Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books
instead of clothes, who 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 has found the
book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old
book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist
smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.
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, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry
and 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 read understand that all things must come to end, but 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 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.