Your next date will read you like a book

Book publishers, edgily aware that the nature of their market is changing, are forever surfing the net in search of new ways to use online services without losing readers. The latest idea comes from the union of Penguin and dating agency Match.com.

A reliable way of discovering whether some one is compatible with you, Penguin and Match will soon be telling us, is to check the potential lover's reading habits. A website will be created to restore "the importance of the written word in modern courtship". It could work. Discovering that some one shares your literary enthusiasms is a strangely intimate pleasure, and is probably as good a guide to future happiness as anything.

Of course, there will be cheats. If the idea catches on, some sleazy opportunist - me, perhaps - will put together an instant guide called 50 Great Books To Get You Laid. In the meantime, women looking for book-based romance will need some basic guidelines. A man who adores Jeremy Clarkson's wit will almost certainly lack a sense of humour. One who mentions a love for Ulysses is a serial liar. Male readers of Margaret Atwood are surprisingly untrustworthy.

On the other hand, neither men nor women should dismiss out of hand potential dates whose literary taste runs to authors with controversial sexual politics. Those who curl up with Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Mary Gaitskill's jaunty tales of sado-masochism or Howard Jacobson's eye-wateringly rude No More Mr Nice Guy are invariably straight as a die in real life and excellent bets, romantically.

Source: Terence Blacker, The Independent