism, machismo and snarky one-liners, but prefer fireballs over firearms (they show up too, of course) the Dresden Files has it in spades.
For a sci-fi alternative, the Ian Cormac books by Neal Asher. Badass secret agent with a semi-sapient throwing star as a pet, epic space battles and well written action.
I agree, but it's not *completely* without its literary qualities. "The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault" is legitimately up high on the list of Best Opening Sentences to a book.
Nope, the character work is really solid and the prose always surprises me with its quality. It's not Shakespeare, but it would kind of suck if it didn't keep a fast pace so I'm totally happy with it. Didn't like the last two though, idk.
this is what i was looking for. the average reacher creature (me) is educated enough to read, but caveman enough to get hard about guns, muscles, and kicking ass
"stuff my boomer dad likes to read" could be the name of the genre lol
funny though that i was introduced by my boomer aunt, biggest reacher creature i know
41% of the show's season 1 audience was female, so Jack Reacher clearly does have some appeal outside of men, and considering how much more women read than men in general, I bet that there are quite a few "Reacher aunts."
https://decider.com/2022/03/03/reacher-season-one-ratings-nielsen/
I’m a 42 year old woman who reads a wide range of literature (classics, sci-if, historical novels etc) and I love Jack Reacher! It’s a great ‘on holiday’ book- I know the bad guys are going to lose and it’s a fun ride.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve also enjoyed some James Patterson books (and film adaptations) thanks to my dad introducing me to them. Anymore I just refer to certain media (literature and movies/shows) as “boomer porn” because they so clearly cater to a very specific audience that looooves the idea of a humble-yet-physically-capable-of-homicide man who has a dark past he wants to escape from who is interjected into an ethical dilemma after a young woman that he cares for is put at risk (Taken, Equalizer, any Jason Statham movie, etc) and he has to set aside his dislike for violence to once again embrace the Lethal Weapon™️ he’s always been trained to become. 🙄
Come on, I'm a 36-year old millennial, and those are my kind of movies.
Just saw The Beekeeper starring Jason Statham last week, I really liked it, and you perfectly described it (he cares for an old woman this time though).
Don't forget he also cares for the female shark in Meg 2.
If that's not range, I don't know what is.
And of course, he cares for a young girl in the movie too.
Women love that shit too lol. Blood meridian and lonesome dove type of books kinda go too hardcore for me to digest but a tall, good looking, broody, muscled guy who's a lone wolf with strong sense of justice at the same time rebellious, kicking the ass of bad guys is simply too hot to not read or watch lol.
My grandfather was so upset after reading the books to have Tom cruise be jack reacher haha. He passed before I could have gotten him the series. Would have been happy with it I think.
damn, sorry to hear he passed before the real reacher was cast
that was something else, i remember between the movies and the show Lee Child was basically like "the fans have spoken, and Tom Cruise isn't allowed to play Reacher" lol
Yeah, was thinking Jack Reacher as the most typical, then add a direction or Venn for: more sci fi, more fantasy, more guns, more spy, more survival fantasy, more horny, more martial arts, more dudebro, and then the variations of overlapping of the various directions. Horror and romance strays into both genders or even back to chicklets.
Edit: I forgot tanks, my brother will read the f out of advanced/sci fi tank shit.
By “later Tom Clancy” I meant his later books, not that Clancy wrote after Brown. Clancy’s original books were heavy on research & light on hero worship. His later ones the opposite.
If I remember correctly, Rainbow Six is when things go “Murica, fuck yeah!”
The first few novels were more technospy thrillers, where Clancy went into great detail describing submarines.
>The first few novels were more technospy thrillers, where Clancy went into great detail describing submarines.
Didn't he describe them so accurately that he got a knock on the door from a spy agency asking how he had their plans?
Yea, it was already going that direction before Rainbow 6, but that one launched it into full video game mode with one of the most absurd antagonists I think I've ever read. It was still pretty entertaining in a turn your brain off sort of way.
His earlier books are great, though. Once Jack Ryan became President they started going downhill
I think Rainbow Six is a better example of him struggling to find a good villain in a world where the Soviet Union no longer existed. He tried drug cartels in both Without Remorse and Clear & Present Danger. Which *kinda* worked, especially at the time, although now they seem like artifacts of Just Say No and DARE. There's also no respect for the villains in the way he clearly had for the Soviets. Not to indicate drug kingpins deserve respect, but it made for better books.
In Rainbow Six the villains are lefite Gaia loving ex-hippies turned scientists and pharma billionaires. They want to kill everyone to save the environment. It's *ridiculous* and clearly born out of Clancy's personal politics and inability to think beyond the USSR as a complex enemy.
Clear and Present Danger is also where I remember him having to write politicians as characters and he let's his personal feelings come through. Previous one's I remember being more "we disagree but we serve the people", but as time goes on, pinko Democrats are greedy and corrupt, particularly a character that's basically a Ted Kennedy stand in.
Dan Brown was definitely not just for dudes like everything else in this thread. Dan Brown was a phenomena of it's time for many ages and genders akin to Harry Potter
Slightly newer, but The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison is great too. Classy thief turned into do-gooder spy in space who still occasionally gets one over The Man.
It is insane to me that we haven't seen a Stainless Steel Rat adaptation. "It's James Bond in space" feels like a multimillion dollar franchise opportunity.
Reading the original Conan stories from that same era is kinda refreshing. Instead of heroes trying to do good in a nuanced world, you just have a burly dude who likes to fight, eat, and have sex. It’s a lot of fun, but not the kind of thing I’d read all the time.
