Manfiction
Monday, October 6th, 2008
Stephen King has a column up on Entertainment Weekly that looks at What a Guy Wants with respect to fiction. It’s nothing too new or profound, just an argument that action books are to men as romance novels are to women. In either case, this is reading for entertainment - when you’ve had a rough day and want a book to read pick up a romance novel or an action novel and dream the world away for a few hours. 
I think this is why I like books such as John Ringo’s. It’s almost embarrassing to read his novels as a lot of them read like Mary Sue (or Gary Stu) stories. "Oh look, it’s yet another retired military veteran who is a crack shot, can bench-press a small car, does world class physics on the back of an envelope, conveniently acquires a fortune, and saves the world from/despite the wooly-headed liberals." The attitudes of the "good guys" can be more than a little disturbing if you think about their ramifications in a non-author controlled setting. Nevertheless his books are fun to read.