"A Tale of Two Titties: A Guide to Writing Women Like a Bestselling Male Author" should be taken with a ginormous grain of salt. Twin grains of salt, perhaps, like the twins that are so amply dissected in this humorous satire that purports to train women, in particular, to write women like bestselling male authors. There are plenty of authentic examples from current authors, from Stephen King to classic John Steinbeck, that serve to make the author's point of continued misogynistic and trope-filled female characterizations in fiction. Vondriska also allows for plenty of practice to write like a man, including fill in the blank, word search, and scenario prompt exercises. Ultimately I started skimming the last quarter of the book, as it became repetitive and not as humorous as the beginning. However, I must admit that I feel armed with an awareness and understanding of how to spot poorly written women characters in the wild.

Onward!

It has taken me a long, long time to read A Tale of Two Titties, a book that has 292 rather small pages and 20% – if not more – of them is blank space for ‘prompts’ and ‘exercises’ the point of which is, ostensibly (this review might and will contain sarcasm) to teach women (and, I hope, gay men, how could we know how women titties work?) to become bestsellers.

The afterword – or rather ‘The Heart of the Matter,’ says: “Using humour as a tool to help people notice this kind of casual misogyny, instead of an accusatory ‘why didn’t you notice!’ voice, was one of the core goals of A Tale of Two Titties. If the only thing a reader takes away from this book is simply noticing, the workbook will have succeeded.” Thing is, this book is not funny. I mean, it would probably be funny to the exact sort of men who should notice the misogyny, but they’d instead cackle, Beavis-and-Butthead style.

Reader, I did not laugh.

•

A Tale of Two Titties is a bitter, cynical, sarcastic, uncomfortable read. Why uncomfortable? Because all of it is true, from Poor James Patterson complaining about how now that women are allowed to write books there is simply NO SPACE for white men, to the frankly terrifyingly long list of quotes from Stephen King, complete with a footnote saying that the editor discouraged from making this list even longer, because lawsuits are even less fun than cantaloupe breasts. Why bitter? Because no matter how many followers Meg Vondriska (who created the delightfully horrible @menwritewomen article) is going to gather on X or how many copies of this book are going to sell, its contribution to what passes for ‘literature’ (one of the books quoted, The Circle by Dave Eggers, was literally the next read on my TBR) is going to hang somewhere around zero.

Maybe I am projecting my own bitterness on A Tale of Two Titties, because I know and abuse the saying “oh, to have the self-confidence of a mediocre white man,” and the book pretends to teach the reader exactly that. Except most of the many quoted mediocre white men are sickeningly rich and famous. Oh, to have the bank account, the reviews, and the awards of a mediocre white man, I’d sigh, if the book didn’t explain in a disgustingly accurate way how to achieve that feat.

When I think of who would find this book funny, I envision a group of drunken blokes in a pub pulling the book away from each other to read the ‘best quotes’ and high-five each other, then use it as their own list of future reads, in case they are actually literate. (This time I am exaggerating. One of the examples is fecking Kazuo Ishiguro and I really, REALLY did not see this coming.) (Did you know that in the interest of historical accuracy of his fantasy series that has dragons in it George RR Martin included rape or attempted rape 214 times? So far?)

I found the ‘exercises’ and ‘prompts’ completely pointless. They didn’t even hammer the point further home, they hammered it through the wall until both the point and the hammer fell inside. One of my pet peeves has always been including ‘blank pages for the reader to fill’ inside books, which makes me feel like I have overpaid no matter how cheap the book is – I was promised 292 pages, not 252 sort of thing. The joke that runs throughout the book is that obviously we, everyone who is not a mediocre cis man who comes up with…creative descriptions for breasts, simply need to learn how to out-mediocre those men. The blank pages, though, are a joke that overstays its welcome. Another phrase I loathe in books is “take your journal…” but at least it doesn’t feel like padding.

•

I said ‘loathe’. This is something so important to me I’m going to give it a separate paragraph. As in, section.

A footnote in ‘The Heart of the Matter’ says something that I feel is actually the key to understanding the why behind this book. My biggest pet peeve of all – the pet in question being Godzilla: the idea that ‘women’s literature’ is a genre. “Of course, there is no ‘men’s literature’ section, that’s just a bookstore.” Nailed. Can’t be repeated enough. And should be made illegal. I might be a noted male man of masculine gender, but despite my insistence that Storytellers belongs on the ‘women’s fiction’ shelves, it never made it there. Which it should. But I have a (whispers) p-e-n-i-s and therefore – as Vondriska tells – my section is the bookstore. Speaking of which, I wonder where A Tale of Two Titties will land in bookstores. I have a sickening feeling that “TikTok Made Me Read This!” might be its best shot.

