Guys don't read?

So I was catching up on all the blog posts that I missed during NaNo and the holidays when I read this post, which discusses the problem of too few guy readers and why perhaps that is.

I'll be honest, I didn't even realize this was an issue until just before Christmas. After all, I'm a guy, I read A LOT, my friends are guys who read, and the first book blog I ever read was by a guy. But then I found myself in Wal*Mart with $20 with which to buy things, so I headed to the book section. I, for one of the first times ever, had a hard time finding a book I wanted to read. It seemed like EVERY book in that section was aimed at females. D:

Now, I think the reason I never noticed this before is because I usually know what I want before I go to buy, and I tend to buy from Amazon or B&N and not so much at stores.

My younger brother was only interested in Video Games and was feeling very impatient with me as I struggled to find a book to get so I also felt rushed. Perhaps if I had had more time to browse the books I would have found that more of them would have interested me, but I didn't have time, I was judging almost entirely on book covers (a horrible sin, I know) and most of them looked full of flowers and fairies and other such things and so I passed over them because it was obvious who they were geared toward and it surely wasn't me!

Finally I found a little area that had fantasy and I cried tears of joy. More like I fell to the floor to get a better look as they were very low to the ground. And even then most of them looked girly. Thankfully one cover caught my eyes, it had a dragon on it, or four, or a four headed dragon. Either way, dragons, I was happy. But it was a book four :( So I looked for book one of the series and to my unspeakable horror, book one's cover was filled with fairies! How could fairies become dragons? Luckily I noticed the blurb, it was a blurb by Christopher Paolini (you know, the guy who writes those books about DRAGONS?). The blurb said that it was one of the most enjoyable fantasies that he had ever read. This sold it for me. He is one of my favorite authors (because he writes about dragons, seriously, that's all you have to do and you will likely have my undying devotion) so I picked up the book. What book was it? Fablehaven. I hear its pretty popular no?

I had money for more books, so I looked for more. I saw a cover with a guy on it holding a sword :D called The Lightning Thief so I snatched it up, and then I saw Inkheart which one of my friends (who is a guy) recommended, so I grabbed that one also. Yay for three new books, of which I am currently devouring, and they are tasty.

What that? What's my point? I dunno, perhaps that I just discovered that something is very wrong with publishing today (besides that it needs more dragons, but no matter how many it produces I shall not be satisfied). Perhaps to say that while it is a problem, it isn't exactly all that bad as I could still find books that interested me, even if two of them have girl MCs and one had fairies on the cover. Perhaps it's been to long since I just discussed something here and I wanted to. I dunno, what I do know is that I'mma go write more Skies of Fire, I've been neglecting the poor thing since November.