fiction as social grace
By Anne Stameshkin
According to this recent study, fiction makes you more empathetic–and therefore less socially awkward. If you’re British, you can even use those bookish charms to find love on PenguinDating, “where book lovers meet.”
From the Penguin Blog:
Sure, some of us might be trapped in joyless, loveless relationships with people who get upset because we were looking at online dating websites, even though it’s for PERFECTLY REASONABLE reasons like fabricating a picture of a King Penguin with a match.com profile KATE. But there are others out there yet to find that special joyless, loveless relationship in which to get trapped. So, for those poor souls, Penguin have teamed up with match.com to make it easier to pick potential dates online based not just on idle frippery like hair colour and star sign, but on truly important stuff like what books they like. As an example of how crucial that can be, see how arousing this is:
I just finished reading Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme … ladies.
How does fiction help you function in society (or on its fringes)? And what role — if any — do books play in your dating life?
For inspiration:
“It’s Not You, It’s Your Books”
This doesn’t surprise me at all! Fiction asks the reader to think about why other people act and feel as they do. And the kinds of people who love fiction are, largely, those who are interested in thinking about other people and other situations in the first place. Whether one causes the other, or whether it’s a self-perpetuating circle, is a chicken-and-egg question. (But it’s certainly true that if fiction is trimmed from schools, fewer children will be asked to consider these things at all.)
It’s hard for me to imagine dating someone who didn’t like books. As a writer, I’d feel they lacked a certain respect for what I did! But the people I’ve met who really didn’t like to read–or didn’t see any value in “made-up stories”–have had a very different worldview, and very different priorities and values, than I have. The NYT article hits the nail on the head. This may be why I’m now married to the child of two English teachers, and why we always need more shelves to hold all of our books.
Isn’t this one of your dating screening questions? Don’t you look at a man/woman’s bookshelves when you see where they live? I am always amazed when I meet people who say they don’t read books and don’t realize the blasphemy of what they have just uttered.
[...] It makes you more empathetic. [...]