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My Love

Image credit: Flickr - Jennuine Captures

Clearly there’s some connection between literature and romance. We know that fiction makes you more empathetic, and thus, possibly, more dateable. Writing and love are a lot alike. And a literary misalignment can even break a budding romance.

Recently we’ve heard about how a shared love of books can act as a matchmaker. Now the San Francisco Public Library has taken that a step further, organizing a speed-dating session in the library itself:

Participants were asked to bring a favorite book, so he clutched a copy of “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell and “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy.

In a basement meeting room a boombox played love songs while daters were assigned numbers and had four minutes to chat, flirt or wrinkle their noses at one another’s literary tastes. Then the men rotated, book in tow, to the next woman. Later, librarians would tally scorecards and connect any two people who indicated mutual interest.”

According to the article, other cities—including Fort Collins, CO., Sacramento, Chattanooga, and Omaha—have also followed suit, and the trend may have started in Europe.

Would you attend a library speed-dating night? And the big question: what book would you bring to represent yourself? Mine would have to be a novella of some kind—short and a bit of an oddball.


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