Literature preferences between the genders

Very interesting article that talks about the differences in reading preferences between men and women !
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/apr/06/books.booksnews
Apparently, men liked novels about alienation and women like emotional/passionate novels. Nothing very surprising about that !
However, the actual book lists were pretty surprising. Albert Camus’s “The Outsider” was no.1 on the men’s list. I somehow did not expect that. I was expecting something more macho authors somehow, maybe Tom Clancy? He did not figure anywhere.
Jane Eyre was predictably the no.1 women’s book. No surprises there !
There was practically no book / author in common between the women’s and men’s lists. I did not think that there would be such a divergence in tastes. The only books in common were”To kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee and “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad.
Another shock for me. Almost all the books mentioned in the men’s favorites list were my personal favorites. Very few of the women’s lit section moved me at all.
I wonder what that says about me 🙁

How come “Lord of the Flies” is nowhere here !!! Nooooo….

Below is the full list according to the Guardian:

Men’s list
1 Albert Camus The Outsider
2 JD Salinger Catcher in the Rye
3 Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five
4 Gabriel Garcia Marquez A Hundred Years of Solitude
5 JRR Tolkien The Hobbit
6 Joseph Heller Catch-22
7 George Orwell 1984
8 F Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
9 Milan Kundera The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
10 Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird
11 Vlamidir Nabokov Lolita
12 JRR Tolkien The Lord of the Rings
13 Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment
14 Graham Greene Brighton Rock
15 Nick Hornby High Fidelity
16 James Joyce Ulysses
17 Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
18 Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness
19 Franz Kafka Metamorphosis
20 John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath
Women’s list
1 Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre
2 Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights
3 Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale
4 George Eliot Middlemarch
5 Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice
6 Toni Morrison Beloved
7 Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook
8 Joseph Heller Catch-22
9 Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past
10 Jane Austen Persuasion
11 Mary Shelley Frankenstein
12 Jeanette Winterson Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
13 Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude
14 George Eliot The Mill on the Floss
15 Louisa May Alcott Little Women
16 Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary
17 CS Lewis The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
18 Margaret Mitchell Gone With the Wind
19 Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness
20 Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird

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  1. gugiinsingapore

    Thanks for this list Nish. Well I have to say the majority of my books did fall into the Women’s list. Also picked a few books that I need to read now 😀

    Just finished reading 3 books –
    1. The Dimplomatic Corpse – Funny chick lit, cheating man and revengeful wife
    2. What the Dead Know – Murder mystery, not bad, something didn’t take it up to No.1 for me
    3.The Bone Setter’s Daughter – Really liked this book, Asia Chinese – set in modern SFO and turn of the century (previous)China

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