It was one of the most erotic things I ever heard. A man I know said he was reading all the novels of Jane Austen in one summer.

At first, I figured he was pretending to like things that women like to seem simpatico, a feminist hustle. But no, this guy really wanted to read Northanger Abbey.

Donald Trump isn’t often pictured holding a book, but during the 2015 presidential campaign holds a Dr Seuss-style book written to imitate his style on Jimmy Kimmel Live.Credit: AP

Men are reading less. Women make up 80 per cent of fiction sales. “Young men have regressed educationally, emotionally and culturally,” David J. Morris wrote in a New York Times essay titled “The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone.”

The fiction gap makes me sad. A man staring into a phone is not sexy. But a man with a book has become so rare, such an object of fantasy, that there’s a popular Instagram account called “Hot Dudes Reading.”

Some of the most charming encounters I’ve had with men were about books.

Mike Nichols once turned to me at a dinner in Los Angeles and told me his favourite novel was Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. I was startled because I have read that book over and over, finding it........

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