Shortly after Luigi Mangione was arrested in 2024 following the fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, his Goodreads became a perverse topic of discussion—a portal into the mind of one disgruntled young man and a cipher for the ruminations of many. There were the self-help books, like Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance or A Hard Kick in the Nuts: What I’ve Learned from a Lifetime of Terrible Decisions, and many TED Talk–adjacent titles (think: Freakonomics and Sapiens). Fiction entries were, for the most part, limited to YA and dystopian classics (1984, Brave New World, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). “I don’t want to say that that reading list is a stand-in for most young men’s reading lists,” Simon & Schuster publisher Sean Manning told me in June, “but there’s a lot of overlap.”
It wasn’t too long ago that the stereotype of a well-read man leaned more bespectacled brooder than optimization-obsessed biohacker. I’m sure you can conjure an image of a “lit bro”—that performative 2010s dude with a floor-bound mattress surrounded by doorstop tomes by male novelists, who waxed poetic about them in his MFA workshop. On the 30th anniversary of the genre’s holy grail, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, does a man willing to trawl through 1,088 pages for a vibe still exist?
Numbers suggest that the widely reported “male literacy crisis,” which posits that men are now reading far less than their female counterparts, is more akin to a “conundrum” than a full-blown crisis. Seventy-one percent of men have read a book in the past year, compared with an only slightly higher 78 percent of women. What’s more troubling is the scope of what men are reading: history, crime, self-help (who can blame them?). The most recent NEA survey found that, over the course of a year, a paltry quarter of men picked up a book of fiction, that mind-expanding genre that teaches us how to empathize with others or imagine new futures.
The literary world is puzzling over what the next generation of men wants from a book: Is it adrenaline, direction, new pickup lines? (Callum Turner’s storied icebreaker for Dua Lipa, uttered over copies of Hernan Diaz’s Trust—“So, we’re on the same page…”—comes to mind.) As we become both more atomized and self-interested by the second, predicting a bestseller that will speak to a constellation of male identities is practically the setup to a dad joke. In 2026, how many men does it take to get a man to pick up a book? We surveyed a publisher, literary scenester, an editor, an agent, and an author to find out.
Sean Manning
President and Publisher, Simon & Schuster
What are men looking to read right now?
I wish I could say I found what they’re looking for, because I’d be doing more of it. What appeals to young men, having once been one myself, is danger. Reading is a very dangerous act. Books get banned. Music, movies, television—not necessarily. When you’re trying to appeal to younger men, I don’t think nuance is necessarily the way to go. You have to be a bit bold and provocative.
How do we get men to read more?
What’s interesting to me is this whole looksmaxxing conversation that’s being had. Then what about “brain-maxxing?” Is this a way that we can convince people? I wish there was a way to do it that wasn’t so corny. There’s a famous John Waters quote, “If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em.” If the object is to optimize and to find a partner, there’s very few better ways than to be more empathic, to be more curious, to be more imaginative, to be a better listener.
How do you feel about the term “lit bro”?
One of the books that David Foster Wallace had on one of his college syllabi was Where Are the Children?, Mary Higgins Clark’s classic thriller novel. You can shit on people for reading Hunter S. Thompson or David Foster Wallace, or Bukowski, but people have to start somewhere. Hopefully they will be really enthralled and intoxicated by the reading experience and that will lead them to other books by other people, not just men. You really want that to become an addictive experience, however you get there.
The best book party you’ve ever attended?
Does such a thing exist?
Matt Starr
Author; Creative Strategy and Events, Substack; Co-Founder, Dream Baby Press
What’s your favorite moment from a Dream Baby Press event?
My book launch at Church Street Boxing. I think of my events as like WWE and vaudeville. It opened with a 20-person marching band. Then you have a Christina Aguilera impersonator ripping her clothes off. You have my friend Angela Trimbur, who’s like the coolest fucking dance choreographer in the city, doing New York, New York with umbrella twists and turns. Jemima Kirke comes out and gives a speech that is touching and beautiful. She’s like, “Matt is the king of sex, even though he doesn’t know how to have it.” My parents are sitting there. It’s like, What? Why does she know this?
We ended with a Drake impersonator. The real Drake, a day later, reposted one of my friend’s videos. Every hip hop culture site on the Internet was like, “Why is Drake talking about a poetry book launch?”
It feels like I’m getting to explore the city through poetry and literature. We just hosted the PEN America Literary Gala after-party at the Museum of Natural History. They asked me to read my Natural History Museum poem, which is about getting fingered in the Museum of Natural History under the whale. They wanted me to do that.
Do men actually read less than women?
I don’t even have to look at the statistics. Objectively, women are just smarter. Men are stupid. I’m a soldier on the ground, trying to get people to show up to a writing club to write. If they’re writing, they’re probably going to read more.
How do you feel about the term“lit bro”?
I went to a Big Ten school. I hate bro culture. I’ve never been part of it. I’ve been asked once about performative reading, and this is how I feel: We’re canines; we can sniff out performance. Everything Dream Baby does is very sincere. I really want to make the world more romantic. There’s not a lot of sensuality left.
