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Date A Girl Who Reads
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.
Find a girl who reads. You'll know that she does because she'll always have an unread book in her bag. She's the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That's the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.
She's the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she's kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author's making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce's Ulysses she's just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
It's easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she's going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She'll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she's sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn't burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you're better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
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Date A Man Who Reads
Date a man who reads. Date a man who spends more on books than on video games, electronics, or car "accessories". Date a man with a library card, a man who'd rather carry a book then a gym bag. Date a man who keeps a running list of books, poems, essays, and reviews in a Moleskin in his back pocket.
Date a man who'll be so excited over an essay in The New Yorker or Hitchen's latest piece in Vanity Fair that he can hardly contain himself waiting for you to finish reading. He'll fight you for the NYT Book Review every Sunday but it will be worth it, if for nothing else then the smell of newsprint on his skin.
You'll be stashing books on every stationary surface in your apartment but the joy of swapping books, of sharing spine-broken, dog-eared paperbacks will be euphoric.
Find a man who reads. He'll be the one who drifts quietly through a bookstore looking for a book he read about on an obscure French literary website, or yet another copy of The Divine Comedy, Beowulf, or On Love.
Date a man who smiles broadly and gleefully when he finds exactly what he was looking for. You'll see him sitting quietly in the corner of a coffee shop drinking from a ceramic mug because he can't bring himself to waste a paper cup on a latte he's going to wallow in while wading into Steinbeck, yet again. Crack a joke about the yellowed scotch tape holding his copy of East of Eden together and his heart will probably stop beating. Share your scone with him and spark up a debate about Michiko Kakutani's latest review and you can probably bend his ear for hours.
Date a man who reads. He's the kind of man whose calendar is full of lectures at local museums and universities. His "bookmarks" and browser history are full of indie bookstores, book dealers, literary blogs, free-trade coffee roasters, and library catalogs. He can't pass a bookstore without popping in "just to see". He's got a stack of library books on his nightstand and knows all the librarians at his local branch by name. He shops at co-ops and farmer's markets because he wants to stay connected to his community.
Date a man who reads. He's flawed, like every man, but he tries his damnedest not to be. Rest assured though, when he screws up he knows the power of a well-worded apology because he knows that the greatest heroes often trip on their capes. He knows he's no different than a good novel; he unfolds a chapter at a time.
Date a man who reads because he'll cling to your every word likes he clings to plot developments. He'll lean across the dinner table with a glimmer in his eye as you challenge him on…well, anything.
Date a man who reads. He'll understand your need to keep the bedside lamp on till 2AM in the morning because you couldn't possibly go to sleep before reading the last chapter. And when you're done with that last chapter, he'll consume your thoughts as voraciously as he does your body.
Date a man who will lie languidly in bed with you on a rainy or snowy weekend day with you with an anthology of Neruda or Cummings.
Date a man who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a man who will be your Mr. Darcy, who will square his shoulders against the world for you, who'll sweep you off your feet. You deserve a man who smells of books. You deserve a man who'll whisper in your year on the sofa or as you walk hand in hand through the years.
Date a man who reads because a man who reads is the perfect hybrid of the blissful fantasy of literature and the comforting strength of reality.
Or better yet, date a man who writes.
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