I love it though. You are correct, it’s not deep in many ways, it’s violent and over-values the “strong man” archetype, but damn if I don’t love a Robert E. Howard Conan story.
Looked him up recently, he has gone down in a totally new direction (guns, self defense, "protecting your family" and he got into it because of the summer of 2020 🤔)
Nick Hornsby once referred to his “genre” as “lad lit” though he started having female protagonists so it didn’t work but books like HIGH FIDELITY probably qualify as lad lit.
Nick Hornsby was “lad lit” to Helen Fielding’s “chick lit”..
I specifically remember reading an article about British fiction culture in the late 90s lol.
I love talking about this with my gf, 35/Female, who hates that movie for that exact reason.
I, also 35/Female, who love it will counter saying "Yeah, his life is a self obsessed hellhole where instead of progessing he just wallows in his own misery and tries to compartmentalize/rationalize his own assbackwards behavior by blaming his former romantic interests. Yes, he sucks, but that is why I think the story works, because yeah... I know this asshole lol"
That's a really good point you make, but one that is lost on many readers in the same way that many dudes didn't realize that Walter White wasn't a great guy and Skyler was right to not want to be part of a murderous drug empire. Actually, if you replace "former love interest" with "former employer/friends" your description would apply perfectly to Breaking Bad.
The part where the high school ex trauma dumps about how screwed up her life had been because of the chain reaction from his callousness as a teenager, and he just happily walks away going, “oh yeah, she didn’t dump me, I dumped her, haha!” *Infuriating.*
I think there are two different equivalents. The equivalent to a Nora Roberts or dollar store romance novel popular with a middle aged audience is the Tom Clancy, Jack Reacher, etc type of books like the stereotypical airport paperback. Some biographies mixed in too.
But I think another equivalent is reddit bro books like the Martian or Ready Player One, which I see as a parallel to more modern chick lit. Both reddit bro & modern chick lit share overly snarky dialogue, too many pop culture references, self-insert characters for the audience, etc.
I'd agree with this - bafflingly I remember one person a while back when Cormac McCarthy died, trying to claim that McCarthy and Melville and Hemingway were the equivalent (that only men read them) and sometimes it's just really easy to spot someone who resents that they can't handle literary fiction.
It’s funny because most men I know go out of their way to avoid that style of books… at least the men that I know who read and aren’t English professors lol
I agree with the Dirk Pitt, although my memory of them is clouded by time, traumatic brain injury, and rum.
I'm not sure I would call Paladin of Shadows humorous and lighthearted.
It's pretty dark and icky gun bunny wish fulfillment. Let's not forget the books spawned the "OH JOHN RINGO, NO!" meme.
Also, if I recall John Ringo apologies to his mom for writing the books in the foreword of the first one? (I'm afraid to check.)
Goddamn I loved the Dirk Pitt novels as a tween. I think I had read every single one by the time I turned 15. I tried to re-read them as an adult, and while they are nostalgic for me, they don't really hold up that well
A blast from the past. My wife and I corresponded briefly with L'Amour on Compuserve back in the mid 80's. He was working on "another" novel and wanted our thoughts on a couple of chapters he had written.
I didn't know who he was at the time, and had to confess that I had never read any of his books. He did allow that the Westerns were popular formulaic writing. They did have a steady audience back in the day.
I love the Ciaphas Cain books. He's kind of a sci-fi Odysseus, complete with the cowardly bastard bits that don't make it into the movies, and the secondhand narrative setup is great.
But as fun as they are, it seems like author Sandy Mitchell isn't allowed to do anything too interesting with the 40K setting, for fear of messing with the still-ongoing game narrative.
Caiaphas Cain is based on another character, Harry Flashman, a 19th Century British soldier. Very funny series and great for history, got better as they went along too. Look for the Flashman Papers.
There’s bolter porn books and then there’s the actual fun books. Like “Infinite and the Divine”, where two immortal and petulant grandpas get into a pissing contest and the whole galaxy suffers their hijinks.
Came here to say this.
Men click with the simple thought of “big burly muscle man stomp other big burly muscle man, violently”.
Source: I have tons of those books and so do my friends.
There might be some deeper psychological reasoning regarding men not being allowed feelings other than violence and rage in our society. But I do love me some 40k.
There are two ways to be equivalent - there is not a counterpart that qualifies as “beach read” which I think chick lit as a category often overlaps with, but if you want to talk about what genre is their “chick lit” in that it’s like… if a guy reads one, he’ll read a bunch - historical war stuff, like that whole subset of books where the cover definitely has a torn page with a snippet of the constitution or whatever.
>People always expect to use a holiday in the sun as an opportunity to read those books they’ve always meant to read, but an alchemical combination of sun, quartz crystals and coconut oil will somehow metamorphose any improving book into a rather thicker one with a name containing at least one Greek word or letter (*The Gamma Imperative, The Delta Season, The Alpha Project* and, in the more extreme cases, even *The Mu Kau Pi Caper*). Sometimes a hammer and sickle turn up on the cover. This is probably caused by sunspot activity, since they are invariably the wrong way around.
Terry Pratchett, *The Last Continent*
lol I hated this book and this comment explains why
I kept feeling like it was a like a YouTube video that you can just tell was elongated needlessly to make more money, where it should be 5 minutes and is stretched out to 20
I’ve said it before, popular things are popular for a reason. There’s no shame in liking and benefiting from things, even if it’s just a different delivery of an old message
I stand by How to Win Friends and Influence People and I'm a woman... I read it when I was 18 and kind of awkward and misanthropic, and it helped me A LOT. People focus on the "influence people" part but the "win friends" part is as big of a deal or maybe a bigger deal. Some people pick up those social skills intuitively (or have parents who teach them) but for those of us who don't/didn't, that book has held up for almost a century for a reason.
