If you want to get laid, stop reading Harry Potter

The Glasgow Daily Record (that bastion of proper journalistic integrity) reports on a recent survey conducted which concludes that girls judge a man's desirability by his reading habits:

Penguin books quizzed 1000 females about the holiday reads they would look for in a mate.

They found fantasy fiction like JK Rowling's series, JRR Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings and Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels put girls off.

Sex and relationships expert Tracey Cox, from BBC2's Would Like To Meet, said men escaping into alternative realities appear to have less grip on the real world.

She added: 'They usually are so immersed in the world they're experiencing through their book, they forget about real life.

'This guy isn't going to be trendy or particularly rich.'

The most attractive genres to women are true stories, autobiographies, classics, thrillers, crime and mystery.

A heavyweight title such as Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is more appealing than macho blockbusters by Tom Clancy.

The report also claims that "more than half of men and women say books can inspire a chat-up line." Ah, crap. Busted.

Comments

[Bill Crider]

Dang. That explains a lot about my high school years.

[Rebecca]

No way. ANY man who reads Terry Pratchett's Discworld has something going for him...like the ability to recognize a genius. (Granted, I broke up with the guy who introduced me to Discworld, in college, but not because of that.) And I find that it's easier to communicate with someone who likes GOOD fantasy (defined by what I like) because we share reference points. I'm neutral on classics, although a tendency to dismiss Jane Austen as "chick lit" or an excessive admiration of the Brontes might be a deal breaker for me. But fantasy/sf readers have been wronged! If they are otherwise desirable (i.e. not on the build of Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons) their reading habits are a plus.

[Gerald So]

'They usually are so immersed in the world they're experiencing through their book, they forget about real life.'

My all-time favorite book? Don Quixote.

[Sarah]

Rebecca, I have to agree--SF/F is really getting a bad rap in the above article, because let's see, all of the nice guys I know who are in stable relationships either spent their youth reading that genre and still have their collection or keep reading and stay current with their beloved authors. In other words, they are geeks. And that is often a good thing to be:

http://www.neystadt.org/john/humor/Girls-Guide-To-Geek-Guys.htm

[Aldo]

Damn,
Well, I read the classics, Tolkien, Ludlum, comics and still couldn't get a date in high school. I don't understand????? Now college was a different story....

[Dave White]

Damn, I knew the Harry Potter thing would come back to bite me in the ass.

[ron]

Yes, Sarah, but the women they polled don't want STABLE relationships, no matter how much they say they want them. They want DRAMATIC relationships, even when those relationships subsequently blow up in their faces.

[Megan]

Yet more evidence that I'm not a real woman....

[John Rickards]

I'm still struggling to think of a book-inspired chat up line. Especially for crime...

"Is that your ninhydrin fingerprint testing kit in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?..."

"Hey baby, you wanna know how to estimate time of death?..."

;*)

I like the guide to geeks, too. Very cool. :-D

[Rebecca]

Gerald: LOL. Do you think Don Quijote marks you as a sensitive mature reader of classics or as a fantasy nut? (DQ is sort of the ultimate geek in that he ignores his balding/aging condition as much as the Star Trek guys. The nice thing about him is that he just imagines himself a Deanna or Bev, without actually forcing a real woman to live up to that standard.)

Sarah, thanks for the geek guide giggle, but it's a bit unfair too. Of the IT people I worked with one was a jazz musician in his time off, another wrote and illustrated children's books and others...oops, a bunch of others were rather bright attractive women. I guess they got carried away with that whole "pretend to be interested" thing.

John, obviously the better chat up line is "Hey baby, can I check your vital signs?" (Or alternately some version of the very brilliant Scottish musical "Stiff"....Donna, if you can get me the lyrics to that, you will have my eternal gratitude, possibly expressed in buying you a drink the next time you're here to pick up your Nevermores.) ;-)

[Fiona]

Hell, if I spotted someone reading Pratchett, like Rebecca I would be IMPRESSED. In my world, the only author whose name is a synonym for genius is Terry Pratchett.

[Jim Winter]

Let's see. I married my wife because, at the time, I was a Trekkie. I also liked Lord of the Rings a lot, enough so that her repeated viewings of the 17-hour extended versions of each movie did little to dampen my appreciation for it.

That said, if I'd only started reading Spenser in the 10th grade, along with Estleman and Valin, I could have dated several of these women who wanted trendy, dramatic relationships.

But I don't have one of those. We don't fight. We're perfectly comfortable being separated. We're not jealous of each other. Hmm... If I'm ever single again, remind me to make sure I don't date any women who read chick lit. Or anything I write.

