I'm currently reading two books: a dazzling one with awful writing and an awful one with dazzling writing.

The first, written by a man, has an impressively complicated plot that was surely a giant headache to craft. It’s compelling in its own way and I do vaguely want to know what happens despite most pages containing repeated instances of a sentence construction I dislike and never use myself, plus a host of other sentences I find truly ghastly.

As a marker, I’ve been folding down page corners whenever I read a dreadful sentence or phrase, and halfway in, plenty of corners have been folded. I’ve never done this before but it’s a revelation and it’ll be useful in my creative writing teaching.

The book is fast-paced and a bestseller, but there’s no real depth to it and I can’t connect with any of the characters, most of whom are men, one of whom is a rapist.

Many clearly love it but as it’s not my thing, I’ve paused it to read Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, which is astonishing.

It’s not awful at all (I only wrote that in the first sentence for the nifty mirroring) but the subject matter is (the narrator has depression) and some of the characters are: they’re rude, spiteful and neglectful towards each other (otherwise known as family and marital dynamics).

But it’s astute, funny and skilful. Now I know why our school gave it to the sixth form prize-winners at the end of term, but I’m not sure they’re old enough to appreciate it.

Sorrow and Bliss also came up at a talk hosted by Kate Mosse (the author, not the supermodel) at Latitude recently.

The Women’s Prize for Fiction event entitled Men Reading Women highlighted their campaign to encourage men to read books by female authors.

While women read books written by both men and women, men predominantly read books by men, and sadly, this gender bias also affects teens and children (hence writers like JK Rowling/Robert Galbraith and Emer Stamp masking their first names and thereby their gender). Men frequently claim women are a mystery to them but, as the speakers pointed out, if they read books written by women, perhaps they wouldn’t be.

We read to learn of the life experiences of others, which increases our empathy and understanding: why wouldn’t we try to understand the experiences of half of the world’s population?

So they’ve drawn up a list of ten outstanding books by women that men might like to start with. I’d read nine of them and felt satisfyingly scholarly. The audience offered further suggestions. I didn’t put my hand up because I’ve always handed such books to men I know and they’ve always liked them — or, at least, read them. Maybe I’m friends with a certain type of man.

My fiction choices include My Cousin Rachel, Strange Weather in Tokyo, The Doll Factory, The Foundling, The God of Small Things, Olive Kitteridge, and, Jewishly, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.

My nonfiction choices include travel writing (Tracks; The Cruellest Journey; Terra Incognita) nature writing (H is for Hawk), poetry (Devotions by Mary Oliver) and Women and Power by Mary Beard, just to crack it on men’s heads.

I teach at a girls’ school, and while rewriting our school reading list this summer term, I didn’t consider the author’s gender as much as their religious and racial background and the subject matter. At a co-ed school, I might have devised a different list.

I wonder if some people feel about Jewish books as some men seem to feel about books written by women — it’s not for them? And what makes a book Jewish?

A glance at the bestseller lists suggest a focus on the Shoah that feels less than healthy. Important, of course, but how about more contemporary stories of Jewish life, not death?

This summer, I’m on the kind of holiday where packing isn’t restricted by weight. We hoi polloi who mainly fly economy have become so used to a 20-kilo limit that perhaps, in my excitement, I’ve overpacked, but driving off with two reinforced shopping bags of books in the boot is an utter joy.

I look forward to handing the best of them to the men and women I know and find out who prefers the dazzling plot lines or the dazzling writing. I could make an educated guess — but would that show a bias?