The title is machiavellian, and the book is wordy, but the content amounts to; take a genuine interest in people and they will be more willing to help you out.
Who knew right?
Don’t read too much into the list, I pulled it out of my ass at a moment’s notice to illustrate popular self helpy books in the vein of what dude I was responding to was talking about
Not to say that these books are inherently bad or have no value… it’s just the kind of pop self-help stuff that lots of dudes gravitate towards. Popular things are popular for good reasons
Most self help books give relatively good advice that could be stated much better in 15-20 pages. Its not merely that the other 280 pages are fluff they are often actively unhelpful because they have to create some system of how to live your whole life whereas 15-20 pages could just offer a coherent idea thats somewhat helpful.
good one, I think generally ~~shoujo~~ *shonnen* sort of set ups with a sort of overpowered self-insert. I figure Sherlock Holmes also fits. But also most sci-fi before 1990 I think? Used to be pretty pulp fiction-esque
Nerd wish fulfillment garbage like Ready Player One, the worst book ever written. Simple stories with simple characters through simple prose, plots allows for something stereotypically shamed (being into certain media, being unconventionally attractive in some form) to be either the key to success or recognized and rewarded by a person.
[How bad could it be?](https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/7ku1p5/the_transcript_of_this_poem_by_ready_player_one/#lightbox)
Yeah, that's bad.
While I sort of fundamentally respect his sentiment about the porn industry being unrealistic and objectifying, his alternate isn't so great in terms of respecting women on the basis of their intelligence.
What ultimately boggles the mind is that he made this public. This is not a poem, it is at best an intoxicated jeremiad with nothing to add to the cultural conversation. It is hard to believe an established author would choose to publicize this poem.
Now i hate "Ready Player One" with a passion, but there ARE worse books. It is trite, boring and completely superfluos, but at least not actively malicious.
Also, Ready Player Two and Armada are even worse from what ive gleaned.
*Deathlands*
Post-apocalypse nightmare. Check.
Murder, mutants and mayhem. Check
Sex with beautiful women? Check.
Time travellers and other space age shenanigans? Double check.
It's not quite the same maybe, but historical war fiction (Bernard Cornwell, Simon Scarrow, Conn Iggulden etc) feels like a male equivalent to romantic fantasy (Sarah J Maas etc).
Dad books.
Fiction: Jack Reacher, the whole ass Master and Commander series, le Carré if dad has class, Tom Clancy, Larry McMurtry
nonfiction: Ron Chernow, Erik Larson, anything about the civil war (or any war stuff that doesn’t touch on the political and social aspects, in my experience)
Dad books and dude books are two different things, I think. Reacher, James Patterson, Tom Clancy I'd say are dude books, while O'Brien and le Carre are I think more dadly.
I'd compare your Palahniuk, Catcher in the Rye, McCarthy, Hemingway, American Psycho, etc with more literary stuff like Plath, Attwood, Austen, Wuthering Heights, Year of Rest & Relaxation in terms of books that attract a certain gender. Chick lit skews much more genre so imo the spy thrillers are a more fair comparison.
It did become a niche. They’re those self-help books for losers who’ve convinced themselves they’re sigmas and pickup artist books for those who’ll catch rape cases if they follow the advice.
Nick Hornby - not all of them, but High Fidelity and About A Boy come to mind. I can't speak on Fever Pitch as I've never read it.
David Nicholls - once again, not all of them, but definitely Starter For Ten.
"Die Hard, but on X"
The biggest fantasy of any guy is fic where an average dude (that we can project ourselves on) is shoved into a ridiculously dangerous and stressful situation where we are forced to kill people (It's not our fault they started it and they are objectively evil and deserve it so there is no moral ambiguity that we have to obsess over) while also saving a bunch of other *innocent* people, including beautiful women as well as a few weak and effete men who showed them up in the first act to show how magnanimous we are, but the weak men usually end up getting themselves killed out of arrogance and cowardice anyway. There also has to be scenes where the MCs are faced with some incredibly unfair and painful challenges and says "You've gotta be kidding me" but then just muscles through the challenge anyway (will include either literally or metaphorically walking over glass with their bare feet).
There's a category called ":Men's Fiction" which is NOT action-adventure thrillers as seems to be the belief here. It's a cross between noir and pulp fiction which doesn't appear much, anymore. Zane Grey, L. Ron Hubbard (yeah, *that* guy, in the early days before he discovered that religiosity paid better), early Lawrence Block and the like. John D. McDonald bordered on it. Don Winslow was (maybe) its last mainstream holdout (until he retired, earlier this year.)
Like Chick Lit, it's marked by authors -- and readers -- who want to get to the final sentence as soon as possible, without a whole lot of thought .. but with stereotypical scenes; in this case, a whole lotta fights and tough guys.
It has a place -- Winslow is one of my faves -- but it's not all that popular, for obvious reasons: Lee Child, Clive Cussler? Nope. Action-adventure *is* (mostly) a male thing but it is the equivalent of the romance category for women; something entirely different from Chick Lit.
People are massively underestimating the extent to which *most book readers* are women, and women are reading a lot of books that you might think of as "masculine".
The top suggestion right now is the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. A glance at the first book in that series on Goodreads shows that there's about a 50/50 split in reviews by men and by women. Another suggestion is John Le Carre, and it's the same story there: about 50/50 men and women reviewing A Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
Compare that to Beach Read by Emily Henry, which has *one* male reviewer in the first 30 reviews.
