Literary Speed-Dating
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
The “Literary Speed Dating” event at the Rochambeau Library, sponsored by the Providence Community Library, set out to change this typecast by allowing dozens of local singles to use their bookworm qualities to attract prospects.
A novel idea
Speed dating, for anyone not well versed in Sex and the City, is an organized way to meet several singles of the opposite sex in one evening. The two sexes pair up facing each other and like a middle school dance, the boys line up on one side of the room, girls on the other. After an allotted amount of time, the pairs rotate so that each single has a chance to meet every other. Next, the participants have a chance to fill out a scorecard and if two people approve one another, they will receive each other’s contact information and know that they are mutually interested.
“Literary Speed Dating” works the same way, but adds books into the mix. Each one of the participants was asked to bring a work of literature they loved to talk about. And there is certainly a mix of books. Two women bring To Kill a Mockingbird, some bring inspirational books, there is a copy of Astrology for Beginners, as well as novels by Margaret Atwood and Susan Sontag. One woman brings the gorgeously illustrated and cryptically written Diary of Frida Kahlo.
Finding a type
The books tend to reflect not only the bringer but also the type of person they are looking for. Ryan, who brought Pet Cemetery by Stephen King, “both my favorite book and my favorite movie,” he says, is looking for someone who is also interested in the horror, thriller genre.
Beth, who brought a Christopher Moore book, describes both the book and her ideal date as “sarcastic and irreverent.” Beth says that her mother told her to come after seeing the ad in the Providence Journal and suggested she go—“Someone who reads would be good. There are not too many guys who like books.”
This is true of the event; there are certainly fewer gentlemen than ladies; there are 25 women and 19 men. (When the emcee announced that four men failed to show, someone calls out: “No commitment!”)
Just there to date
During the event, the literary aspect did not hold up as well as the dating part did. A speed dater named Anthony said that after half an hour deliberating outfits, he left himself just enough time to get to the event before remembering that he was supposed to bring a book. He said he wasn’t much of a reader, but the event seemed like “a refreshingly different format from both online dating and the bar-club scene.”
A woman named Jill was much more shameless; she didn’t bring a book at all and declared: “I don’t read, I’m here for the speed dating.”
Rebecca, who said the dating event was “seemed less scary since it was organized by the library,” was surprised by how many people said they weren’t big readers or didn’t have time for books. “Of course,” she says, “the book was just a vehicle for starting conversation; among the guys that held my interest the most, I had the easiest time conversing with. We didn't even get to talking about our books.”
Clicking
Of course, there were participants who were thrilled about the possibility of meeting someone who shared their love of books. Kristin, who works at another library in the state and brought five books, is considering bringing the event to her library.
Dan brought two—Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund and Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans — because he didn’t think he could be represented with just one work of literature. However, he says, “There seemed to be an indirect relationship between my ‘clicking’ with someone and my memory of the book they brought—because if we got along, I had no reason to really look at their book.
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