Ethan Bassoff
Literary Agent, WME
Does the male literacy crisis exist?
People are reading a lot. Look at the prevalence of the newsletter industry. But the idea of a general-interest reader doesn’t exist anymore. It’s more about: What are people obsessed with? Where are these people congregating online? A lot of people are looking for escapist stuff. A lot of people are looking for validation right now, and writers and thinkers who are able to put readers’ experiences into words.
Your male literary idol?
When I was in college, and just after, it was probably Haruki Murakami.
How do you feel about the term “lit bro”?
I don’t think it helps for people to feel that they’re being pushed out of a community. You’re not going to encourage men to read if you speak to them that way. A Gen-Z guy is growing up in a completely different media ecosystem than the one I grew up in. I can only imagine how that affects the brain: the dopamine hit of a podcast or a YouTube video or an Instagram post is far more appealing than sitting down and having a long-form experience.
Best reading you’ve been to?
As someone who used to host reading events, [those] have changed. People are more interested in seeing a conversation. A really good Q&A with a moderator who knows how to ask the right questions is always really engaging and really fun. I wouldn’t be against seeing more healthy, civil, active debate and conversation in events. We’re missing a lot of that these days.
Your guilty pleasure read?
I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. I know big, serious intellectuals who love to read what might be called the trashiest of books. We could help our industry by being a little bit less critical and judgmental about these things.
Ben Brooks
Associate Editor, FSG
What are men reading these days?
I see men reading on the train, and in parks, and alone in bars. I see people with books often, mostly fiction. I saw a guy reading Martyr! on the train today, and after Han Kang won the Nobel, I saw a lot of guys reading Han Kang. There was a period of time when it seemed like every man in Brooklyn was reading Murakami. I also think that there’s a trend towards reading books that have been published more than a few years ago. There’s this appeal or attraction to works that are perceived as being challenging. I know “lit bros” who love Ulysses and also love The Da Vinci Code. It can’t all be hard. Unless you’re a total masochist, the point is to have a good time.
What should men read more of?
Things that fill their heart with joy instead of with rage.
How important is representation in getting men to read?
One of my formative reading experiences as a young person was reading The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. I am not a Chinese-American woman. I did go through a phase in 2020 where I was only reading Black authors. I read Luster by Raven Leilani, Memorial by Bryan Washington, and Real Life by Brandon Taylor. I felt very fed by that as well. If you need to be affirmed or seen because you’re not getting that in the real world, literature can be incredibly powerful. But there’s no reason why people shouldn’t be reading outside of their identifiers. That’s something I would add to the list of what men should be reading: more things from people who are not like them.
One book every man should read?
Assembly by Natasha Brown. It contains these big philosophical, ethical questions about living and dying and politics and race. If I had a box [of copies], I would pass them out.
Rob Franklin
Author of Great Black Hope
Is the male literacy crisis real?
Most of the people I encounter who say, almost with a sense of pride, that they don’t really read fiction tend to be straight guys. Pretty much every gay man that I’m in contact with is a regular reader of fiction.
When you look at your bookshelf and what’s coming out, are there archetypes of manhood that you feel are overrepresented, underrepresented, or missing from the canon?
This question of wanting to directly identify with the experience of the characters you’re reading about isn’t really why I go to literature. I think that’s a particular perspective because I’m a writer. I mostly go to a novel for craft. I love a well-constructed sentence, and who is doing the construction of that sentence is maybe less relevant to me. Writing at its best is an act of empathy. Reading at its best is also an act of empathy. Even if a character has nothing biographically in common with me, I can feel a sort of human connection.
It is very nice to read books that have, for instance, gay Black men, something that I didn’t really have at all when I was a young reader. I’m always excited to read, for instance, Bryan Washington’s work. But even in those books, you realize that there’s a universe of difference, and that’s what’s exciting about it. None of these identities are a monolith.
How do you feel about the term “lit bro”?
I envision a Times Square-y, skater-y meme of a performative straight dude reading All About Love at a bar to get cuties to come talk to him. As a writer, I love to see anybody reading. I don’t self-identify as a “lit bro,” but there are many more toxic things a guy can do than performatively reading feminist theory at Clandestino… The lit-broiest thing I’ve done in recent memory is bench press while listening to Famesick in my earbuds.
What should men be reading more of?
We could all be reading more poetry. I imagine there are probably men who only read big history books that have a self-evident, capital-I importance to them in terms of consuming information. Part of it is a capitalist impulse to always be optimizing.
Your go-to performative reading spot?
Fort Greene Park. On the Bittersweet and Café Paulette side, everyone has their paperbacks out.
What book lets you know someone is a real reader?
The indie press. I was at the house of this guy I’ve been going on dates with the other day, and he had a McNally Editions title. I was like, “I see your game.” Also, niche literary journal totes—you’ve got The Drift tote, the n+1 tote, and so on.
Photography by Jeremy Liebman
Photography Assistance by Layton Davis
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