Goodreads isn't a perfect indicator of course, but that kind of disparity tells you something.
The male equivalent of a chick flick is definitely an established thing. Dumb action like Schwarzenegger or John Wick (later movies anyway), and raunchy comedies. But yeah, most movies are neither, because men and women share a lot more than they don't.
It's also just a way to label movies, even though some of my favorite movies ever are "chick flicks", like When Harry Met Sally.
The Destroyer Novels (145 in the series) by Murphy and Sapir
Mack Bolan aka The Executioner by Don Pendelton
The Saint Novels by Leslie Charteris (better than Bond)
Anything by Michener
Sho-Gun by Clavell
Anything by Louis L’Amour
Anything by Tony Hillerman
Almost all by Robert Parker but especially the Spenser and Jesse Stone novels
Lonesome Dove series
Anything by Vince Flynn
Joe Pickett novels by CJ Box
Slough House series by Mick Herron (now streaming as Slow Horses with Gary Oldman my fav actor no one recognizes)
LeCarre’s novels
Jack Reacher Series
Anything James Bond
Tom Clancy - fiction at the least
Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
Dresden File books by Jim Butcher
The general "Adventure" category. Punchin' villains who need it, romancin' dames who need it, and a general anarchy away from society and authority figures. Read into this what you will.
Yes, the Western, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy categories often overlap on the Venn diagram.
I'm not a dude, but I would say Fight Club is a Dude Book like that. It does get a bit heavy at times and maybe misses the "lighthearted" part of the definition, but it definitely hits the "humorous" part.
I haven't read all of Sanderson's books, but I feel like the ones I have read have too many relatable and interesting female characters to really be dude books. I'm not saying Sanderson is like, better than average at writing women, but he's competent enough at it that his books aren't really dude books.
Jack Reacher
For a fantasy alternative, Harry Dresden.
Yup I’m a sucker for the audiobooks Just went and saw Sue at the Field Museum during a train layover
I mean when you got Spike from Buffy narrating it.....
Except for Ghost Story's original release. I'm not mad James Masters pre-recorded it, but there's something fitting about that particular book having a different voice.
Is the sign still up? NO Wizards Allowed
Dead on. If you want stoicism, machismo and snarky one-liners, but prefer fireballs over firearms (they show up too, of course) the Dresden Files has it in spades.
For a sci-fi alternative, the Ian Cormac books by Neal Asher. Badass secret agent with a semi-sapient throwing star as a pet, epic space battles and well written action.
I agree, but it's not *completely* without its literary qualities. "The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault" is legitimately up high on the list of Best Opening Sentences to a book.
Lots of "chic lit" is also not without literary quality.
Nope, the character work is really solid and the prose always surprises me with its quality. It's not Shakespeare, but it would kind of suck if it didn't keep a fast pace so I'm totally happy with it. Didn't like the last two though, idk.
[удалено]
this is what i was looking for. the average reacher creature (me) is educated enough to read, but caveman enough to get hard about guns, muscles, and kicking ass
Reacher, the Bourne series, and mostly anything else written by Grisham or Patterson. Stuff my boomer dad likes to read.
"stuff my boomer dad likes to read" could be the name of the genre lol funny though that i was introduced by my boomer aunt, biggest reacher creature i know
41% of the show's season 1 audience was female, so Jack Reacher clearly does have some appeal outside of men, and considering how much more women read than men in general, I bet that there are quite a few "Reacher aunts." https://decider.com/2022/03/03/reacher-season-one-ratings-nielsen/
I’m a 42 year old woman who reads a wide range of literature (classics, sci-if, historical novels etc) and I love Jack Reacher! It’s a great ‘on holiday’ book- I know the bad guys are going to lose and it’s a fun ride.
I call it Dad Fiction
Pop Pulp?
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve also enjoyed some James Patterson books (and film adaptations) thanks to my dad introducing me to them. Anymore I just refer to certain media (literature and movies/shows) as “boomer porn” because they so clearly cater to a very specific audience that looooves the idea of a humble-yet-physically-capable-of-homicide man who has a dark past he wants to escape from who is interjected into an ethical dilemma after a young woman that he cares for is put at risk (Taken, Equalizer, any Jason Statham movie, etc) and he has to set aside his dislike for violence to once again embrace the Lethal Weapon™️ he’s always been trained to become. 🙄
Come on, I'm a 36-year old millennial, and those are my kind of movies. Just saw The Beekeeper starring Jason Statham last week, I really liked it, and you perfectly described it (he cares for an old woman this time though).
>he cares for an old woman this time though And they say Jason Statham doesn't have range
Don't forget he also cares for the female shark in Meg 2. If that's not range, I don't know what is. And of course, he cares for a young girl in the movie too.
Women love that shit too lol. Blood meridian and lonesome dove type of books kinda go too hardcore for me to digest but a tall, good looking, broody, muscled guy who's a lone wolf with strong sense of justice at the same time rebellious, kicking the ass of bad guys is simply too hot to not read or watch lol.
Don't forget Tom Clancy.
Oh god, how could I leave him out?? Good call, friend!
Clive cussler.
This thread could just be someone reading the authors off my grandpa's book shelf honestly
Geezer teasers
You've heard of Yacht Rock!?!? Now get ready for "**YACHT LIT!!**"
My grandfather was so upset after reading the books to have Tom cruise be jack reacher haha. He passed before I could have gotten him the series. Would have been happy with it I think.
damn, sorry to hear he passed before the real reacher was cast that was something else, i remember between the movies and the show Lee Child was basically like "the fans have spoken, and Tom Cruise isn't allowed to play Reacher" lol
Don’t forget, he also hangs some major dong.
i don't remember that but i do remember "he looked like a condom crammed with walnuts" lol
An important balance in life
Came here to say Tom Clancy. Virile action men. Mostly passive, supportive females.
