A Response to 'Date a Girl Who Reads'- by a Girl who Reads

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who doesn't spend her money on books because she's a member of three libraries, and works in one, and runs three book swaps a month so has money left over for clothes but doesn't spend money on them either, but instead spends it on beer and fags. She has problems with her closet space because she doesn't have a fucking closet, she has a wardrobe, and most of that is on the floor. Date a girl who hasn't got a list of books she wants to read, she's got a list of books she has to read because she writes for two book blogs and is in a book club and is behind, damn it. Date a girl who has had a library card since she was three. Find a girl who reads, you'd be hard pushed seeing as a third of adults in the country don't have a reading level over a level 3. You'll know a girl that reads because she'll be fucking reading. She'll be the one lovingly stroking Waterstones front tables, she doesn't necessarily have an orgasm every time she sees a book she wants, but doesn't do 'quiet'. You see that weird chick spending all her fucking time trying to get other people to talk about reading for pleasure to normalise it in the popular conscious so she doesn't always get labelled 'weird'? That's the reader. She's the girl reading in the pub down the street, she's not waiting, she's having a pint and reading her book, why not massively interrupt and harass her? She might look pissed off, like the few hours of the week she gets to do what she wants instead of kow-towing to other's demands are precious to her and she doesn't really want to have some one talk to her about Mura-fucking-kami, but that's a front, she's actually really quite lonely on the inside and you should definitely try and put your willy in her. Ask her if she likes the book and if not why is she spending her down-time reading a book she doesn't like and when she tells you its for a dare don't look at her like she's some sort of freak that reads books for dares in pubs. See if she got through the first chapter of a book you've read, whilst completely ignoring the fact that she's probably read more books this year than you have in your entire twenties. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce's Ulysses she's actually using the old 'bluestocking' tactic to get you to fuck off. Don't fucking mention Alice in Fucking Wonderland.

It's easy to date a girl who reads, because they are one big homogeneous mass with exactly the same tastes and experiences. In fact, you should just put a mass order out on Amazon for some totally predicable shite 90s classics that your housemates read for his English degree so you can give her them randomly as gifts as make her think you care. Let her know that you understand words are power. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but you're not actually Captain Wentworth, and she's got another year before she's Too Old to be Anne and you should respect that and come back when she's thirty and run out of Austen heroines to emulate. Lie to her, that'll get her hot. If she doesn't get that sometimes you need to lie you can always claim she doesn't understand syntax and use it against her to form the beginnings of a controlling, abusive relationship with no trust. Fail her. In fact, why don't you just sit around all day spending her money, sleep with her best friend and steal from her. She'll be gagging for it then. Girls who read have no basis for self-confidence so will always let you back, you see. Life is meant to have a villain or two, how much better when the villain is the person who claims to love you? Girls who read base their entire basis for what people are on one series of books. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close by lying to her, being a villain, and failing her. When you find her up till 2am clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and go back to fucking bed, if she wanted to be held she'd have come to you. She'll talk as if characters in books are real because you've made her friends loose their rag with her for staying with someone who psychologically manipulates someone to the point where the characters in the books are the only basis for friendship she really has left. You'll propose in some outdated predictable way, or really offhandedly, and then expect her to get down on her knees in gratitude that someone, someone, cares enough about her to want to be with her, even though she was great before she met you. You will smile so hard you will wonder why she hasn't knifed you through the chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, she will stand behind your shoulder and compliment you on your skills with words. Your kids will resent you for what you've done to their mother, who always looked so happy in the photos, reading, who introduced them to Matilda, The Paper Bag Princess and Pippi Longstocking. You will walk the winters of your old age together and occasionally she'll remember that she used to dream of someone who knew Keats.

Girls who read, don't date someone who "deserves" you. You deserve the most colourful life imaginable. If you can only get monotony, and stale hours, and half baked proposals over Skype, you're better off alone. If you want the world, and the worlds beyond it, read. Or better yet, write.