Salon’s Carol Lloyd considers the portion of Jill Lepore’s recent piece “Just the Facts, Ma’am” that addresses the often divergent reading tastes of women and men.
I once went on a date with a man who insisted, indignantly, that men did too read novels (of course, I didn’t claim that no men read novels—that would be absurd coming from someone whose father has a yearly Pride and Prejudice bacchanal—only that the men I know tend to prefer nonfiction), and called his best friend from the car (he had a car, which was strange in itself) to gather further irrefutable evidence of this truth. Anyway, he was vindicated, but I didn’t much like his pugilistic need (coincidentally, he was a lawyer) to be right on every point he brought up. So, that was the beginning and end of our romance, and that is more history than literature.