Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on
books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too
many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a
library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know
that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the
one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly
cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing
the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can
never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s
the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take
a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind
of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She
might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted.
Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let
her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first
chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s
Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice
or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give
her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the
gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let
her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the
difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her
life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she
does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she
understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other
things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the
world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads
up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end.
That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still
be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be
frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that
people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you
find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a
book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose
her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as
if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always
are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or
very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard
you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest
yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and
even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and
Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together
and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your
boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl
who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her
monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off
alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who
reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

(not my work)

Astu Mengesha – stay down blaze up.