...And This Is How Snobs Find Each Other

This article, I bet you look good in a bookstore, featured in the Guardian's excellent culture vulture blog, made a rather tongue-in-cheek proclaimation that "Not only can you judge a book by its cover, it seems you can judge the person reading it, too."

"According to a survey of over 2,000 adults carried out by internet pollsters YouGov for Borders bookstore, books play a crucial role in influencing our opinions of strangers. Half of those asked admitted that they would look again or smile at someone on the basis of what they were reading." The Guardian being the voice of the intellectual elites the world over, things invariably get a bit more complicated. It went on saying:

"Erotic fiction, horror, self-help books and the dreaded chick-lit were all, in fact, deemed turn-offs when it came to love between the covers. The genre most likely to help you pull - the itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny yellow polka dot bikini of the books world - is the classics, followed by biography and modern literary fiction (think Zadie Smith and Sebastian Faulks, rather than Dan Brown and Martina Cole)."

As much as these statements need to be put into context, they are more or less true. I doubt if I can ever smile at anyone parading themselves on the street with a copy of Confessions of a Shopaholic.

But reality is rarely as black-and-white as that. The classics are good, and by extension most of the Penguine books. But as one commenter aptly put it, anyone who hasn't read the Great Gatsby by the time they are legal is bound to be a turn-off. Other classics that are in the tricky territory include Dickens and Catcher in the Rye; you can never tell if someone is reading them for fun or is simply agonizing over his/her grade 10 English assignment.

Modern classics are safer; I'm almost bound to take an instant liking (unless they are eating a $15 chickpea curry on brown rice at a pretentious vegan restaurant) to anyone reading Philip Roth or Ian McEwan. Henry James (would he be considered modern?) and Nabokov are also bonus points for people reading them.

My fascination with the Bloomsbury group and their time in general disposes me favourably towards Forster, although Virginia Woolf is much trickier business--Virginia Woolf faithfuls tend to be a mixed bag, not to mention the fact that the object of your un-called-for affection might very well be a lesbian.

Books by Poe and Lovecraft also lend some ambiguity to people. They are generally fine unless goth kids are reading them.

The area that bibliophilia less often extends to is special-interest books, which is a shame because they are often a good gauge of intellectual curiosity and depth. I once caught sight of a girl reading The Life and Death of Great American Cities in a coffee shop; it was truly brain and beauty.

I feel obliged to express my opinion on people who read in bars and nightclubs. I find them irksome and ostentatious in the same way I find non-vegetarians who refuse to eat meat at Korean Grill. I attribute it to a remarkable lack of common sense: nightclubs are where you get gregarious, act loud and obnoxious, and dance with your arms thrown up in the air, not where you put up intellectual pretensions. Which is why I find the following paragraph a little funny:

"...A colleague told a story of a wedding she attended which had its origins in a chance meeting in a nightclub, during which the gentleman in question asked his future wife what she was reading. Obviously her reply - The Great Gatsby - struck the right note. "

Well, I wish the gentleman best of luck in his marriage.

Finally, there are books I love to hate: Dan Brown, Screen-to-novel adaptations, and Amy Tan brand of Asian American literature starting with Joy Luck Club.

Of course exceptions have to be made. One commenter said, and I heartfully concur, that love at first sight would be someone attractive reading the Da Vinci Code and suddenly tossing it out of the window. That she has to be attractive is, I guess, an after-thought?

p.s. Some of the really funny responses I forgot to mention:

I like to sit next to holidaying families on the tube with a copy of the 120 Days of Sodom and shout "oooh!" and "Uuuugh!" extra loudly.

I also enjoy concocting a pungent mix of spit, jizz and piss and flinging it at any furrow-browed twat that happens to be conspicuously reading Paradise Lost or their trendily tattered Nabokov or whatever. Fuck. Off.

Posted by simiain on August 1, 2006 09:04 PM.

A colleague of mine remarked rather pithily that, if the stranger opposite is very good looking, then what does the book's title matter? They can read, can't they?
Anyway...
Total turn offs for the ladies include:
- Mein Kampf - you might find you have long-term ideological issues with this person
- The little red book by Mao Tse Tung - ditto
- Anything by Enid Blyton (if the person is over 10) ditto
- Anything by Oscar Wilde - the guy's probably gay so don't bother, girls
- Anything by the Bront�s - ditto
- A DIY manual - this guy's already hitched and a home-maker. No chance
- Da Vinci Code - simply because anyone who hasn't read it yet AND is reading it has been on another planet for the last year. Mind you, it could indicate he's a NASA rocket scientist...
----
And total turn-ons are:
- Saki's short stories. Marry this person before the bus or train reaches its next stop. Wonderful wit, black sense of humour and epicurean lifestyle. Go for it.
- Anything by Irvine Walsh. Offbeat, bedraggled and very sexy. In a lowlife sort of way.
- Shakespeare's complete works. You'd never be short of conversation.
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Erudite without being boring.
- Anything by Ishiguro. Very sexy indeed.
- Viz magazine. Read by a very well-dressed gent smelling of Givenchy. Unexpected.
Not sure where I stand on Louis de Berni�res and Mishima...Depends on what the bloke looks like, I suppose.

Posted by frogprincess on August 1, 2006 06:35 PM.