I was talking to a family friend the other day about reading. And he mentioned that there aren’t many non-fantasy young male fiction writers while he is not a big raider he does read usually if he does nonfiction and the occasional Dan Brown or John Grisham novel. I rattled off some authors, but he responded that they were all fantasy authors.
While I know a few queer fiction writers who don’t write fantasy, I don’t think he would be interested in that.
So then, I thought, who are the young, up-and-coming straight male authors in the world? Who are the young straight men reading these days?
by magicianguy131
6 Comments
Young male readers are more likely to be found reading SF and darker-edged fantasy, so I’d be pointing to people like Adrian Tchaikovsky, James S A Corey, Pierce Brown, Steven Erikson, Alastair Reynolds, Joe Abercrombie, Iain M Banks and that young up-and-comer George R R Martin.
It sounds like that might not be your friend’s bag, though. He seems to be after something more conservative (for want of a better word), like maybe a younger person’s version of Lee Child. So I guess… Anthony Horowitz?
Nathan Hill and Adam Levin are both currently working, male literary fiction writers in their 40s. I haven’t read any of Nathan Hill’s writing so I can’t really comment on his work but I’ve heard good things. Adam Levin is a wonderful writer though. There’s also Anthony Doerr. I haven’t read any of his books but again I’ve heard good things and his novel All the Light We Cannot See is pretty popular. Most guys I know read exclusively (or at least almost exclusively) non-fiction, science fiction, or fantasy. The few guys I know who don’t read mostly/exclusively from those genres tend to be into classics and/or 20th century male writers; James Joyce, Earnest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, W.H. Gass, Joseph McElroy, Cormac McCarthy, John Barth, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace (please note a lot of these authors write long, dense, and difficult novels that at least in part remain popular because some portion of their modern readership sees completing them as a flex). I would maybe suggest Michael Chabon as well? He doesn’t write novels anymore since transitioning to film and TV but he was popular in the early to mid-2000s. He’s a great writer as well.
Warrior and Protector by Peter Gibbons
Do they need to be young? I really enjoyed Gates of Fire but Pressfield is in his 80s.
Does it need to be fiction? Ben McIntyres books are awesome. Loved Operarion Mincemeat at Traitor and the Spy.
I also loved City of Theives by David Benioff
My old classmate Jonny Sun is a young man with a STEM and arts background who wrote a bestselling book called Goodbye, Again. He might like that. He might also like The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green.
Jack Carr, Brad Thor, Dean Koontz, Ted Dekker, Mark Greaney, Daniel Silva, and Don Bentley are good starts.
3 Recs: The Terminal List Series by Jack Carr, Lions of Lucerne (The Scot Harvath Series) by Brad Thor, and The Gray Man by Mark Greaney.