[Gerald]

Rebecca, I guess I'm a bit of both. Other favorite classics include Homer's Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, Prometheus Bound, and that great granddad of detective fiction, Oedipus Rex.

I'm also a Trek and Star Wars (Eps. 4-6) fan, but have never dressed the parts, nor read the spinoff books.

The best of all possible worlds? Those episodes where Picard played 1940s PI Dixon Hill, and the one where he played Robin Hood to Q's Sheriff of Nottingham.

And I have to mention the episode of "Quantum Leap" where Sam plays an understudy in a Syracuse production of Man of La Mancha.

[Donna]

Now, had you posted this yesterday Sarah, I might have said "Actually, I wouldn't mind what anyone was reading, it's nice to see people reading any book", but today, I'm not so sure. I think the man sitting next to me on the bus on the way home should have read this article in the Record. Then he might have thought twice about his reading material. I always check out what people are reading (not with the intention of chatting them up, I hasten to add). So I took a sneaky look at the title of his book "Inside the Mind of The Serial Killer". It wouldn't have been so bad, but his lips were moving as he read it. I might have imagined the outline of the carving knife in his jacket pocket, but he was definitely creepy. So I think true crime and The Racing Post would be the only things that would make me think twice :o) Or something really dull like The Financial Times. Or "How to Cure yourself of Syphilis". Or "The Autopsy - A Scratch and Sniff Book"...

And Rebecca, i will keep my eyes open. In the meantime: "Stuffing a stiff, gives me a lift, it's thrilling, exciting, quite simply, it makes my skin go goose pimply..."

Tata,

Donna

[Sarah]

Donna, what is up with the 62 bus? Freaks everywhere. Although that guy reminds me of the time, early in my Partners & Crime days, when a guy walked in and asked if there were any how-to guides about being a hitman. I politely said he should look elsewhere and hoped he would leave, fast. Luckily, he did.

John, those lines are bloody awful. Although come to think of it, every time my forensic background comes up, guys either get a) ridiculously interested or b) look very confused, so maybe with a little modification...

And as for Don Quixote, it is a wonderful piece of fiction. And so too is its more contemporary cousin, A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, which has one of the most bizarre and funniest relationships ever described in fiction.

[John Rickards]

Sarah said: "John, those lines are bloody awful. Although come to think of it, every time my forensic background comes up, guys either get a) ridiculously interested or b) look very confused, so maybe with a little modification..."

I thank you. :-D

Although now I've had longer to think about it, it's possible to scale the heights of cheese with 'lines inspired by crime fiction'.

"Are you one of those cops who hunts down escaped felons? 'Cos you've sure captured my heart..."

"I'm investigating a mystery. I'm trying to deduce how come you and I aren't together..."

I'm still trying to come up with one that has "murder" in it somewhere.

...

Hmm...

Looking at those, it's probably for the best that I'm not in the habit of asking out every girl I meet*. The combination of the black eyes I'd receive and people vomiting over me would get tiring very quickly...

;-)

* And in my defence, in reality I wouldn't touch chat up lines with a ten-foot pole. Honest. With quality like that, can you blame me?

[Arcane Gazebo]

Not terribly surprising--I suspect that the Comic Book Guy type was in the minds of more than a few of those respondents who were put off by sci-fi. The CBGs are a small minority, but they give the genre a bad reputation...

If I have any literary turn-offs they're mostly limited to the LEFT BEHIND series, which is fortunately not very popular among Berkeley women.

[Jim Winter]

LEFT BEHIND not popular? You mean you don't find the idea of a male model being the Antichrist and monumentally oblivious to everything happening around him (despite being the omnipotent son of the Devil) intriguing?

Ah, screw it. Randall Flag was a way cooler incarnation of evil. I mean he quoted the Rolling Stones and took over Vegas in THE STAND. Now that was Armageddon done right.

[John Rickards]

Well, it's late, and I'm tired, but I figure one last batch of crime chat up lines and then I really will stop and seek professional help... :-)

"I'm here to help you avoid a murder charge. 'Cos if I can't be with you, I might just die of a broken heart..."

"I've gotta admit, I'm a thief. And I'm hoping to steal a kiss..."

"I'm looking for a partner to commit a crime of passion, and you're perfect for the job..."

"I'm studying the science of predictive forensics, and I predict in a few minutes' time my fingerprints are going to be all over you..."

Enough, enough. Very definitely. :-)