As mentioned on several other blogs, including one blogger who was pitch-perfectly quoted, The NY Times has a funny piece about how someone's taste in books can be a "dealbreaker."
I'm just happy if people read at all, so I have no real dealbreakers, excepting the obvious (read: offensive)... I suppose though, that I'd run the other way if I saw Paul Reiser on their shelf. Books with close-ups of what should be their petite author photo used as the front cover are pretty much all dealbreakers, aren't they.
Another questionable genre of books is children's books. Yes, it is endearing if you meet a guy whose favorite book is "Harold and the Purple Crayon." Yes, a fondness for Dr. Seuss suggests an open-mind, possibly even an interesting past with psychotropic drugs. Yes, every good humored man should own "Everybody Farts." But what if it means they're just mentally retarded? (Can't know till you ask them to read it to you.)
Of course I jest, but all this neglects the whole phenomenon of dating people who ARE writers. More than any of these book, I think the supreme dealbreaker is finding copies of the one unique novel your date self-published with graduation money, curiously positioned in the bathroom or on a coffee table (i.e. where you are certainly going to find them and be forced to acknowledge).
2 comments:
I think you're right on this count.
What cracks me up is how people who pursue the self-publish/POD route are oblivious to the fact that anybody who knows anything about books can spot these as vanity projects of little worth right away. They are always shocked and hurt when somebody calls them on it.
I usually correct them when they say that they've had a book published by saying that they've had a book PRINTED and that there is a difference.
gerry! yes, you can smell a pod from a mile away. too funny. i think the self-published/pod is the thirty-something version of that photocopied 'zine of your own poetry circa high school.
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