I watched the other day the latest version of “Little Women”, by Greta Gerwig (2019). A fine directorial effort, very nice photography, but I just could not concentrate very much on the plot, had some difficulty getting which girl was which, and the wine I was drinking at the time didn’t help. I guess that, if there is a story that was created specifically for females, it has to be “Little Women”.

Nothing against it, of course. It’s just that it feels like when you’re a boy and you’re watching a pirate movie and then there is some kind of boring kiss scene and romantic drama and you just want it to end and get back to sword-fighting and shipwrecking. Well, here there’s only romantic drama.

Now I admit, I never really liked romantic comedies in cinema. And in literature, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, well, they are good writers, for sure, but their themes are so “for women”, that I just never had too much interest.

On the other hand, I love Emily Dickinson, Wisława Szymborska and many female poets. Novelists, I’ve read with pleasure Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton, among others. And Flannery O’Connor is a genius short story writer, better than most men. So it’s not a question of women being or not being good at writing, but really about the themes of the stories they choose to tell, which in many cases tend to be about love/relationships/being a female and are thus more appreciated by women.

Is there a similar case of books “for boys”? Well, I suppose that science fiction and adventure books (Jack London, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, etc.) are in general more interesting for men/boys, but there are some women who like them too. Many non-fiction themes (history, politics, science, war) are also heavily preferred by men, but I suppose there are some women who are history or science buffs.

Yet the opposite almost never seems to happen: it is rare for men to be interested in explicitly romantic novels. How many men have read “Fifty Shades of Grey?”

But then again, it might be just a case of personal preference. There are some great books written by women that are wonderful for both boys and girls, and I might compile a list one day.