Marriage is so last century. Natalie Bakopoulos contemplates the demise of the marriage plot and Jeffrey Eugenides’s complex, undermining revival of it in his aptly-titled novel, The Marriage Plot. Is love still the ultimate trump card? Dear reader, it is. With some qualifications.
Here on the FWR blog, we’ve discussed how literature can find you love–through online dating sites for book-lovers or in person through speed-dating in libraries. (Hey, even the New York Times picked up on it!) But what do you do AFTER you’ve found love? Well, boys and girls: 1. Sometimes when two bookworms love each other very much, they decide to get married. If they’re really book-lovers, the proposal happens IN the library, as with this couple, who got engaged thanks to a very special book: Stephanie of Read In a Single Sitting tells the story of her proposal, which […]
When you’re on a first date, what’s the first question you ask? “What do you do?” “Where did you grow up?” “What did you think of Inception?” Maybe you should ask “Who’s your favorite author?” Thought Catalog presents this handy (though somewhat tongue-in-cheek) guide to personalities based on favorite authors. For example, love Tao Lin? 3. Tao Lin If your favorite author is Tao Lin, you’re the type of introspective person who recognizes absurdity in typical daily behavior. You’re most likely a combination of all or some of the following: hipster, twee, Into Literature, shy/ anxious/ curious/ depressed, Poet, and […]
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 […]
Last summer, FWR reported on Alikewise, a free dating site based on your taste in books. Only five months later, the New York Times has picked up the story, including Alikewise in a roundup of “niche dating sites.” Compared to some of the other sites, in the list—matchmaking sites for senior citizens, Apple lovers, virgins seeking other virgins, and mustache fetishists—finding a date based on shared literary tastes is hardly weird. Is this a sign, maybe, that literary dating is ready for the mainstream?
Literature can bring people together—but it can also cause romantic tensions. Reports the New York Times: For Erin and Daniel Muskat, a couple in Brooklyn, the ink-stained quarrel has disrupted the togetherness of their reading habits. Ms. Muskat, 29, bought an iPad for her husband, 33, who works at his family’s shoe business, before their honeymoon in June, but quickly discovered that his electronic reading impinged on her old-fashioned reading. “I brought a book with me and I barely read it,” said Ms. Muskat, a media consultant. “We used to go to the beach and we’d both take out books, […]
