At Tartan High School, A Place For Manly Reading

Tartan High School ninth-grader Ben Carson said he's flexible about which text is chosen as the first ever selection for the “Real Men Read” book club.

But if he had his druthers, he’d pick “Flesh and Iron,” which he describes as a “stand-alone novel” in the Warhammer 40,000 science fantasy series.

“It is kind of sexist, but guys like action and it’s full of action about a military unit going into a jungle planet of the future to squash a rebellion," he said, "but the people behind it are even stronger than you could have thought."

Carson is one of the students who came after school Tuesday to 11th grade social studies teacher Doug Norlander’s classroom in the hope of finding institutional support for their recreational reading.

“Usually I don’t read in class because they’re like, ‘Put your books away,’” Carson said.

Tartan Reading Specialist Nancy Stalland said she started working on the book club after reading a newspaper article about a similar club started at Eastview High School in 2008.

Stalland said there have been book clubs in the past at , but their membership has been almost entirely female.

“One time one boy showed up and, oh my gosh, I thought he was going to get swallowed into the floor,” she said. “He was slinking further and further as the girls were talking. Girls want to read relationship books, and that’s what high school girls do read, and that doesn’t work for boys.”

Norlander said he thought the proliferation of video games among teenage boys was one reason they read less than girls, and he said it was telling that most college students are female and most special education students male.

“Our young men are getting short-changed,” he said.

Norlander said he sees his students bombarded by information from television and the Internet, but “they can’t synthesize, discuss, analyze, articulate.”

“Providing a forum that allows you to talk about what you read is exactly what we need to create a respectful discourse that expands our thinking,” Stalland said.

Picking a book

“... so while the Imperium soldiers are going in, they find out who’s actually behind it and their belief in the God-Emperor is questioned,” Carson says, continuing his synopsis-slash-pitch for Flesh and Iron.

“So, Ben,” Stolland interrupts, “is this a book you’ve already read?”

“Yes, and I own it,” comes the reply without hesitation.

But Micah Weber-Goebel, also ninth grade and the other attendee of the book club planning meeting, is not familiar with the Warhammer 40,000 series, and Norlander suggests they pick a more familiar title in order to garner interest acrosss the student body.

Norlander floats the idea of Michael Crichton, the “Jurrassic Park” scribe, a favorite of Norlander’s (“He has a very creative mind,” he says. “He isn’t afraid to bring up topics that aren’t accepted in certain circles.”)

Carson saw the two-part Andromeda Strain miniseries, and Weber-Goebel’s heard good things. Soon the club decides to read Timeline, Crichton’s time travel-feudalism epic. Everyone seems pleased.

Twilight and Men

Carson gets talking about what it means for a book to be manly.

“I have read the Twilight saga and everyone’s like, ‘Oh, that’s not manly,’” he says. “Well, sure, romance isn’t technically manly, but I think it’s a good fantasy-slash-fiction series.”

But Weber-Goebel disagrees.

“I wasn’t that impressed with the Twilight series, actually,” he says. “The way it was written didn’t appeal to me that much. She based the whole story too much on the main character.”

A little later, the Real Men Read book club concludes its first meeting by deciding to meet again to discuss “Timeline” on Dec. 13 at 3 p.m.