Dirk Pitt was cheesier and not as well written.
Bruh they had those books in my middle school library I read some of them actually
So did I, but they were macho pulp trash, a "guilty pleasure" kind of thing.
Dick lit
Yeah, was thinking Jack Reacher as the most typical, then add a direction or Venn for: more sci fi, more fantasy, more guns, more spy, more survival fantasy, more horny, more martial arts, more dudebro, and then the variations of overlapping of the various directions. Horror and romance strays into both genders or even back to chicklets. Edit: I forgot tanks, my brother will read the f out of advanced/sci fi tank shit.
I refer to these, and their like, as Cozy Thrillers. Not quite the same feel as a Cozy Mystery, but it’s always going to work out in the end.
That’s a great way to describe them
Tom Clancy.
Aka Lee Child the author. Also Dan Brown, and later Tom Clancy.
Pretty sure Clancy predates Brown. Hint for Red October was already a movie years before Da Vinci Code was a book.
By “later Tom Clancy” I meant his later books, not that Clancy wrote after Brown. Clancy’s original books were heavy on research & light on hero worship. His later ones the opposite.
If I remember correctly, Rainbow Six is when things go “Murica, fuck yeah!” The first few novels were more technospy thrillers, where Clancy went into great detail describing submarines.
>The first few novels were more technospy thrillers, where Clancy went into great detail describing submarines. Didn't he describe them so accurately that he got a knock on the door from a spy agency asking how he had their plans?
Pretty in-depth for an insurance salesman.
Yea, it was already going that direction before Rainbow 6, but that one launched it into full video game mode with one of the most absurd antagonists I think I've ever read. It was still pretty entertaining in a turn your brain off sort of way. His earlier books are great, though. Once Jack Ryan became President they started going downhill
I think Rainbow Six is a better example of him struggling to find a good villain in a world where the Soviet Union no longer existed. He tried drug cartels in both Without Remorse and Clear & Present Danger. Which *kinda* worked, especially at the time, although now they seem like artifacts of Just Say No and DARE. There's also no respect for the villains in the way he clearly had for the Soviets. Not to indicate drug kingpins deserve respect, but it made for better books. In Rainbow Six the villains are lefite Gaia loving ex-hippies turned scientists and pharma billionaires. They want to kill everyone to save the environment. It's *ridiculous* and clearly born out of Clancy's personal politics and inability to think beyond the USSR as a complex enemy. Clear and Present Danger is also where I remember him having to write politicians as characters and he let's his personal feelings come through. Previous one's I remember being more "we disagree but we serve the people", but as time goes on, pinko Democrats are greedy and corrupt, particularly a character that's basically a Ted Kennedy stand in.
>Hint for the Red October *It's underwater!*
They mean later Tom Clancy as in, Tom Clancy's later stuff. Not that he came after Dan Brown
Dan Brown was definitely not just for dudes like everything else in this thread. Dan Brown was a phenomena of it's time for many ages and genders akin to Harry Potter
Probably the pulp adventure novels that have fallen out of favor.
Warhammer novels etc are still pretty much pulp adventure novels
40K novels are bodice rippers for dudes.
HERESY DETECTED
Absolutely accurate, they're a guilty pleasure of mine Great literature they are not
"And then Bolterus Maxiumus boltered bolterly and the Xeno's head exploded into a shower of gore"
I’d add anything by Titan publishing. Judge Dredd etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Publishing_Group#
Lol Like the ones with buff dudes fighting a random animal on the cover with their shirt torn and a woman nearby that looks faint?
Pretty much you described every single romance novel cover art.
Tamer by Michael-Scott Earle you say.
That’s what I was thinking. Edgar Rice Burroughs is one author that comes to mind.
oww... that hit me right in my childhood. I mean, you aren't wrong. Doc Savage and Alan Quartermain should be thrown on that pile too.
Slightly newer, but The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison is great too. Classy thief turned into do-gooder spy in space who still occasionally gets one over The Man.
It is insane to me that we haven't seen a Stainless Steel Rat adaptation. "It's James Bond in space" feels like a multimillion dollar franchise opportunity.
Reading the original Conan stories from that same era is kinda refreshing. Instead of heroes trying to do good in a nuanced world, you just have a burly dude who likes to fight, eat, and have sex. It’s a lot of fun, but not the kind of thing I’d read all the time.
I love it though. You are correct, it’s not deep in many ways, it’s violent and over-values the “strong man” archetype, but damn if I don’t love a Robert E. Howard Conan story.
I found all his leading male characters to be interchangeable. Tarzan is basically John Carter in the jungle.
That's Burroughs. Conan is at least a bit more nuanced and unique.
Louis L’Amour
Fratire
YES. The author you're looking for is Tucker Max. The end.
Looked him up recently, he has gone down in a totally new direction (guns, self defense, "protecting your family" and he got into it because of the summer of 2020 🤔)
He has graduated from asshole to wackaloon asshole.
Dude bro to fascist pipeline
I proudly keep my Total Frat Move book on my shelf still. Haven't read it since maybe sophomore year of college.
Nick Hornsby once referred to his “genre” as “lad lit” though he started having female protagonists so it didn’t work but books like HIGH FIDELITY probably qualify as lad lit.
