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In late 2025, I co-founded the Modern Man\u2019s Book Club. My co-founder Zubin Jain and I had noticed that book clubs in Singapore were predominantly attended by women. It was not clear to us why this was so – book clubs are open to all, and there isn\u2019t an intuitive reason why men would read less than women.<\/span><\/p>\n While there are no conclusive studies on why this happens, one explanation could be that women may view book clubs as a\u00a0social activity and invite their friends, resulting in book club attendances skewing majority female. These book clubs may then fly under the radar for many men, or those who attend, find that they may not relate to the issues being discussed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We saw a potentially underserved audience and decided to start a book club for men who may already be reading or want to read more, but lack an outlet to share their thoughts about the books they read.<\/span><\/p>\n The response has been heartening. From just a handful in our first two sessions, we now regularly have around 15 to 20 participants at each session, with both returning and first-time attendees. While our book club is open to all genders as we believe everyone is affected by the issues we talk about, men now outnumber women at our sessions.<\/span><\/p>\n What has surprised me most is the free-flowing nature of these conversations. While Zubin and I prepare handouts with discussion prompts for participants, on almost every occasion, the discussion takes on a life of its own after our introductory question to the group. So much for the stereotype that men do not talk about themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n The conversation tangents that participants embark on are also varied. In our discussion of the 2025 Booker Prize winner Flesh<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/em>by David Szalay, some shared their frustrations with the protagonist\u2019s portrayal as an emotionally detached character with monosyllable dialogue.<\/span><\/p>\n After a while, one of our middle-aged participants interjected, \u201cAs someone who is slightly older and comes from the same era as the character, I can tell you this portrayal is entirely realistic of men of that age.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The conversation then shifted to talking about intergenerational differences in masculinity, as we shared stories about our older male relatives or friends, and how men are expected to express emotions more openly in this day and age.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n THE NEED FOR MEN\u2019S BOOK CLUBS In late 2025, I co-founded the Modern Man\u2019s Book Club. My co-founder Zubin Jain and I had noticed that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--nXKsO7MX--\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/fl_relative,g_south_east,l_mediacorp:cna:watermark:2021-08:cna,w_0.1\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/02\/26\/20240704_llt_singlit_books_reading.jpg?itok=RzO-jmRV","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6632,1813,14471,1126,6542,932,400,17905,274],"class_list":["post-73033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-attended","tag-book","tag-clubs","tag-commentary","tag-created","tag-heres","tag-men","tag-tend","tag-women","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/73034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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