This post at a blog about psychology and reading points out that people often “read into” what you’re reading (no pun intended, but it’s not a bad pun, come to think of it). Reporters love to list what the president is taking for vacation reading. Bill Clinton loved crime fiction; George Bush read mostly history; Barak Obama took two works of crime fiction to Martha’s Vinyard – George Pelecanos’s The Way Home and Richard Price’s Lush Life. The post goes on to talk about a bookstore that has started  a dating service by matching people who like similar books.

The bookstore dating service began when a friend of the owner spotted two books lying together behind the counter and immediately exclaimed, “‘tell me those are for the same guy, and please tell me he’s single!” When I was young, I remember being endlessly curious about the people who had taken a book out of the library before me. I would always pick the circulation card from of its snug manila pocket and peek at the previous borrowers. When was the book taken out last? What did the person’s signature look like? This is one of the things I miss about circulation cards, that fragile tie to the strangers who share our love of certain books.

There are now laws that keep what you’re reading private, and I wouldn’t have discovered my husband of thirty plus years based on reading tastes.  On the other hand, I have read the two crime fiction novels the president took on vacation and loved them both, so maybe if we weren’t both already married . . .

Of course this dating service wouldn’t work well for most college students since you’re too busy reading what you’re told to read to have much room for choice. You’d end up having to date people in your classes.