He had me at Thomas Pynchon.
Bookworms are having their moment with the rise of a slew of new dating sites and events geared toward the literary set.
There’s alikewise.com (tagline: “Dating by the book”), which lets users scope out would-be partners based on their reading picks. Brooklyn’s Word Bookstore matches up customers with a corkboard in the shop and also hosts mixers, proms and running groups for the brains in the neighbourhood. And in Belgium, “lib-dating” sees bookworms speed-dating among the bookshelves of their local libraries, where participants have 10 minutes to hook a date by expounding on their favourite authors.
Although dating sites have been growing increasingly niche over the years – think TrekPassions.com, SingleParentsMingle.com and HumanitarianDating.com – some have reeked of exclusivity more than others, including BeautifulPeople.com, which booted 5,000 members for gaining weight last Christmas.
While not aesthetically superficial, bookish dating sites and events have a snooty connotation: Can literary tastes really make or break a couple?
More at The Globe and Mail
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