“Is it important to date someone with a similar bookshelf to yours?” My kneejerk: yes, of course. How could one possibly spend an entire evening with someone who was enthusiastic about a new Dan Brown novel?
A good friend of mine (not @boogiecousins) recently tweeted this query with an accompanying URL that led to a new Web dating site, alikewise.com. The site uses an ancient principle familiar to bookish guys everywhere – you put in your favorite books with brief comments and then you match yourself up with others who have simpatico tastes.
I write with some hesitancy here because I’ve been married for a long time and my last date, I think, may have occurred early in the Pleistocene Epoch, well before the advent of Internet dating sites.
But I am the kind of person, who when invited to a new friend’s house for dinner, finds myself drawn to whatever books are on display as soon as the host exits to prepare drinks. Not quite sure what I learn by these scans, but they do provide an early warning system of boredom down the road. Many bright people had an Ayn Rand fixation in their youth so I’m tolerant of Atlas Shrugged, but any novel by James Patterson indicates the evening will be a short one. Anything by Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck, and I’m out the door. On the positive side, if I discover three novels by any combination of Margaret Drabble/ Cormac McCarthy/Hilary Mantel, or a volume of poems by C.P. Cadafy or Louise Gluck, I know the evening promises a certain level of high-grade talk.
Without actually signing up for alikewise.com and seeking a date, I recently cruised the site to see how it works, the equivalent of checking out a lot of people’s bookshelves. Of course, there’s an automatic filter on the site: only people who believe that the books one likes tell you something important about a person go there. This might limit it to the top 10 percent of the nation in IQ, but it is an eclectic group.
A few thoughts on alikewise.com:
As one would expect, the site is populated mostly by the online dating generation, 20- and 30-somethings. In my quick tour the oldest ages admitted to were 65 (male) and 61 (female), though the site allows you to seek a date for any age between 18 and 99.
According to an Associated Press article, the most popular books seem to be The Great Gatsby, and, works by Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell, Stieg Larsson, Chuck Palahniuk, and Jane Austen. A predictable mix of the respectable mainstream and the slightly edgy as filtered through a decent liberal arts education. Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being is another favorite, perhaps because it offers a near-perfect mix of intellectual cred and a certain sexiness. Plus if you can’t remember the novel that well, you can always talk about the movie.
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| Lena Olin in the movie version of The Unbearable Lightness of Being |
The site gives you a Featured Profile of a new prospect every time you call it up. The algorithm seems set to feature mostly attractive women in their 20s. No surprise there. In fact, this may be one of those places where men have a competitive edge, based simply on their relative scarcity. As far as I’m aware, there are no data available on the proportion of each sex on the site, but my quick survey turned up two women for every man. Even a novel as protypically masculine as Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises gets favorited by about equal numbers of men and women.
You can learn as much about a prospective date by her comments on books as by her book list. For example, here’s a nice-looking blonde named Begonia Bette (not her real alikewise name) on Anna Karenina: “This book was the first novel I took on post-college. I had gotten my degree in English and was totally burnt out on reading, then one morning I woke up and said ‘Ya know, I think I want to read Tolstoy!’ Anna Karenina got me out of my book depression and revived my love of amazing literature.”
Hmmm, I don’t think so – burnt out on reading? Ya know, that’s just not possible for me. And the lack of a comma after “said” – unforgiveable in anyone, let alone an English major.
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| Cormac McCarthy |
I’m currently enjoying Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Crossing, a young man’s coming-of-age adventure quest set in Mexico. The novel is evocative of Twain, Faulkner, Hemingway, Carlos Casteneda, and the King James Bible. As a test of the system, I checked out those who listed The Crossing among their favorites. Few women in this group – no surprise there. McCarthy favors an old-fashioned kind of macho toughness, a constant threat of nasty violence, and a meandering plot line – all elements that don’t go over well with the Oprah Book Clubbers.
There is a 29-year-old woman from Pennsylvania who likes The Crossing, though she made no comment on it. She might be a good match for a 52-year-old guy from Massachusetts who says this about the novel, “If this book doesn’t depress you for a week or two, you’re on the wrong planet. It’s a staggering mess, but somehow, like that dog in the last few pages, manages to inspire an almost unbearable empathy.”
Now he sounds interesting. Only one problem: he’s seeking women age 35 to 52 and she’s seeking men age 27 to 40. If each can adjust their parameters, we may have a match.
< br />A likewise.com launched at the beginning of August so the evolution of book-dating matchup systems is pre-Pleistocene at best. Critiquing the site, Ruth Franklin in the New Republic talks about the theoretical pleasures of discovering a guy with a shelf of books completely different from her own. OK, I get that, but I do think the founders are onto something.
My wife and I recently saw a production of Donald Margulies’s Dinner with Friends, a marvelously insightful play on what breaks up marriages and what holds them together. The play concludes with a longtime married couple sitting up in bed, each reading a book as they carry on an intermittent conversation. As a card-carrying member of the steadfastly married tribe myself, I can testify to the archetypal nature of this everyday situation.
Enduring matches rely far more on turning to the person next to you in bed and reading an enchanting passage aloud than on the enchantment of first bedding.
Ted the Cat (1994-present) is a domestic shorthair blogger and vers libre poet. He also enjoys sleeping, eating, and lurking. Ted the Cat co-habits with Kaze,
also a blogger at 317am.net.
Wonderful.
Do we need to have the same bookshelf to be good match to our partner? It is the varied interest and things we could share or sometimes similar things we could share that make life more eventful n interesting
I have too wide an interest in books. I first got hook to ancient Greek legendary stories which I found in the attic of a family friend's huge country house in a small town, Limbang, Sarawak, Malaysia. It was an interesting place n I looked forward to every weekend to hide myself in that dark attic besides climbing the hill at the back checking out on water flowing through the uncovered bamboo pipes right into the house!! And with my mix match education background, I really would hv too varied an interest n I don keep books cos I used to move too often, how then it is possible to have the same book shelf n I do read Dan Brown when I am in the mood of jz being a dreamy teenage gal ,, Cynthia
Thanks, Anon.
Cynthia, I like your mix match education and your style of English. Dan Brown is not for me, but if you like his work, there are millions out there in the world who will match up with you. Your first book, the one you found in a friend's house, makes a great little story. Sarawak – what a name. I've always wanted to go there.