Welcome to the first edition of Books for Dudes. As a dude reading is usually an afterthought, I mean who has time for books. That’s why if you do choose to nerd out and read you want a book that’s not too long, and captivating from start to finish. A solid dude book may even encourage further reading. Hell, before you know it you’ll be drinking Earl Grey tea and attending Andrew Luck Book Club.

Quick Dude Book Check List (Things a good dude book must have)

Under 400 Pages, preferably under 300. Self Explanatory.

Short Chapters, a chapter is a big deal to a dude, short chapters give us a false sense of accomplishment, this will be key to our continued reading.

Main Character is a guy, don’t ask a dude to be a chick, we are already reading which is far enough outside the comfort zone.

Sex and Violence, want to make a book seem more like a movie to a guy? Fill it with sex and violence.

The setting, dude books usually have a pretty cool backdrop. No dude book ever took place in Madison County, no matter how cool the bridges are. Dude books are set in places like 1980’s New York City, Outer Space, or World War II.

Before David Benioff was the showrunner for the massive hit, Game of Thrones, he was a New York Times Best Selling Author. His book City of Thieves is nothing short of incredible. To be fair, it’s more than a book for dudes, it’s for anyone who likes a great story. In fact, the only person I recommended it to, that I know to have read it, was a girl in my screenwriting class. She thanked me for the recommendation and told me she read the whole thing in a day and loved it. She was going for her Master’s in History so it was right up her alley.

City of Thieves is set in Leningrad in the first week of 1942. The city is under siege and starving. Do I have your attention? Listen to the novel’s opening sentence.

“My Grandfather, the knife fighter, killed two Germans before he was eighteen.”

Lev, just a boy in 1942, is our stories protagonist. He is arrested for looting a body by the NKVD. Facing a possible death sentence for almost nothing, he is sent to an NKVD General. Also looking at the firing squad is Koyla, a young Cossack arrested for desertion. Koyla maintains he was just visiting a whore, not deserting. <- Total Dude Excuse. Together they are given an odd mission, by the General, find a dozen eggs in a starving city. It turns out the General’s daughter is to be married and they don’t have the eggs to make a cake.

I love this plot, guys are in the middle of a war, no food anywhere, but the General’s daughter must get a wedding cake. I won’t give away much more of the plot, I’ll just say that City of Thieves is 258 pages you won’t regret reading.