Monday, December 15, 2008

Want to find a woman? Just go by the book
Mark Brown, arts correspondent for The Guardian,

Heterosexual single male? Tired of travelling home with ready meals for one in your bag? Need to get a grip of your life and find a woman? Then help could be at hand.

A survey commissioned by the National Year of Reading has found the top 10 reads to impress a woman. Top of the list is Nelson Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. If you also drop in that you adore Shakespeare, poetry, and cookery books; are never off current affairs websites; and - sorry readers - that you take the Financial Times, then there may be queues. The poll also delves into dating deceit. Lying about something you've read to impress someone you're taken with comes second after telling untruths about sexual conquests, but ahead of lying about your age or job.

The National Year of Reading is spending 2008 trying to get more people reading, in any form, whether it is books, magazines or websites. It said the poll was an attempt to explore the importance of reading in all aspects of people's lives. The campaign's director, Honor Wilson-Fletcher, said: "I love the fact that every generation seems to know that reading can help us all increase our potential appeal in the search for love and romance.
For all the talk of our superficial obsession with beauty, it looks like underneath it all we know that brains contribute to sex appeal too."
Over half of the 1,543 people surveyed were teenagers. Top of the list to impress a teenage boy are Facebook and MySpace followed by text messages, Harry Potter and song lyrics.

Magazines like Zoo and Nuts are number seven. To impress a teenage girl, it is the same top two, followed by song lyrics, cookery books and Harry Potter. Reassuringly, Jane Austen is number seven.

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