“You should date a girl who reads.
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.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
By Rosemarie Urquico
Happy Valentines Day to all the readers out there, and the people who love them.
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