Girl Books and Boy Books?

This semester my writing class is reading (along with a textbook) "Digging to America," by Anne Tyler. I thought the themes of mixed cultures co-existing, international adoption, and family would stimulate good discussions and good writing, and they have done so. After we finished the novel this week, I asked students to write a quick overall response to the book: Did they like it? Were they glad they had read it? Would they recommend it to friends? Should I assign it again in future semesters? I asked them to be honest. All of them liked it at least somewhat, but the responses were quite gendered. The women all liked it without reservation. The men liked it more or less, but several of them said that they preferred books with "more action." And one male student stated that he liked it, and wrote very well about what he learned from it, but concluded by saying that it was a rather "girly" book, wasn't it? I am not sorry that I assigned this novel, as students spoke animatedly and wrote well about the themes and characters, and seemed genuinely interested in the story. But the male responses reminded me of something that I sometimes forget: for whatever reason, nature or nurture (I will not get into that huge and fraught question here!), it does seem that -- on average -- males have overlapping but at least somewhat different tastes in books than females. As an educator, should I take these differences into account? Should I look for novels with literary value but "more action"? I will have to think long and hard about this before the next time I need to select a novel for a class.