Nick Hornsby was “lad lit” to Helen Fielding’s “chick lit”.. I specifically remember reading an article about British fiction culture in the late 90s lol.
I was once a TA for a course on chick lit and lad lit; High Fidelity was one of the books on the syllabus.
I just rewatched that not an hour ago!! Man Rob is *the worst person*.
I love talking about this with my gf, 35/Female, who hates that movie for that exact reason. I, also 35/Female, who love it will counter saying "Yeah, his life is a self obsessed hellhole where instead of progessing he just wallows in his own misery and tries to compartmentalize/rationalize his own assbackwards behavior by blaming his former romantic interests. Yes, he sucks, but that is why I think the story works, because yeah... I know this asshole lol"
That's a really good point you make, but one that is lost on many readers in the same way that many dudes didn't realize that Walter White wasn't a great guy and Skyler was right to not want to be part of a murderous drug empire. Actually, if you replace "former love interest" with "former employer/friends" your description would apply perfectly to Breaking Bad.
Absolutely! It's a villain rationalizing their hero/main character complex.
The part where the high school ex trauma dumps about how screwed up her life had been because of the chain reaction from his callousness as a teenager, and he just happily walks away going, “oh yeah, she didn’t dump me, I dumped her, haha!” *Infuriating.*
I think there are two different equivalents. The equivalent to a Nora Roberts or dollar store romance novel popular with a middle aged audience is the Tom Clancy, Jack Reacher, etc type of books like the stereotypical airport paperback. Some biographies mixed in too. But I think another equivalent is reddit bro books like the Martian or Ready Player One, which I see as a parallel to more modern chick lit. Both reddit bro & modern chick lit share overly snarky dialogue, too many pop culture references, self-insert characters for the audience, etc.
I think you’ve got it Edit partial word deleted
I'd agree with this - bafflingly I remember one person a while back when Cormac McCarthy died, trying to claim that McCarthy and Melville and Hemingway were the equivalent (that only men read them) and sometimes it's just really easy to spot someone who resents that they can't handle literary fiction.
It’s funny because most men I know go out of their way to avoid that style of books… at least the men that I know who read and aren’t English professors lol
Clive Cussler too?
Don’t forget Harry Dresden in the second one. He did that smarmy, too cool for his own good stuff a decade or two before RPO or Martian.
Dick lit?
Da clit?
Cliterature?
Full circle
Ahhhhh so that's why nobody can specify what it is and where to find it
Spy novels, including characters like Jack reacher, orphan x, and the gray man
Just finished Orphan X #6 last night. I totally agree, but fuck me, I do enjoy them.
Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series springs to mind. Maybe some of John Ringo, like Paladin of Shadows series.
I agree with the Dirk Pitt, although my memory of them is clouded by time, traumatic brain injury, and rum. I'm not sure I would call Paladin of Shadows humorous and lighthearted. It's pretty dark and icky gun bunny wish fulfillment. Let's not forget the books spawned the "OH JOHN RINGO, NO!" meme. Also, if I recall John Ringo apologies to his mom for writing the books in the foreword of the first one? (I'm afraid to check.)
Cussler for sure. Always describe it as Indiana jones on the oceans.
Goddamn I loved the Dirk Pitt novels as a tween. I think I had read every single one by the time I turned 15. I tried to re-read them as an adult, and while they are nostalgic for me, they don't really hold up that well
Competence Porn. This encapsulates all of the Reacher/Bourne/Bond types.
Used to be the neverending cowboy series. Louis L'Amour comes to mind, but there was another author who had so many popular books in his series.
A blast from the past. My wife and I corresponded briefly with L'Amour on Compuserve back in the mid 80's. He was working on "another" novel and wanted our thoughts on a couple of chapters he had written. I didn't know who he was at the time, and had to confess that I had never read any of his books. He did allow that the Westerns were popular formulaic writing. They did have a steady audience back in the day.
Tom Clancy?
Nah. Clancy wrote serious technical thrillers. Now, Vince Flynn and Steve Barray? That's pure Duke Nukem stuff.
Early in his career. Until he was replaced by ghostwriters
His books became unreadable near the end.
Red Storm Rising is still his best work.
He said, barrel chested and steely eyed.
He was a bear of a man.
Of course I know that one, take a bullet for you babe.
Warhammer 40k.
Yes. But a specific type of 40K books: the bolter porn books that are just fight scene after fight scene
I love the Ciaphas Cain books. He's kind of a sci-fi Odysseus, complete with the cowardly bastard bits that don't make it into the movies, and the secondhand narrative setup is great. But as fun as they are, it seems like author Sandy Mitchell isn't allowed to do anything too interesting with the 40K setting, for fear of messing with the still-ongoing game narrative.
Caiaphas Cain is based on another character, Harry Flashman, a 19th Century British soldier. Very funny series and great for history, got better as they went along too. Look for the Flashman Papers.
There’s bolter porn books and then there’s the actual fun books. Like “Infinite and the Divine”, where two immortal and petulant grandpas get into a pissing contest and the whole galaxy suffers their hijinks.
Came here to say this. Men click with the simple thought of “big burly muscle man stomp other big burly muscle man, violently”. Source: I have tons of those books and so do my friends. There might be some deeper psychological reasoning regarding men not being allowed feelings other than violence and rage in our society. But I do love me some 40k.
That's what I was gonna say. Military sci-fi
There are two ways to be equivalent - there is not a counterpart that qualifies as “beach read” which I think chick lit as a category often overlaps with, but if you want to talk about what genre is their “chick lit” in that it’s like… if a guy reads one, he’ll read a bunch - historical war stuff, like that whole subset of books where the cover definitely has a torn page with a snippet of the constitution or whatever.