It’s 2024. Apparently we are now very evolved and woke, etc. I just typed ‘women’s fiction’ into Amazon’s search box and the first result charts at #1 in the ‘women’s fiction’ category AND #2 in ‘women’s domestic life fiction’. The first result when I search for ‘men’s fiction’ is a ‘historical thriller’ and a ‘military thriller’ and definitely not a men’s battlefield life fiction. (Don’t make me laugh by suggesting ‘men’s domestic life fiction.’ Okay, I will check. *checks* Did you know Margaret Atwood’s Life Before Man is men’s domestic life fiction?)
I will stop here, because I’m doing the same thing Vondriska does in A Tale of Two Titties: driving the point home so hard the home might have collapsed and I keep going.

•

I have once declared that I would spend a month reading solely books by women, except non-fiction. Then forgot I said that until the month was nearing its end and I realised I was already only reading books written by women – my two exceptions were a book on writing craft and a biography of Jony Ive. So, there’s a chance that I am not the right audience for A Tale of Two Titties. I like to round up my reviews by recommending the book to the ideal audience. But who is it?

People who follow @menwritewomen might not be able to take in the amount of reality – as I said, I had to read this in small chunks – because the reality is more grim and dark than grimdark when it comes to literary misogyny. And they have already noticed. Those who should notice are unlikely to read something longer than a meme. With breasts on it. As for me, I may be a gay man who works exclusively with female editors, but I felt guilty-by-association (men are my least favourite gender, and this is NOT a joke). People don’t like being made to feel guilty. There is a reason why so many copies of books such as Let’s Talk About Race have sold, but so few have actually been read. (Rebecca, Not Becky might not be an excellent read, but what it shows really well is how many well-meaning allies bought the Deep and Important Books, only never quite found time to read past the title – BUT they switch from Ed Sheeran to a R&B Spotify playlist before the book club meeting, showing how greatly they have immersed themselves in racial diversity.)

I would like this book to become a compulsory read for creative writing students. And professors. And guest authors. And bestselling authors. Including The One Who Shall Not Be Named. Not that I think they’re capable of learning. And when I say ‘they’ I am not just making an invisible jab at The One etc., but most of the exact people who should read A Tale of Two Titties. The cover might mislead them, but not for long. Once the words start, and this is one of those books that have words in them, they’ll either rage about woke-blah-something, or simply “DNF at 1% because insert a reason I just invented not to seem sexist.”

PS. I really wouldn’t mind a foreword from Stephen King.
PS2. Stephen, this is a dare. Write that foreword, and I will both buy your next book and read it.

(Rating: 6.5/10, rounded to 3/5)

<i>My ratings:
5* = this book changed my life
4* = very good
3* = good
2* = I probably DNFed it, so I don't give 2* ratings
1* = actively hostile towards the reader</i>

Fuelled by pure spite, A Tale of Two Titties is a hilarious take on how women have been written about by men in literature. It is written in an incredibly entertaining manner and is interactive, helping you to write about all women, including the sole types of women that exist (and only exist for men to enjoy). Quizzes and coached writing opportunities are littered throughout to help you reach the supreme writing levels of a man. It is a laugh-inducing book but the reality of the content is enough to bring on a wave of despair.

I follow some groups and pages on social media that find examples of this kind of thing in the wild, but I have to admit, this problem is so much more pervasive than I thought. Sometimes when I'm reading an otherwise solid story I'm drawn out of the book by a bizarre characterization of the women in the book, and it really makes me wonder, is this what men think women are like? It's strange that even in literature, discussion of women has to be focused on their bodies and sexuality instead of their humanity. Seeing the scope of this makes it less funny.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

not all-encompassing but this book would send any of the following people into a coma:

✅ anti-feminists
✅ men with podcasts
✅ republicans (especially ones who think women are "asking for it")
✅ people who are quick af to defend authors for mysogny
✅ anyone who mocks or bullies women on booktok for reading romance with spice

if you do not fall in any of the categories above and believe that women deserve more than to be sexualized in books, i highly recommend this book! i will also turn a blind eye to any woman who wants to use this book as a guide to get on the NYT bestsellers list and get a movie deal lmao.

frankly, i don't read a lot of book written by men and i haven't read any of the books mentioned in this guide so you can imagine my surprise reading some of these quotes. that's not to say i haven't unfortunately read books written by men where woman are heavily sexualized and described inappropriately because trust me i have read my fair share. for example, the author of an arc i read last year Zero Kill would definitely have scored 100% on the final exam unironically. it's crazy to think about the amount of success these men get from simply being unoriginal and writing anatomically incorrect descriptions of women. ah to be a man who can sit on his lazy boy and profit from writing about women's breasts 😍

For both writers and readers alike, this was a fresh, informative approach to looking at the roles of women in books. With clever points and glaringly offensive examples from popular work written by men, Meg Vondriska challenges the idea that men have ruled the world of writing for far too long, and their stereotypical portrayal of female characters and bodies serve only to further their misogyny, cementing their place as Kings of the World. For writers, there are workbook exercises to emphasize the point that writing women accurately is a worthy and noble practice. For readers, there is plenty of insight provided to challenge our choices in what we read and what gender ideologies we are supporting. This was a thorough, engaging read and one I will eagerly make available to our writing and reading communities.

