The Book Nerd’s Guide to First Dates

Welcome to the Book Nerd’s Guide to Life! Every other week, we convene in this safe place to discuss the unique challenges of life for people whose noses are always wedged in books. Find past guides here.
Despite all the wondrous innovations we’ve witnessed in this bright, bold century, managing first dates has not been among the sparkling improvements we’ve made to everyday life. They’re still awkward. They’re still inevitable. They often lead to disappointment. Anyone who claims not to find dating at times torturous is someone you should be eyeing with suspicion.
As is customary, this process can be even more difficult for people whose most intense emotional attachments tend to be with characters that live between a front and back cover. When you could be staying home with Darcy, what’s the point of trying to find a flesh-and-blood partner? Yet we trudge on, ever trying to form a connection with another living human.
To paraphrase the immortal dating advice of John Waters, if you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, then don’t get intimately acquainted with them. It’s sound advice, but it can’t solve all the pitfalls of dating for book nerds. What if your suitor, attractive in every other way, is a genre snob, and you’re harboring a steampunk obsession that borders on mania? What if your views on reading in the bathroom are diametrically opposed?
I’ve had dates that ended with the admission, “I’ve never heard of Kurt Vonnegut.” I’ve had other dates that never veered from the topic of how heinously unjust it was that Hermione’s pioneering work with S.P.E.W. never made it into the Harry Potter films. These things can go either way. What I have learned from the experiences, however, is that there are a few telltale questions you need to ask on a first date, before you end up wasting any more valuable reading time. These will be different for anyone, but here are three of mine.
“How do you mark your place?”
I’m not going to be so bold as to say there’s a right answer to this question—only a right answer for you. Someone whose copy of Wolf Hall is pristine, with no annotations and no scuffs, may have a hard time sharing a library with a hardened dog-earer. And as I believe to be true, there is very little more to a relationship than cohabiting in a book warehouse. This might explain things about me. Regardless, you need to know a potential partner’s thoughts on appropriate bookmarks.
“Word association: Infinite Jest.”
There are two types of people in this world: those who have read David Foster Wallace’s opus, and those who probably never will. Realistically, I am the latter, and it is important to get to this information up front. Neither of you has the time or the stamina to pretend you’ve read all 1,079 pages if you have no interest in doing so. You cannot fake appreciation for endnotes, nor should you. Conversely, for those who adore David Foster Wallace, you can’t possibly be with a person whose lack of commitment to what you consider a masterpiece will always cast doubt on their loyalty and devotion in other aspects of life.
“What are your thoughts on R + L = J?”
This is a strategic maneuver to guide the conversation away from the weather and your awful coworkers and toward a topic that can serve a few purposes: 1) determining this person’s attention to detail, 2) illustrating that your potential mate has the patience and wherewithal to stick with a series with no definitive end date, and 3) weeding out any lunatics who truly believe the paragon of virtue in a book series otherwise filled with tawdry self-indulgence is capable of infidelity.
I encourage you to share your make-or-break questions, and slowly, we’ll make the dating landscape less unbearable for we, the ink-stained wretches of the world.