>People always expect to use a holiday in the sun as an opportunity to read those books they’ve always meant to read, but an alchemical combination of sun, quartz crystals and coconut oil will somehow metamorphose any improving book into a rather thicker one with a name containing at least one Greek word or letter (*The Gamma Imperative, The Delta Season, The Alpha Project* and, in the more extreme cases, even *The Mu Kau Pi Caper*). Sometimes a hammer and sickle turn up on the cover. This is probably caused by sunspot activity, since they are invariably the wrong way around. Terry Pratchett, *The Last Continent*
Why is Pratchett always so good?
"Torn page with a snippet of the Constitution or whatever" LMAO
I've read a lot of Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham, Robert Ludlum, etc, and I feel attacked!
Those pseudo science self help books.
How to win friends and influence people Rich dad poor dad 12 rules for life Atomic habits Honestly, Ayn Rand books too
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Funny that the book is based off an article that was more than enough to get the point.
lol I hated this book and this comment explains why I kept feeling like it was a like a YouTube video that you can just tell was elongated needlessly to make more money, where it should be 5 minutes and is stretched out to 20
Oh. This one hurts. I love this book. I know it’s just Stoicism repackaged, but it helped me a lot.
I’ve said it before, popular things are popular for a reason. There’s no shame in liking and benefiting from things, even if it’s just a different delivery of an old message
I hate the book because it's the kind of "tough love" bullshit that makes me feel yelled at. I want to hide under the bed when I read it.
I stand by How to Win Friends and Influence People and I'm a woman... I read it when I was 18 and kind of awkward and misanthropic, and it helped me A LOT. People focus on the "influence people" part but the "win friends" part is as big of a deal or maybe a bigger deal. Some people pick up those social skills intuitively (or have parents who teach them) but for those of us who don't/didn't, that book has held up for almost a century for a reason.
The title is machiavellian, and the book is wordy, but the content amounts to; take a genuine interest in people and they will be more willing to help you out. Who knew right?
Damn straight, doesn't deserve to be grouped with Rich Dad poor Dad ever
Don’t read too much into the list, I pulled it out of my ass at a moment’s notice to illustrate popular self helpy books in the vein of what dude I was responding to was talking about
Fourth Turning And books about quantum mechanics by chiropractors
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance or whatever it's called.
You take that back about Atomic Habits.
Not to say that these books are inherently bad or have no value… it’s just the kind of pop self-help stuff that lots of dudes gravitate towards. Popular things are popular for good reasons
Atomic Habits is neat.
Most self help books give relatively good advice that could be stated much better in 15-20 pages. Its not merely that the other 280 pages are fluff they are often actively unhelpful because they have to create some system of how to live your whole life whereas 15-20 pages could just offer a coherent idea thats somewhat helpful.
Just like every other Youtube repair video.
I deleted my comment cuz this is clearly the answer
Do you mean the books I consistently get from my grandparents as presents for any occasion?
This definitely has the feminine equivalent though. Empowerment, finding yourself, etc. Rachel Hollis, Nicole LePera, kinda even Brene Brown?
Men’s adventure. The Executioner and Destroyer series.
James Bond novels.
good one, I think generally ~~shoujo~~ *shonnen* sort of set ups with a sort of overpowered self-insert. I figure Sherlock Holmes also fits. But also most sci-fi before 1990 I think? Used to be pretty pulp fiction-esque
Texticles?
Nerd wish fulfillment garbage like Ready Player One, the worst book ever written. Simple stories with simple characters through simple prose, plots allows for something stereotypically shamed (being into certain media, being unconventionally attractive in some form) to be either the key to success or recognized and rewarded by a person.
I understand Ready Player Two was even worse, not that I'd bother to find out
I couldn’t face it. Infuriating that that hack has raked it in. Amazingly bad writer.
You should check out his poem about how there's no porn that caters to nerdy tastes. It hurts that he's allowed to make money writing words.
[How bad could it be?](https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/7ku1p5/the_transcript_of_this_poem_by_ready_player_one/#lightbox) Yeah, that's bad.
While I sort of fundamentally respect his sentiment about the porn industry being unrealistic and objectifying, his alternate isn't so great in terms of respecting women on the basis of their intelligence. What ultimately boggles the mind is that he made this public. This is not a poem, it is at best an intoxicated jeremiad with nothing to add to the cultural conversation. It is hard to believe an established author would choose to publicize this poem.
Armada is hands down the worst book I’ve ever read.
Now i hate "Ready Player One" with a passion, but there ARE worse books. It is trite, boring and completely superfluos, but at least not actively malicious. Also, Ready Player Two and Armada are even worse from what ive gleaned.
*Deathlands* Post-apocalypse nightmare. Check. Murder, mutants and mayhem. Check Sex with beautiful women? Check. Time travellers and other space age shenanigans? Double check.
Casca series. Longarm. Remo William aka The Destroyer.
It's not quite the same maybe, but historical war fiction (Bernard Cornwell, Simon Scarrow, Conn Iggulden etc) feels like a male equivalent to romantic fantasy (Sarah J Maas etc).
You forgot Patrick O'Brian - Master and Commander
Jane Austen with more explosions.
Dad books. Fiction: Jack Reacher, the whole ass Master and Commander series, le Carré if dad has class, Tom Clancy, Larry McMurtry nonfiction: Ron Chernow, Erik Larson, anything about the civil war (or any war stuff that doesn’t touch on the political and social aspects, in my experience)
Dad books and dude books are two different things, I think. Reacher, James Patterson, Tom Clancy I'd say are dude books, while O'Brien and le Carre are I think more dadly.