A Tale of Two Titties is a smart, eye-opening, funny, and thought-provoking book that will have your reactions constantly shifting between laughing and shouting "WTF" whenever Meg Vondriska drops a quote to prove a point. And she always proves her point.

If you need a guide on how to become the next bestselling author, Meg Vondriska has you covered. You simply have to follow the valuable lessons in A Tale of Two Titties on how to write women like a man. But not just any man. Like a bestselling male author. If you do it correctly, you bet you'll get published in no time, and it's just one small step away from the bestseller's list. See? Easy.

But on a more serious note, A Tale of Two Titties offers brilliant criticism of the misogyny found in our fiction. It also does a great job of pointing out how we, as a society, are often conditioned to view it as "just the way things are," to the point of not noticing it anymore. The book provides a very smart analysis of the environment that spawns the misogynistic quotes featured in its pages and the many forms it manifests itself in our fiction. Vondriska’s point became painfully clear to me when she introduced quotes from books I truly love—lines I didn’t even notice were problematic when I read them for the first time, or multiple times in many cases. And that is exactly the point. By contextualizing the way male authors write women, the problem becomes painfully clear, and descriptions and characteristics of women in fiction turn from "just words" to "a symptom of a structural problem."

What makes Meg Vondriska’s debut so addictive is how engaging it is. At its core, A Tale of Two Titties follows the pattern of a well-structured workbook: Theory -> Examples -> Summary -> Exercise -> Reflection. But it never felt like a chore or homework. I gladly went along with the structure because 1) it was fun, and 2) I was genuinely engaged with the subject matter because of how Vondriska presented it to me. Here, I would also love to take a moment to talk about how brilliant the interior design is. It made the book visually appealing, true, but more importantly, it also complemented the text in very interesting and imaginative ways.

A Tale of Two Titties is a book that lives up to its name. It takes everything written by male authors and unapologetically throws it back in their faces, and for that, it deserves all the stars I can give it.

Such a funny read! The way women are stereotyped in books is often so wrong but as shown here so laughable that male writers even think these tropes are accurate to begin with.

Hilarious and tear-inducing (because some quotes are so cringe), this little guide helps you become a better writer of female characters. Filled with examples, exercises and exams, it is both theoretical and practical. You bet I’ve learned how to write a Secretary or Nagging Wife character better than your best-selling white male author can now!

All jokes aside: I enjoyed reading this very much. The humorous undertone to a quite serious problem made for easy reading, laugh out loud moments and the desire to gift this to everyone I know when it comes out in July.

Anyone who complains about it being too on the nose, exaggerated or stereotyping white male authors missed the point of the book.

5 big titties (stars) from me.

"A Tale of Two Titties" is a funny yet thought-provoking guide that examines the portrayal of women in literature. While reading, I found myself laughing at the absurdity while also feeling a sense of frustration at the stereotypes presented. It offers valuable insights into gender representation and serves as a witty call to action for writers to challenge the status quo.

I will be recommending this book to every woman I know. As an amazingly witty, satirical piece that serves as an interactive guide on how to write women the way men do in order to get your book published, I thought this was a brilliant way to criticize the misogyny in not only the publishing industry, but society was a whole. Meg Vondriska does an excellent job informing the reader of how awfully male authors, *ahem* FAMOUS male authors, having been writing women for decades in an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek way.

I have read many a fantasy series written by a man, including A Song of Ice and Fire and The Witcher, so I am no stranger to the creative liberties men make when a scene involves a woman, but Vondriska still found ways to shock me when revealing passages from incredibly famous and successful male authors. A Tale of Two Titties was both hilarious and incredibly illuminating, and I think that's everything you can ask for in a book criticizing the most sexist tropes in history by teaching you how to write them.

If the title and the premise of this book didn't hook you, let me tell you this. A Tale of Two Titties features endless activities to get your creative mind rolling, including writing exercises, word searches, matching games, and (my favorite) Madlibs to create sexist descriptions of women "as a bestselling male writer would," using actual passages from books by authors, including James Patterson and Stephen King. And boob jokes. Many, many boob jokes. But who doesn't love a boob joke, aren't they the breast? (I'm so sorry...)

A fun and insightful read! I've always been equally amused and angered by the way many male authors write female characters, so I knew I had to read this when I saw it was available on Netgalley. I enjoyed that this was an interactive tongue-in-cheek book rather than straight critique; while I've been trying to read more nonfiction, I still tend to get bored after a while, even if I'm interested in the subject. I didn't actually do any of the writing activities in the book since I don't have a physical copy, but I think they'd be a fun activity to do with your friends to see who can come up with the most ridiculous descriptions.

I really liked this. I love the exploration of tropes and character arcs that are in the book and how it effects women. I think it was well researched and constructed in a way that was fun and educational to read

A funny approach to how women are written in books by male authors with references to back up the story. I was entertained while reading.

A titillating tale. I had to!

This account is a good time and so is this book. I think the format is engaging and the illustrations are detailed.