During the 2012 NBA playoffs, as the Miami Heat battled the Oklahoma City Thunder for the championship trophy, fans noticed something unusual about LeBron James’ pregame routine. Between his typical shooting warmups, photos surfaced of the Finals MVP reading.
“The reading has given me an opportunity to, just for those couple hours of the day or those 20 minutes, 25 minutes before the game, an opportunity just to read and think about something else,” James told ESPN at the time.
After James kept up this pregame routine, skeptics quickly pointed out a recurring detail: James always seemed to be on Page 1 — leading some on the internet to wonder, was James actually reading, or was he just doing it for the cameras?
Fast-forward a little over a decade, and that same skepticism has resurfaced as an online trend gains traction: young men reading and reviewing classic literature. Critics are asking the same questions. Are these “bookfluencers” actually reading, or are they just chasing likes and follows? In a landscape where boys have scored lower than girls on standardized reading tests for more than half a century, the young men’s motive is far less important than the momentum they are building.
From ‘uncool’ to influential
Among these young men, and leading the trend, is Chris Fizer, a Florida-based influencer whose Instagram account has 223,000 followers.
Fizer didn’t always love classic literature like he does now. In fact, he didn’t even love to read as much as he does now. He told The Times he grew up reading but stopped in middle school. “It became uncool, I guess,” he shared. “It was kind of frowned upon throughout middle school, high school.”
After reigniting his love for reading with the science-fiction novel “Red Rising,” he now has a heavy reading routine where he wakes up at 5 a.m., reads for two hours, then heads to the gym, or some days he goes to bed at 3 a.m. because he can’t put a book down.
His efforts have even caught the attention of Penguin Books, which sent him a note along with a collection of novels.
Fizer isn’t an outlier. Creators like Mason Murphy and Sam Wall consistently share their love for reading and their reviews of the latest classic work they just finished.
Or TikTok user Marcus, whose account “Read with Marcus” shares excerpts from classic novels like “East of Eden” or “Frankenstein” and creates reading lists for those who want to read more classic literature but aren’t sure where to start.
Others, like Gavin, lead a virtual book club, where they share reviews of the classics and provides their own recommendations on what classic novels beginners should start with.
The support and criticism from others online
While Fizer and the others are pioneers of the classic literature “BookTok” review, creators like Noah Brisk have been sharing book reviews online for years, but mostly of more modern fiction and fantasy novels. Brisk, whose reviews largely focus on the fantasy genre, has built an audience with a rare 50/50 split between men and women, he told Deseret News.
While many men are drawn to the productivity of the self-help genre, Brisk, who works in pharmaceutical sales and is often surrounded by corporate professional development, argues that fiction offers a form of growth that “hype” self-help books cannot.
He shared that those books might give you tips on how to sell a product, but that it won’t teach you how to better empathize with someone from a different walk of life than you.
“Yes, it’s a story, but it teaches you as a human to look at stuff from other perspectives,” Brisk noted. “It teaches you to see the other side of the argument or the other side of the coin — stuff that you just don’t deal with in your real life.”
While some may be cynics of the new online trend, and doubt the boys are genuinely interested in these novels, others are applauding the boys and their efforts, hoping more will follow in their footsteps.
When asked about the backlash from this trend, Brisk pointed out that even if the goal for some creators is simply to get followers, the outcome is still positive. If these men are getting popular because of “The Count of Monte Cristo,” he is not concerned. If it makes another 22-year-old pick it up, he doesn’t see a downside.
The gender gap in literacy
A recent YouGov survey highlights a need for an increase of reading, especially among men. Of the 2,203 adults who took the survey, 44% of men did not read a single book last year. Among the women who were surveyed, 37% had not read a book. Only one-third of men read more than three, compared to 42% of women. As the number of books rose, the number of people who read them dropped. A quarter of women made it through 10 or more, while only 14% of men did the same.
For decades, a significant reading gap has persisted between genders, but these young men on social media are trying to close that gap.
According to The New York Times, boys have struggled to read and have scored lower than girls on standardized reading tests for a half-century, a gap that widened in the 1990s and has continued to slip since the mid-2010s. Some experts have linked this decline to falling college attendance rates among men.
The power of a role model
Experts suggest that the key to closing the gap is representation. Boys need role models who read.
Shilo Brooks, chief executive of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and host of the “Old School” podcast, which focuses on how books can shape men, argues that boys should see men reading for pleasure or joining book clubs.
“The same way a boy becomes interested in football because he sees his father watch it every Sunday afternoon, he can become interested in reading because he sees his father read for an hour every Saturday morning,” Brooks told The New York Times.
Brisk, a father of three, has seen the power of modeling reading firsthand. He told Deseret News that his philosophy when it comes to helping his own kids love to read is less about “you need to go read,” and more of a “hey, what are we reading tonight?”
He shared his kids see him reading in the morning and at night in his free time, which has encouraged them to do the same.
A new wave of young men are trying to become the role models for the next generation and disrupt the increasingly large reading gap. They aren’t just reading pulp fiction or self-help books, they are diving into classic works from authors like Emily Bronte, Alexandre Dumas, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.
Whether these men are reading for “clout” or for personal growth, and even if LeBron James never actually made it past Page 1, and beyond the likes and the follows, the act of reading is doing something social media or TV shows cannot: it is building a bridge to other lives.
“You’re sitting inside someone else’s existence,” Brisk said. “You’re learning what that’s like, and you’re getting the emotions and those feelings ... it’s changing how you think about empathy, and it’s changing how you think about other people.”