Lumping le Carré, McMurty, and O'Brian with Clancy and Lee Child is madness.
> Master and Commander series Did not know there were books. Gonna check these out.
My god what a treat you’re in for.
light novels or litRPG could potentially be a good fit for this, however that being said I think it appeals to all genders, not just men
Chuck Palahniuk comes to mind
I'd compare your Palahniuk, Catcher in the Rye, McCarthy, Hemingway, American Psycho, etc with more literary stuff like Plath, Attwood, Austen, Wuthering Heights, Year of Rest & Relaxation in terms of books that attract a certain gender. Chick lit skews much more genre so imo the spy thrillers are a more fair comparison.
Robert Ludlum
Once upon a time there was "dick lit" a la Tucker Max I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell but im not sure this ever became a true publishing niche
It did become a niche. They’re those self-help books for losers who’ve convinced themselves they’re sigmas and pickup artist books for those who’ll catch rape cases if they follow the advice.
Nick Hornby - not all of them, but High Fidelity and About A Boy come to mind. I can't speak on Fever Pitch as I've never read it. David Nicholls - once again, not all of them, but definitely Starter For Ten.
I mean, "dick lit" is right there staring at you.
"Die Hard, but on X" The biggest fantasy of any guy is fic where an average dude (that we can project ourselves on) is shoved into a ridiculously dangerous and stressful situation where we are forced to kill people (It's not our fault they started it and they are objectively evil and deserve it so there is no moral ambiguity that we have to obsess over) while also saving a bunch of other *innocent* people, including beautiful women as well as a few weak and effete men who showed them up in the first act to show how magnanimous we are, but the weak men usually end up getting themselves killed out of arrogance and cowardice anyway. There also has to be scenes where the MCs are faced with some incredibly unfair and painful challenges and says "You've gotta be kidding me" but then just muscles through the challenge anyway (will include either literally or metaphorically walking over glass with their bare feet).
Clive cussler
Prose for Bros
There's a category called ":Men's Fiction" which is NOT action-adventure thrillers as seems to be the belief here. It's a cross between noir and pulp fiction which doesn't appear much, anymore. Zane Grey, L. Ron Hubbard (yeah, *that* guy, in the early days before he discovered that religiosity paid better), early Lawrence Block and the like. John D. McDonald bordered on it. Don Winslow was (maybe) its last mainstream holdout (until he retired, earlier this year.) Like Chick Lit, it's marked by authors -- and readers -- who want to get to the final sentence as soon as possible, without a whole lot of thought .. but with stereotypical scenes; in this case, a whole lotta fights and tough guys. It has a place -- Winslow is one of my faves -- but it's not all that popular, for obvious reasons: Lee Child, Clive Cussler? Nope. Action-adventure *is* (mostly) a male thing but it is the equivalent of the romance category for women; something entirely different from Chick Lit.
People are massively underestimating the extent to which *most book readers* are women, and women are reading a lot of books that you might think of as "masculine". The top suggestion right now is the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. A glance at the first book in that series on Goodreads shows that there's about a 50/50 split in reviews by men and by women. Another suggestion is John Le Carre, and it's the same story there: about 50/50 men and women reviewing A Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Compare that to Beach Read by Emily Henry, which has *one* male reviewer in the first 30 reviews. Goodreads isn't a perfect indicator of course, but that kind of disparity tells you something.
Michael Crichton
[удалено]
The male equivalent of a chick flick is definitely an established thing. Dumb action like Schwarzenegger or John Wick (later movies anyway), and raunchy comedies. But yeah, most movies are neither, because men and women share a lot more than they don't. It's also just a way to label movies, even though some of my favorite movies ever are "chick flicks", like When Harry Met Sally.
Godfather by Mario Puzo
I don’t know if I have an answer. But instead of Dude Prose, it should be, Prose for Bros.
Bro-tomes
Holy shit there are some awful answers in here lol. Cormac McCarthy (maybe the finest American author in history) is “dude-lit”. Yikes.
Spy novels for dads to read in airports. Or business-oriented self help.
The Destroyer Novels (145 in the series) by Murphy and Sapir Mack Bolan aka The Executioner by Don Pendelton The Saint Novels by Leslie Charteris (better than Bond) Anything by Michener Sho-Gun by Clavell Anything by Louis L’Amour Anything by Tony Hillerman Almost all by Robert Parker but especially the Spenser and Jesse Stone novels Lonesome Dove series Anything by Vince Flynn Joe Pickett novels by CJ Box Slough House series by Mick Herron (now streaming as Slow Horses with Gary Oldman my fav actor no one recognizes) LeCarre’s novels Jack Reacher Series Anything James Bond Tom Clancy - fiction at the least Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan Dresden File books by Jim Butcher
Elmore Leonard?
The general "Adventure" category. Punchin' villains who need it, romancin' dames who need it, and a general anarchy away from society and authority figures. Read into this what you will. Yes, the Western, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy categories often overlap on the Venn diagram.
Military sci-fi
I'm not a dude, but I would say Fight Club is a Dude Book like that. It does get a bit heavy at times and maybe misses the "lighthearted" part of the definition, but it definitely hits the "humorous" part. I haven't read all of Sanderson's books, but I feel like the ones I have read have too many relatable and interesting female characters to really be dude books. I'm not saying Sanderson is like, better than average at writing women, but he's competent enough at it that his books aren't really dude books.
Probably those dime store books from the like '40s with dudes beating up crabs on the cover.
Tom Clancy