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
will 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
Twilightseries.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find
her up at 2 AM 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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